Startupnews KW 20 - 2025

Persona AI receives USD 27 million in oversubscribed pre-seed. Felix Rose new Head of Optio Incentives. Vivid receives MiCAR license for EU-wide crypto service expansion. INERATEC produces first e-fuel. Hochzeit.click expands into Germany and acquires competitor. Coupa takes over Cirtuo. Scalera secures 6.5 million euros in record time. Frisbii takes over Infer. LAWLIFT and Noxtua start cooperation. 11.4% more start-ups of larger companies in Q1 2025. Svein-Egil Nielsen becomes new Chairman of the Board at BeammWave. Ecohelix wins Green Product Award 2025 for WOODMER® Seal.

Investments

Persona AI receives USD 27 million in oversubscribed pre-seed

The US startup Persona AI has raised USD 27 million in an oversubscribed pre-seed round to further develop its humanoid robot platform. The robots are designed to perform physically demanding tasks in sectors such as shipbuilding and industrial manufacturing and address labor shortages and safety risks. Initial deployments are planned in cooperation with HD Hyundai. Persona AI is based on a Robotics-as-a-Service (RaaS) model and was founded in 2024 by robotics experts. The financing was led by Unity Growth and Tides Ventures, with the participation of numerous other investors. According to Morgan Stanley, the market for humanoid workers is estimated to have a potential of up to USD 3 trillion in the USA alone.

Scalera secures 6.5 million euros in record time

Construction tech startup Scalera has successfully raised 6.5 million euros in just three days - an exceptionally fast and competitive funding process. Several well-known investors submitted competing term sheets, with the lead investor committing within just 48 hours. The round was led by early-stage investors firstminute capital and Speedinvest. Scalera is developing an AI-powered tendering solution for the construction industry that aims to fundamentally improve the procurement process by increasing accuracy, efficiency and speed. The company is also supported by angel investors such as Mehdi Ghissassi (Stem AI, DeepMind), Cal Henderson (Slack) and PlanRadar founders Sander van de Rijdt and Ibrahim Imam.

M & A

Hochzeit.click expands to Germany and acquires competitor

The Viennese startup Hochzeit.click, Austria's leading marketplace for wedding services, has successfully entered the German market and is experiencing strong growth. Since its official launch in Germany in May 2025, the platform has increased its monthly user numbers to over 170,000. Over 150 paying service providers from Germany are already on board. With the acquisition of the hochzeits-location.info portal, the company has strengthened its organic reach and generates around 45,000 direct inquiries from bridal couples every year, 30% of which already come from Germany. Founder Bernhard Fichtenbauer from hochzeits-location.info joins the management team. Despite not relying on investor capital, the company operates profitably from its cash flow and focuses on sustainable scaling.

Coupa takes over Cirtuo

Coupa has acquired the Croatian company Cirtuo, a provider of AI-supported category management. The acquisition strengthens Coupa's position as a provider of AI-based spend management and consistently pursues the vision of an autonomous procurement process. The integration of Cirtuo's technology enables companies to seamlessly link strategic purchasing decisions with operational measures. Cirtuo's dialog-based solution is already in use at global companies such as Walmart, Novartis and Johnson & Johnson.

Frisbii acquires Infer

Frisbii, a platform for recurring revenue management, is acquiring the British AI specialist Infer in order to expand its expertise in the field of data-based revenue forecasting and predictive analytics. Infer's technology for analyzing large amounts of data and developing machine learning models will be fully integrated into the Frisbii platform. The Infer team will form the new Data Science department under the leadership of co-founder Erik Mathiesen-Dreyfus.

Cooperations

LAWLIFT and Noxtua start cooperation

Noxtua, which specializes in legal AI, is integrating its language model (Noxtua LLM) into LAWLIFT's no-code document automation solution. This enables law firms and legal departments to automatically create and edit legal documents with AI support. The cooperation combines European data protection and legal standards with intelligent automation and offers legal professionals practical support in document creation.

Personnel

Svein-Egil Nielsen becomes new Chairman of the Board at BeammWave

BeammWave AB has appointed Svein-Egil Nielsen, former CTO and EVP R&D of Nordic Semiconductor, as the new Chairman of the Board. The decision was made at the Annual General Meeting on May 14, 2025. Nielsen has been a member of the Board since 2024 and brings extensive experience in the semiconductor industry. His appointment underscores BeammWave's strategic focus on the international commercialization of its digital beamforming technology. The entire Board has been confirmed for the upcoming term. CEO Stefan Svedberg emphasizes Nielsen's valuable contribution and global business experience. Nielsen sees great potential in the technology and announces that it will actively support the company's international growth.

Optio Incentives strengthens private equity business with Felix Rose as new division head

The SaaS company Optio Incentives has appointed Felix Rose as Head of Private Equity Solutions. Based in Frankfurt, he will be responsible for the expansion of this business area. With his decades of experience in M&A and management participation programmes, Rose will drive forward the digitalization and automation of private equity incentive plans via the Optio platform. The aim is to replace manual processes with integrated digital workflows to significantly increase scalability, compliance and efficiency. The appointment marks a further step in Optio's growth strategy following a funding round led by CCAP.

More exciting news

Ecohelix wins Green Product Award 2025 for WOODMER® Seal

Biotech Ecohelix has won the Green Product Award 2025 in the packaging category. The award-winning solution, WOODMER® Seal, is a bio-based heat-seal coating made from wood biomass and is an environmentally friendly alternative to conventional plastic coatings. The jury praised the product's up to 90% lower emissions and high performance for various non-food packaging applications. WOODMER® Seal also achieved full recyclability according to the CEPI standard. CEO Petri Oinonen sees the award as confirmation of the company's sustainable innovative strength and close cooperation with industry partners.

Vivid receives MiCAR license for EU-wide crypto service expansion

Vivid has received the MiCAR license from the Dutch financial regulator AFM via its Dutch subsidiary, making it one of the first providers to be approved under the new European crypto regulatory framework. The license allows the Berlin-based FinTech to offer its crypto services, which were previously limited to Italy and Spain, in all EU member states in the future. The Europe-wide rollout is scheduled to start in July 2025. Vivid is thus planning a secure and scalable expansion to establish itself as the leading European financial platform for private and business customers. The company sees the MiCAR approval not only as a regulatory necessity, but also as a strategic milestone to strengthen trust, transparency and growth in crypto banking.

INERATEC produces first e-fuel at pioneering plant in Frankfurt

INERATEC has produced synthetic e-fuels and e-waxes on a commercial scale for the first time at its new pioneering plant in Frankfurt. With a capacity of up to 2,500 tons per year, the plant is the largest of its kind in Europe and a significant step towards the industrial use of power-to-liquid technology. Production is based on renewable hydrogen and biogenic CO₂, and the hydrocarbons produced can be used in the aviation and chemical industries, among others. The start of production marks the transition from pilot projects to marketable series production. The project is supported by investors and funding from the EU, EIB and the German Federal Ministry for the Environment. International production facilities are already being planned.

More large company start-ups, but also more business closures in the first quarter of 2025

According to Destatis, around 36,500 economically significant new businesses were founded in Germany in the first quarter of 2025. This represents an increase of 11.4% compared to the same period last year. At the same time, however, the number of complete closures of such businesses rose by 10.0% to around 30,200. In total, there were around 171,500 new businesses, 2.9% more than in the previous year. The total number of complete business closures rose by 4.0% to around 142,300. There was also a slight increase in the total number of business registrations and deregistrations.