AI is no longer the shiny object. It’s becoming infrastructure.

And that single shift is transforming the German startup ecosystem in 2025 faster than most founders expected.

This month, the DACH region crossed a new threshold: AI is moving from hype into the industrial backbone of Europe — compute scarcity is now strategic, sovereign cloud has become political, and robotics, automation, and vertical AI stacks are pulling in more capital than consumer apps ever did.

But that’s just the start of the story.

In this deep-dive edition of Startup News, we break down five structural shifts shaping Germany, Austria, and Switzerland right now:

What You’ll Learn

– How AI’s shift to infrastructure will define Europe’s next decade

– Why DeepTech & DefenseTech are becoming unavoidable categories for VCs

– Where funding is actually flowing in 2025

– What the newest founder wave means for operators, investors & talent

– Which German startups raised the biggest rounds this month

– What founders should prepare for next

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🎙 About the Hosts

• Jörn “Joe” Menninger, Founder & Editor-in-Chief of Startuprad.io (Frankfurt)

  
  

• Chris Fahrenbach, Co-host & Global Analyst (Hanover / New York)

  
  

Together, they track the most important startup stories in the DACH ecosystem — AI, deep tech, fintech, and scale-up growth.

Follow, review, and share this episode with your team. 

— Blog: https://www.startuprad.io/post/this-month-in-dach-startups-november-2025-deep-dive

 — YouTube: https://youtu.be/K2Syfa3P6HY 

🎧 The Audio Podcast 

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