The German startup ecosystem is off to a strong start in 2026: Between January and June, 3,053 new startups were founded. This represents a 52 percent increase compared to the second half of 2025 and means more startups were founded than in all of 2024.
I have mainly been seeing AI and defense companies in the German tech market. Not the kind of companies we need.
Which would you need?
Enabling a leisure society.
An AI that can respond and receive fax messages…
Companies focused on digital sovereignty. The EU, both companies and end users, are completely dependent on US software and operating systems. There is a bit of movement around governments using Linux, but there is nothing happening around replacing iOS and Android.
You already have iode, /e/, Graphene OS and Jolla. How many other startups do you need? The problem is not lack of software. What is needed is legislation to force compatibility with de-googled phones. It’s up to EU, not startups.
Also, EU needs sovereignty in defense badly. It’s hard to fight American corporations when you still need US to defend you. Defense startups are welcome.
We should avoid a military-industrial complex, though. So the defense must be nationally owned.
Exactly!! It’s a government policy and regulatory problem, not a market problem.
GrapheneOS is leading Android custom rom, but it isn’t a startup and doesn’t support much hardware.
The others are LineageOS based and have weak points when it comes to security, privacy, and frequency updates.
All Android custom roms are still directly tied to Google’s software development (AOSP).
Sailfish OS (Jolla) is Linux based, but is proprietary, so not really an open platform.
So seems like Jolla is the only company really developing an independent mobile OS.
So? You think someone is going to fund a startup and develop a fully independent, fully open source phone OS that will support modern hardware and all the apps stock Android does? Of course not. Jolla, Graphene OS and LineageOS show what a small company can currently do. You also have Ubuntu and Postmarket OS, Fairphone, Murena and couple more. Between them they cover all the niche markets: security, privacy, open-source, Android alternative and independent hardware. No one is investing heavily in them because those markets are really small. New startup trying to develop something from scratch makes no sense.
Germans are the least trustworthy partners when it comes to military. So no, we don’t need them to create new ways to slaughter their neighbours.
We still don’t have an EU replacement for Visa/MasterCard, Intel/amd, nvidia/amd, but building these takes more than a couple of chatgpt prompts
Wero?
MSI/VIA (Taiwanese), could also play in on ASML and contribute to making their own chips.
Why? Because of what happened 60 years ago? Or do you have more recent examples?
60?
Germany bad!
Germany bad! truely is your best argument.
Like memlog? https://www.sprind.org/en/actions/projects/memlog
It competed in a challenge to replace the whole von Neumann architecture.
If I wanted to build any sort of US software competitior, I would go out and claim it is insanely AI to get funding.
One that builds affordable housing?
That’s a political problem. Most voters don’t want housing to be affordable. Urban development is in the hands of councils mostly.
Please provide sources for your claims, that „most voters don‘t want housing to be affordable“ and „urban development is in the hands of councils mostly“. You can use websearch.
For me, my impression is different, considering Deutsche Wohnen & Co. enteignen and the state‘s reaction not to consider the public‘s interest, but to instead change expropriation laws to block the possibility to let it happen by demand of the common folk.
Maybe it‘s a systemic problem, have you considered that?
Nevertheless, wouldn’t they be needed?
But why do you think German voters doesn’t want affordable housing?
Because the voters are mostly old people who have better rental agreement prices (differences of hundreds of euros) or landlords.
Sounds believable but it feels like you’re just assuming this for Germany. Affordable housing is and was a big issue in all elections I remember. It’s a major point for more than half the political parties and it’s a topic regularly covered by German media. On top, we have the second lowest number of home owners in Europe…
So I would still say, a startup that can create affordable housing, would be much needed in Germany 😅