"Startup Autobahn" celebrates fifth birthday

30 companies from the automotive industry are looking for promising start-ups via the network. Mercedes-Benz alone has scouted 5000. This year, the eighth location of the "Startup Autobahn" will follow in Seoul.

From Stuttgart to the whole world: the "Startup Autobahn" takes stock on its fifth birthday. "When we founded Startup Autobahn in 2016, we wanted to be exactly where we are today five years later: Behind us lies an impressive record of implemented innovations, ahead of us new projects, new partners and groundbreaking new ideas," says Markus Schäfer, Member of the Board of Management at Daimler.

The record of the innovation platform for mobility start-ups: 250 events, 350 projects, 30 partners from various branches of the automotive and automotive supplier industry, including several DAX-listed groups. Mercedes-Benz alone has scouted 5,000 start-ups via the platform. One of the most successful is Lana Labs from Berlin, whose AI software is already in use in the production and logistics of the E- and S-Class.

In the meantime, the "Startup Autobahn" has established six locations in addition to its home base in Stuttgart: Sunnyvale and Tuscaloosa in the USA, East London in South Africa, Bangalore in India, Beijing and Singapore. This year, the eighth location in Seoul will be added. The platform mediates between large corporations and mobility start-ups. Mercedes-Benz itself does not participate, but only becomes a client of the start-ups. "We are venture clients," says Philipp Gneiting, Head of External Innovations at Mercedes-Benz. "We give start-ups the chance to immediately find the right contacts in large corporations and quickly gain a foothold."