(B) I attended a German AI Startup RoadShow @ HanaHaus in Palo Alto yesterday night organized by the German Incubator Start2 Group, and the very active German American Business Association (GABA) of California. The event showcased 10 AI German start-ups that are looking to raise funds from American investors mostly to finance their expansions in the US. As you would expect from two German organizations, the event was well-organized, to say the least.

Here are my observations from the event. The difference with Silicon Valley are quite obvious:

• Most start-ups are focusing on improving a given industrial process or an enterprise workflow for a specific vertical (automobile, retail, advertising, health care…)
• Most start-ups had pre-seed rounds of less than 200,000 euros and are looking to raise seed and/or first round of less than 5 millions euros (quite low compared to Silicon Valley start-ups)
• None of those start-ups are innovating in machine learning or gen AI. They are all applying well-known techniques and tools to well-defined use cases
• Some of those start-ups have already break-even or are profitable just after their first round of financing (unheard of for most Silicon Valley start-ups which are sometime still not profitable years after IPO)
• It very likely that only a few or even only one of those start-ups will reach $100 million in annual revenues due to their narrow market focus
• Most of those start-ups are raising funds in the U.S. to support their German customers that have operations in the U.S.

Here is the list of those pitching start-ups. I enjoyed in particular the presentations of 36Zero Vision, dpv-analytics, Exazyme, and FuseAI. Click on the following links if you are a U.S. angel or professional investor, with a connection to Germany, to contact them:

• 36ZERO Vision enables manufacturers to achieve zero-defect production at maximum capital efficiency by leveraging its best-in-class foundation model and a fully software-defined product suite.
• Cyreen specializes in the development of novel, highly effective retail media technologies for brick-and-mortar retailers and FMCG advertisers.
• dealcode AI is a co-pilot for any B2B sales team to achieve 10x sales efficiency. Using autonomous sales AI agents, it streamlines repetitive tasks such as identifying leads, refining data for the CRM, crafting the perfect outreach messages, and prioritizing the right deals.
• dpv-analytics takes cardiac care to the next level: best-in-class AI analysis enables mass ECG screenings for the first time – from smartwatches to ECG Holters. Medically certified and tested 10,000 times.
• Energy Robotics combines a hardware-agnostic robot operating system, cloud-based fleet management, and AI-driven data analysis for automating operations and unmanning industrial infrastructure. Customers include Shell, Aramco, Chevron, BASF, E.ON, and more.
• Exazyme unlocks annual savings of millions of dollars in pharma production by using AI to design chemical catalysts.
• FUSE-AI develops intelligent AI solutions for radiologists to detect lesions in MRI and CT images faster while reducing misdiagnoses.
• neuroflash is an AI content generation platform for marketing teams and SMEs that uses multilingual modern language models to automatically generate professional text suggestions on any given topic.
• Streamboost, a leading AdTech company, utilizes advanced Media AI to enable brands to advertise on the most popular livestreaming platforms like Twitch and YouTube and effectively reaching millions of young viewers.
• yoona.ai is an AI tool which uses Generative AI & Machine Learning to make design easier, faster and smarter than ever for the Fashion industry.

Note: The picture above is three excellent German beers that were offered as drinks during the event.

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