Driving Change

In our pre­vious news­let­ter, we high­ligh­ted how bold­ness is a vital intan­gi­ble asset for change. Spea­king (or in this case wri­ting) about some­thing is one thing; demons­t­ra­ting it is another.

So how did we put words into action at bm|t?

During the first six months of 2025, in close part­ner­ship with our trus­ted stake­hol­ders, Thu­rin­gia-based com­pa­nies within bm|t’s port­fo­lio secu­red circa € 40 mil­lion in total fun­ding across fif­teen finan­cing rounds. Fur­ther­more, we wel­co­med five new com­pa­nies into our port­fo­lio.

This not only con­firms our com­mit­ment to sup­port­ing bold foun­ders, it also pro­ves the depth of talent being cul­ti­va­ted in Thu­rin­gia – a reward for years spent nur­tu­ring the ecosystem.

Buil­ding upon last quarter’s call for bold­ness, in this edi­tion we would like to high­light how intent can be tur­ned into motion – through focu­sing on the importance of dri­ving change. The importance of level­ling up local, regio­nal and pan-Euro­pean com­pe­ti­ti­ve­ness in an ever-chan­ging world can­not be over­sta­ted. The ques­tion thus is not why do we need change, but ins­tead how can we deli­ver it?

This pro­cess of tur­ning intent into motion starts intern­ally through honest self-assess­ment – that in turn starts to drive posi­tive change. High­light­ing and cele­bra­ting wins is easy (and neces­sary); dis­sec­ting missteps is transformative.

It is only through can­did con­ver­sa­ti­ons regar­ding what hasn’t worked as hoped that we can unco­ver the levers for impro­ve­ment as indi­vi­du­als, teams and orga­ni­sa­ti­ons. This initial cri­ti­cal assess­ment is the first step towards dri­ving change, pushing for­ward and ulti­m­ately level­ling up.

Over the years, bm|t has sup­ported mul­ti­ple start­ups through every stage of growth – inclu­ding the chal­len­ging one where a com­pany first rea­ches its cei­ling, is ope­ra­ting ‘at capa­city’ and must examine missteps in order to keep sca­ling. Thus our role goes bey­ond sim­ply pro­vi­ding capi­tal – but in pushing foun­ders (and our­sel­ves) to lean into change, to refine and to turn fric­tion into momentum.

To para­phrase the Roman phi­lo­so­pher Seneca: suc­cess is what hap­pens when pre­pa­ra­tion meets oppor­tu­nity. Vola­ti­lity may be the ‘New Nor­mal’, but fresh oppor­tu­ni­ties are on the hori­zon – from the newly laun­ched MFT II fund to the Fede­ral Government’s new infra­struc­ture fund. Orga­ni­sa­ti­ons best posi­tio­ned to use these oppor­tu­ni­ties effec­tively will be those who con­front weak­ne­s­ses early, con­vert them into strengths, and thus turn intent into motion – inside the com­pany and across the market.

Tog­e­ther with our team and stake­hol­ders, bm|t is com­mit­ted not only to streng­thening the Thu­rin­gian eco­nomy, but also lea­ding by exam­ple. We encou­rage you and your team to start now.

After a strong Q1, we look for­ward to sha­ring fur­ther posi­tive deve­lo­p­ments from Q2 2025.

Your bm|t Team

Fuel for the Future

Fol­lo­wing on from the Thu­rin­gia Minis­ter of Eco­no­mic Affairs, Mrs. Colette Boos-Johns, announce­ment in April, we have now laun­ched the Mit­tel­stands-Fonds Thü­rin­gen II (MFT II) to sup­port estab­lished, medium-sized Thu­rin­gian com­pa­nies with their fur­ther growth and/or expan­sion to new mar­kets. Addi­tio­nally, this fund will sup­port suc­ces­sion plans, manage­ment buy-outs, manage­ment buy-ins or spin-offs/­carve-outs.

