Project A

The earlier you save, the sooner they’re gone. Today we are launching our Child Savings Account, and with that our latest TV Campaign. Raising children can be the greatest joy in the world, but sometimes there are headaches. Especially as our children will inherit a broken retirement system and growing public debt. Only early, independent wealth-building can secure the next generation to fulfil their dreams. That’s why we launch our Child Savings Account with Trade Republic Kindergeld - offering the Vanguard FTSE and others ETFs without fund fees, until your child turns 18 years old. Including all the features you already know, fully digital onboarding and the opportunity to save together with your family and friends for your child. Invest in your child’s future, today. #TradeRepublic #ChildSavingsAccount

Back from Tallinn – and still thinking about what Estonia gets right about DefenceTech. In just five years, they’ve built an ecosystem that’s not only mature, but deeply mission-driven. You feel it in the urgency and practicality: capital, policy, and engineering talent align around what actually matters. We hosted a dinner there last week with folks across the Estonian defence and tech scenes — founders, VCs, angels, policy thinkers — to swap notes on how different countries approach this space. Estonia doesn’t need hype to drive it. It has hard-earned clarity on what’s at stake. We also joined Sten Tamkivi, Patrick Schneider-Sikorsky, and Markus Villig onstage for the panel everyone seems to be asking these days: Is defence tech overhyped? Short answer: 𝘺𝘦𝘴 and 𝘯𝘰. Yes, if you’re treating it like the next B2B SaaS trend. No, if you’re backing the founders building critical infrastructure for Europe’s defence and resilience. Many of those founders are in places like Estonia, outperforming the big hubs not through scale but through focus. Grateful for the conversations. Even more excited for what’s being built. Jack Wang, Jannic Meyer

What a week! 🚀🔥 1100 signups + 200 people on the waiting list, speakers from OpenAI, Google, Project A, ACI.dev & Beyond Presence - and we were only 2 students organizing this in 6 days, besides our studies. Still buzzing from the excitement of last week's events - the opening of OpenAI's new office on Thursday, followed by our Entrepreneurship & AI Speaker Event at the Technical University of Munich on Friday. The combination of both made me realize that Munich is exactly the place in Europe to turn AI innovation into real business applications (e.g. via startups) 1. There is an incredible interest in AI and Entrepreneurship amongst the students in Munich. With TUM and LMU, both of Germany's leading universities in town, many of these students have the perfect starting conditions to work with and on AI, closely surrounded by many of Europe's leading industrial players. 2. There is a growing implementation gap between the newest models that Brad Lightcap and Nick Turley talked about at the Office Opening ceremony and the software and processes that most companies are still working with these days. The actual productivity leap is yet to come and it will likely happen through effective GTM with solutions tailored to specific industries. The bigger the difference between today's slow bureaucratic processes and modern AI-supported ones, the larger the potential productivity leaps. This gap is likely to be more significant in Germany than in most other places :) 3. While Paul Schneider and I pushed hard, we could never have done this without our amazing communities! Again and again, we felt super humble and thankful to be part of such driven and supportive groups of people. These communities are certainly another distinguishing factor of Munich. And the facts speak for themselves: Center for Digital Technology and Management (CDTM) -> over 30% likelihood of successfully building a startup and over 11% of Germany's VC money going to only 1000 alumni (€8bn). The application deadline is on the 30.05. in case you haven't applied yet: https://lnkd.in/dbX9bUt5 TUM.ai -> We published an ICML Main Conference paper, 3 ML journal publications and collaborate with 5 of the world's top 6 AI research institutions. More info here: https://www.tum-ai.com/ A huge thank you 🙏 to all the inspiring speakers who made our event possible: Dietmar Harhoff (Max Planck & SPRIND), Laura Modiano (OpenAI), Axel Täubert (Google), Daria Gneusheva (Project A), William Lee (Aci.dev) & Awais Shafique (Beyond Presence) Also, thank you 🍻🥨 for your generous sponsoring: Project A, Beyond Presence, Mercura (YC W25) & Red Bull And finally, love 🫶 to all the supporters: Sebastian Sartor, Johannes Michalke, Jakob Mayer, Soren Little, Joël Hainzl, Daniela Breidenstein, Lena Ehrenreich, Julian E.,Benedikt Wieser, Sami Haddouti, Ju-Shan (Amy) Chao, Ece Özdağ, Ilda Karaj, Alexandre Kessler & many more

Germany might just be the home of the next AI revolution — and Friday in Munich felt like a glimpse of what that could look like. We joined a packed room of 1,100+ students, builders, and founders for an event hosted by TUM.ai and Center for Digital Technology and Management (CDTM) to mark the opening of OpenAI’s new office in the city. The focus: what the future of AI, innovation, and entrepreneurship in Europe could look like. From the energy in the room, the message was clear: 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝘅𝘁 𝘄𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗯𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗸𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵𝘀 𝘄𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗯𝗲 𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗲𝗱; 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆’𝗹𝗹 𝗯𝗲 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝘁 𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗯𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻. Grateful to have shared the stage with some of the sharpest minds shaping this future, Dietmar Harhoff, Laura Modiano, Axel Täubert, William Lee, and Awais Shafique The signals are clear – Munich’s AI ecosystem is feeding itself and fast becoming one of Europe’s capitals for talent and innovation. Thanks for having us! 👉 If you want to help build what comes next, check our open roles: https://lnkd.in/eK6t34_R Daria Gneusheva, Jannic Meyer

