• Spleen­lab devel­ops AI soft­ware for the safe autonomous flight of drones and air taxis
• bm|t, APEX Ven­tures and a busi­ness angel have invested a seven-fig­ure sum in the Thürin­gen high- tech AI com­pany Spleen­lab GmbH
• This first financ­ing round will fund Spleenlab´s growth and mar­ket development
• The company´s loca­tion in Thürin­gen and rural areas are dri­vers of its innovation
• BayStartUP sup­ported Spleen­lab in approach­ing suit­able investors

Spleen­lab and bm|t, together with APEX Ven­tures and a busi­ness angel, are jointly bring­ing the future of mobil­ity to East Thürin­gen. With the help of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence, Spleen­lab will enable the safe autonomous flight of drones and air taxis in the future. The aim of the seven-fig­ure invest­ment is the fur­ther expan­sion of the com­pany and its suc­cess­ful estab­lish­ment in a promis­ing mar­ket. The financ­ing round was also made pos­si­ble by the sup­port of BayStartUP’s investor net­work. Inno­v­a­tive Tech­nol­ogy Spleen­lab GmbH devel­ops AI soft­ware for the autonomous flight of drones and air taxis. The fusion of dif­fer­ent sen­sors such as cam­eras, laser scan­ners and radars with AI cre­ates highly effi­cient tech­nol­ogy appli­ca­tions. These capa­bil­i­ties can be used not only for fly­ing, but also for the inspec­tion and mon­i­tor­ing of indus­trial plants, the pre­cise mon­i­tor­ing of forests, agri­cul­tural land and crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture, the safe trans­port of sen­si­tive goods or the pre­cise track­ing of miss­ing per­sons and acci­dent vic­tims. «Our aim is to develop tai­lor-made AI solu­tions for our cus­tomers and at the same time to strengthen con­fi­dence in this key future tech­nol­ogy in Ger­many, Europe and beyond,» said Tobias Rüdi­ger, Head of Oper­a­tions & Finance. Machine learn­ing and new forms of mobil­ity Get­ting drones and air taxis safely into the air with­out pilots is Spleenlab´s long-term goal. How­ever, the com­pany is not lim­ited to only these mar­kets, because the key to new mobil­ity con­cepts lies in machine learn­ing, a spe­cial form of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, as Dr. Ste­fan Milz, Head of Research & Devel­op­ment, empha­sized: «Machine learn­ing is a highly com­plex tech­nol­ogy area. The algo­rithms we have devel­oped are intended to enable vehi­cles and machines of all kinds to make inde­pen­dent deci­sions and thus carry out time-con­sum­ing processes faster, more pre­cisely and, above all, more cost-effec­tively than ever before.» Rural areas as dri­ver of inno­va­tion The suc­cess­fully com­pleted invest­ment round strength­ens Thürin­gen as a busi­ness loca­tion and shows that young high-tech firms are not only at home in met­ro­pol­i­tan areas. Sebas­t­ian Süß, Head of Mar­ket­ing & Sales stated: «We delib­er­ately chose our home region as a busi­ness loca­tion, because we believe that the devel­op­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties in rural areas in par­tic­u­lar are greater than in densely pop­u­lated met­ro­pol­i­tan areas. The prox­im­ity to var­i­ous uni­ver­si­ties and eco­nomic clus­ters in the region, such as Jena, Ilme­nau and Chem­nitz, offers an ideal envi­ron­ment for our growth.” “We are there­fore even more pleased to have a strong region­ally rooted part­ner, bm|t, at our side who will, together with the tech­no­log­i­cal expe­ri­ence of APEX Ven­tures, sup­port our future path,» added co-founder Tobias Rüdi­ger. Invest­ing in a ground­break­ing indus­try of the future The engage­ment of bm|t together with APEX Ven­tures and a busi­ness angel is a con­scious step into a dynamic dig­i­tal­ized future. «With Spleen­lab, we are pleased to have a highly inno­v­a­tive Thürin­gen high-tech com­pany on board and to be able to sup­port its growth», said Katja Butz­mann, Senior Invest­ment Man­ager, bm|t.  Andreas Riegler, found­ing part­ner of APEX Ven­tures added: «We are con­vinced of the idea and the deep know-how of Spleen­lab and together we aim to estab­lish the next mar­ket leader for AI solu­tions in Ger­many and Europe». The Bavar­ian start-up net­work BayStartUP pro­vided valu­able sup­port in prepar­ing this financ­ing round by approach­ing investors that are a per­fect strate­gic fit for Spleenlab’s busi­ness model.

