Europe’s AI ambition is real – and urgent.
That was the message from speakers at the HTGF Family Day in Station Berlin, which Tech Funding News attended earlier this week.
“This is the most consequential technology shift possibly in the history of humankind,” Howard Wright, vice president of startup ecosystem at NVIDIA, says to TFN.
High-Tech Gründerfonds, Germany’s most active early-stage investor, known as HTGF, chose the event theme, Wirtschaftswunder 2.0, a reference to the original Wirtschaftswunder, the rapid economic recovery that West Germany achieved in the decades after World War II. The implicit argument was that Europe is at a similar inflexion point today: under pressure, in need of reinvention, and capable of more than the current mood suggests.
If the original miracle was built on manufacturing and exports, the 2026 version, in HTGF’s telling, runs on energy infrastructure, quantum computing, space technology, AI industrial productivity, and biotechnology. Over 1,200 people attended the Berlin gathering, with more than 5,000 one-on-one meetings scheduled across the two days.
Not everyone took the slogan at face value. Any real revival has to reckon with the fact that Europe is an integrated economy, not a collection of national projects, and pretending otherwise is where the “new miracle” narrative starts to break down.
“When I read about the miracle, my first reaction was like, ‘That’s very German.’ It doesn’t help if we look at it from a national lens only. Instead, we must have a European strategy,” says Axel Deniz, CEO of Bosch Business Innovations, venture builder for the Bosch Group.
From cautionary examples to corporate collaboration
European corporates want to work with startups. The problem is that most attempts fall apart because the ownership structures, incentives, and integration plans are not well thought out.
The panel, which we moderated at HTGF Family Day, did not shy away from this, and the argument that emerged was uncomfortable but useful: the barrier is as cultural as it is structural.
Christina Hammes, managing director at Uplift Ventures, a venturing unit launched by the German material handling firm Jungheinrich, was direct about what that means in practice.
“Waiting for this passive miracle won’t work. We have to accept that things won’t work as they used to and must speed up to become competitve again,” she notes, referring to the fact that this – in her case -has meant creating a dedicated unit to build, invest in and partner with ventures rather than expecting from business-as-usual teams that are tied up in their daily work and established structures to deliver on innovation alone.
Pierre Buerkle, an operating partner at SE Ventures, a $1 billion-plus Silicon Valley venture capital firm backed by Schneider Electric, argued that the cultural dimension of this is underestimated.
“Most of the Germans are a little bit more on the negative side. I think we should take a positive spirit there inside,” he says.
Henrike Luszick, founder and CEO of Bridgemaker, a company that helps large corporates build and launch new ventures from scratch, was sceptical that positivity alone moves the needle. Her point was simple: there is no shortage of ways for big companies to work with startups — they can run accelerators, take minority stakes, set up pilots, build internal venture studios. Most corporations have tried at least one of these.
The problem is that few stop to ask honestly whether it actually worked, or whether the next experiment is just the same thing with a new name on the door.
Building infrastructure and keeping it in Europe
The capital gap is still a problem. Europe creates new companies, but American investors often fund their growth. As part of the DTCF integration announced last year, the HTGF management team assumed responsibility for Deep Tech and Climate Fonds in February this year, with both teams now working closely together to build a powerful multi-stage VC platform.
HTGF is preparing its fifth seed fund generation, planned for mid-2027. This is its answer to the problem, but it is unclear whether it will prevent future European champions from seeking funding abroad.
“Germany is poised to have an AI renaissance moment, and we want to be an active participant, a co‑collaborator with you as that happens. When it actually occurs, we would like to think that we were part of the team that helped Germany achieve that, humbly, as a quiet partner,” Wright concludes.
The next Wirtschaftswunder, if it comes, will not arrive as a postwar windfall. It will be built meeting by meeting, investment by investment, in rooms like this one, by people who showed up with more than a slogan.
This article is part of a media partnership with HTGF. TFN also hosted a table talk at the Berlin event on the European media landscape, among other activities.