🚀 Meet our amazing speakers! 🚀 We’re excited to announce the full speaker lineup for our AI & Entrepreneurship event this Friday (May 23rd) at TUM Audimax. Organized together with Center for Digital Technology and Management (CDTM), we’re proud to present: ✨ Prof. Dietmar Harhoff ✨ Laura Modiano ✨ Axel Täubert ✨ Daria Gneusheva & William Lee ✨ Awais Shafique Join us for inspiring discussions, innovative ideas, and fantastic networking opportunities!  📅 When: This Friday, 23.05 at 18:00–20:00 📍 Location: TUM Audimax (Arcisstr. 21, 80333)  🎟️ Sign-up now: https://lu.ma/qfcjzmg0 Connect with leaders shaping AI and entrepreneurship—don’t miss out!

We join Trill Impact as a growth partner in Primutec Solutions Group, a leading flat roofing services provider, currently operating across the Netherlands and Germany. Our latest private equity co-investment aims at supporting a key player that is strongly focused on the renovation segment, supported by macro trends such as aging building stock, increasing demand for insulation, and a high share of re-occurring revenue from loyal clients. “By embedding our tech specialists alongside Primutec’s teams, we will further digitalize the group and help cement Primutec’s position as the partner of choice for modern building-envelope solutions.”, says Christoph Rösler, Partner at Project A. Read more about the investment here: https://lnkd.in/eyCJCT33

Calling all founders and researchers in the Munich AI ecosystem 🚨 Join us this Friday, May 23, at the TUM.ai x Center for Digital Technology and Management (CDTM) event in Munich, alongside teams from OpenAI, Google, ACI.dev, and Beyond Presence. We’ll be on stage with William Lee, co-founder of ACI.dev, exploring how he recently built an AI infrastructure company — from hiring engineering talent in a competitive market, to going open-source and launching in Europe. You’ll also hear from other great speakers, including: – Laura Modiano (Head of Startups EMEA @ OpenAI) – Axel Täubert (Head of Startups Germany @ Google) – Awais Shafique (Prev. Presize CTO, exited to Meta and now CEO of Beyond Presence) – Sheila Beladinejad 🇨🇦 (specialist on AI due diligence). Sign up here and see you Friday → https://lu.ma/qfcjzmg0 CC Daria Gneusheva, Jannic Meyer

Roaming protocols in Europe. Tesla dominance in the U.S. EV charging is fragmented across borders. The opportunity? Building the connective tissue. Jakob Kleihues, Co-Founder and CEO of portfolio company ENAPI, offers a comparative lens on the EV charging ecosystems in Europe and the U.S. Each region is scaling fast, but with fundamentally different approaches: 🔌 Europe leans into open systems, roaming, and regulatory cohesion ⚡ The U.S. favours vertical integration, platform dominance, and seamless user experience, driven mainly by Tesla Jakob highlights how these cultural and strategic differences shape the infrastructure being built. His key insight: the winning solution will create smart, neutral infrastructure that bridges ecosystems. Read the full issue in our Supply Chain newsletter – and subscribe if you're following this space closely. 🔗 Link in comments. CC Philipp Werner, Ciara Gumsheimer

What can founders learn from a company that broke every VC rule and still became a unicorn? Quantum Systems is the first European dual-use unicorn. A milestone for the company and for European resilience tech. When we invested at Project A back in 2022, the case wasn’t obvious. Not to the market. Not to everyone internally. Hardware? Defence? A company already seven years old? It broke the VC playbook in every direction. But we had conviction in what the company was set to achieve. Quantum Systems had something rare: ▪️ Engineering quality you could feel the moment you stepped into their facility. ▪️ A mission that only grew more urgent as Europe’s defence realities shifted. ▪️ And the guts to build through friction, not around it. In a new blog post, I share why we backed Quantum early — and the lessons founders can take from companies willing to build before the world catches up. Read it here: https://lnkd.in/e2a6QAdi #QuantumSystems #Unicorn #DualUse

Quantum Systems just raised €160M in Series C – making it the first dual-use unicorn in Europe. 🚀 This is a major milestone for a team building one of Europe’s most important defence tech companies. In 2022, they made a decisive pivot from commercial drones to dual-use autonomy. It paid off. Since then: → 100%+ YoY revenue growth → 550 people across Germany, Ukraine, Romania, and Australia → A product that's reshaping how autonomous systems operate in defence and beyond This round gives them the firepower to scale production, expand globally, and push their AI and autonomy even further. The round was led by Balderton Capital, with participation from HENSOLDT, Airbus Defence and Space, GP Bullhound, LPEA - Luxembourg Private Equity & Venture Capital Association, and existing investors including HV Capital, Thiel Capital, DTCP, Omnes, Airbus Ventures, Porsche Automobil Holding SE, Notion Capital, and us at Project A. Florian Seibel, Sven Kruck, Dave Sharpin and the whole team — congratulations. This next chapter is well earned. Read the FT exclusive with Tim Bradshaw, Sylvia Pfeifer and Patricia Nilsson ( 🔗 in comments 👇) CC Uwe Horstmann Jack Wang