Spleen­lab, with its founders and man­ag­ing direc­tors Dr. Ste­fan Milz, Tobias Rüdi­ger and Sebas­t­ian Süß, has been active on the mar­ket as a highly spe­cial­ized AI soft­ware com­pany since 2018. The team mem­bers bring many years of pro­fes­sional expe­ri­ence as senior AI experts, man­ag­ing direc­tors and mar­ket­ing experts to the com­pany, which is based in Saal­burg-Ebers­dorf. With the suc­cess­ful financ­ing by bm‑t, Apex Ven­tures and a busi­ness angel, Dr. Carlo Vel­ten, in March 2020, Spleen­lab aims to fur­ther grow the com­pany and estab­lish its mar­ket position.

bm|t is the first address for invest­ments in Thürin­gen, Ger­many. bm|t invests in start-up teams and com­pa­nies in the Free State with a clear aim of gen­er­at­ing pos­i­tive invest­ment returns. This is how inno­va­tion and eco­nomic growth in Thürin­gen are financed. bm|t cur­rently man­ages eight funds with a total vol­ume of over 400 mil­lion euros and invests in inno­v­a­tive com­pa­nies in nearly all sec­tors and in all phases of com­pany devel­op­ment — from the start-up and growth phases to buy­outs and other suc­ces­sion situations.

APEX Ven­tures is an Euro­pean-based ven­ture cap­i­tal fund that invests in tech­nol­ogy start-ups. Based in Vienna with an office in Frank­furt, the investor’s focus is on dig­i­tal media, busi­ness intel­li­gence & cyber­se­cu­rity as well as Fin­Tech and Future of Work.

BayStartUP is the Bavar­ian start-up net­work for founders, investors and com­pa­nies. With the Bavar­ian Busi­ness Plan-Com­pe­ti­tion, an exten­sive coach­ing pro­gram and Europe’s largest investor net­work, it sup­ports start-ups in opti­miz­ing their strat­egy, build­ing up their busi­ness, and search­ing for seed and growth cap­i­tal. For pri­vate and insti­tu­tional investors, BayStartUP ensures a qual­i­fied deal flow and offers start-up insights at exclu­sive busi­ness angel meet­ings and investor con­fer­ences. With nation­wide start-up indus­try match­ings and con­cep­tual offers, BayStartUP advises estab­lished com­pa­nies on the devel­op­ment of suit­able strate­gies for coöper­a­tion with start-ups. Via BayStartUP, founders have the oppor­tu­nity to get in con­tact with approx­i­mately 300 active busi­ness angels and over 100 insti­tu­tional investors. Since 2015, BayStartUP has bro­kered over EUR 263mm of cap­i­tal in 259 actively man­aged financ­ing rounds with a vol­ume rang­ing from EUR 50,000 to EUR 6mm per invest­ment. Com­pa­nies sup­ported by BayStartUP are active on the mar­ket with over 13,100 employ­ees and gen­er­ate rev­enues of almost EUR 1.4bn (as of 2017). These include eight IPOs and suc­cess sto­ries such as Flixbus, eGym, Mag­a­zino, Vox­el­jet, numares, Trans­poreon and va-Q-tec AG. www.baystartup.de

 

Media con­tact Spleen­lab GmbH Sebas­t­ian Süß Man­ag­ing Direc­tor |Mar­ket­ing & Com­mu­ni­ca­tions +49 (0)176 211 30 295 sebastian.suess@spleenlab.ai