Tech scene: San Francisco is becoming a place of longing for young Germans in the AI boom

Marvin Gabler, a young German with a neat short haircut and glasses, sits in front of his glass on a wooden bench at the networking event for founders and investors and makes a calculation: “If you, as a 25-year-old, can take $400,000 in cash and another few million in shares – then why should you start at Bosch?”

Bosch serves Gabler as an example of a classic corporate career; he sees a general problem there. The 30-year-old has already drawn his conclusions. He has been in San Francisco for two and a half months to set up a new business. The details are still secret. Just this much: He says it's about simulating the physical world using artificial intelligence (AI), for example to develop new materials. “Machines that invent machines.” Gabler and his colleagues are looking for capital – and hungry talent.

He currently does not see an alternative in Europe, where Gabler founded his first start-up Jua in 2022. Despite excellent universities training AI experts. He is convinced that the wave across the Atlantic will become even more powerful. Gabler knows people in his area with doctorates in their mid-twenties who are sometimes paid millions by American AI laboratories.

“They’re all leaving,” he says. AI is different from “all the cycles that have existed before”.

Whether at tech events, in start-ups or AI laboratories: young Germans are noticed here more often than in previous years, sometimes seeking their fortune as founders or programmers in California even before studying. German venture capitalists confirm the exodus - even if studies or official statistics are missing so far. Some representatives of funds such as Pointnine or 468 Capital now regularly travel from Berlin, Munich or Stuttgart to the West Coast to invest in teams from their home country.