The fund tar­gets pro­fi­ta­ble, fast-gro­wing and inno­va­tive com­pa­nies that are at least five years old and have a mini­mum tur­no­ver of € 2 mil­lion. The fund for late-stage finan­cing has an initial volume of € 20 mil­lion and can invest up to € 5 mil­lion per tar­get com­pany with an invest­ment hori­zon of five to ten years. For more infor­ma­tion please read this press release.

Welcome to the Family

Leap­ter GmbH: bm|t, SIVe­n­tures and a group of busi­ness angels have inves­ted € 2 mil­lion as part of a pre-seed finan­cing round in Leap­ter – an AI-native soft­ware coding plat­form for enter­prise appli­ca­ti­ons. The Leap­ter plat­form trans­la­tes busi­ness requi­re­ments not into opaque code, but into exe­cu­ta­ble blue­prints. This core inno­va­tion pro­vi­des struc­tu­red, visual dia­grams that serve as the sin­gle source of truth for AI-gene­ra­ted code. Sign up for their wai­ting list here!

App­lyo Jena GmbH: bm|t tog­e­ther with Robert Bosch Ven­tures, LBBW Ven­tures and a busi­ness angel inves­ted a seven-figure amount as part of a Series A round-exten­sion. App­lyo GmbH has deve­lo­ped a uni­que and paten­ted tech­no­logy for freeze-dry­ing reagent mix­tures into “beads” – these being tiny freeze-dried sphe­res that retain highly active com­pon­ents that are fully reac­ti­va­ted upon dis­so­lu­tion. This inno­va­tion eli­mi­na­tes the cold-chain logi­stics chall­enge curr­ently pre­sent in the rapidly gro­wing point-of-care dia­gno­stics mar­ket. For more infor­ma­tion please read this press release.

PERCEPTEC GmbH: bm|t tog­e­ther with Spar­kasse Jena-Saale-Holz­land inves­ted a mid-six-figure sum in the first clo­sing of PERCEPTEC GmbH’s seed finan­cing round. PERCEPTEC is deve­lo­ping a soft­ware-based test­ing pro­ce­dure which, in com­bi­na­tion with visio­nary 3D dis­play tech­no­logy, enables a vir­tual vision test for deter­mi­ning visual impairm­ents. The test can be per­for­med quickly, in a space-saving man­ner, and inde­pendently wit­hout the invol­vement of spe­cia­lists – a signi­fi­cant step toward effi­ci­ent, low-thres­hold, and at the same time pre­cise dia­gno­stics for opto­me­try and oph­thal­mo­logy. For more infor­ma­tion please read this press release.

Exiting Stealth

warm­wind (form­erly EVA AG): The Jena-based AI Startup has offi­ci­ally exi­ted ste­alth mode with the launch of the clo­sed beta for its pro­duct ‘warm­wind’. Warm­wind is the first AI ope­ra­ting sys­tem from Ger­many desi­gned as an „auto­no­mous cloud employee.“ The soft­ware fully auto­ma­tes recur­ring office pro­ces­ses on a visual basis and offers low-thres­hold access to the pro­duc­tive use of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, espe­ci­ally for small and medium-sized busi­nesses. Check out their launch video to expe­ri­ence the future of AI Ope­ra­ting sys­tems. You can sign up for their wai­ting list of more than 60,000 inte­res­ted users. 

Investor Days Thüringen 2025 – Recap of our X Edition

This year’s tenth edi­tion of Inves­tor Days Thü­rin­gen (IDT) was once again a great suc­cess and very well atten­ded, with two new attrac­tive venues in Erfurt. The first part of the event, orga­ni­zed by bm|t, took place at the Gar­den Museum in ega­park Erfurt and focu­sed on net­wor­king bet­ween inves­tors and growth com­pa­nies. The second part of the anni­ver­sary edi­tion of IDT took place at the his­to­ric Peters­berg, where 34 start­ups pre­sen­ted their busi­nesses to around 300 participants.

THANK YOU to all the spon­sors, pre­sen­ters, atten­dees, and orga­ni­zers for their important con­tri­bu­ti­ons to this fan­ta­stic event, which has become the pre­mier inves­tor event in middle Ger­many. If you missed this year’s IDT, you can review the event in our 2025 Photo Gal­lery available on the event site.