How start-ups in Germany can be successful despite hurdles

Anyone who calls the hotline at the capital's BER airport usually has an artificial intelligence on the line: an agentic AI, as the technical term goes. An artificial intelligence (AI) that can perform complex tasks - much more than just a language model that tries to guess the right word to give as an answer.

This AI has to be able to do much more and needs “not general information, but very specific information about BER,” explains Stefan Ostwald, one of the founders of the German start-up Parloa and the company’s AI boss. Parloa developed the Agentic AI that is behind the BER hotline.

The BER software works differently than a classic Large Language Model (LLM), which users have to deal with on a regular basis. On the one hand, the program must be able to analyze and evaluate internal processes in everyday airport life and, on the other hand, understand what the callers want. Another challenge, because people often express themselves unclearly or imprecisely.

Language models help here. According to Ostwald, the goal is for “people to be able to speak in their language” and for the AI ​​to still understand them and help them. “A perfect fit,” as Ostwald says. That is the demand for your own product. "The most difficult part of development is actually the companies' internal processes."

Parloa focuses its acquisition on the 2,000 largest companies in the world. There are orders here that are large enough to recoup the development effort. A strategic decision: Parloa wants to join the concert of global AI companies, and AI for airport passengers is a classic product in the portfolio.

The Berlin start-up is a “unicorn”. This is the name given to start-ups that reach a market value of one billion US dollars. This is special because Europe and Germany are considered difficult places for start-ups. The criticism is often: too many regulations, too little willingness to take risks and also too little capital invested in new companies.

Ostwald shares many of these criticisms, but also says: "What we have noticed is that the ecosystem in Germany and Europe has grown up."

Compared to the year it was founded in 2018, there are now significantly more start-ups and also more capital. Start-up capital in particular is easier to obtain today. But later, if the business idea is to be “scaled”, i.e. set up on a large scale, significantly more capital will be needed. “It often becomes more difficult,” reports Ostwald.

There are relatively few investors from Germany who would be considered. “We actually rely on international markets,” he says. He sees this as a key challenge for Germany as a business location: “closing this growth financing gap.”

He and his co-founder Malte Kosub only completed a round of financing at the beginning of the year. Parloa was valued at more than three billion US dollars. A rare success for German start-ups. With almost 600 employees, the company continues to expand.

The young company is part of the “Made for Germany” initiative, which was founded in summer 2025. Traditional and new companies want to accelerate the reform dynamics in Germany - together with the federal government, as they say. Everyone emphasizes the future viability of the location.

The company joined the initiative because it believes that there are “a lot of great talents” in Germany and Europe, as Ostwald explains. However, the continent is still having a hard time in some places. Only together “as an ecosystem” can we do better internationally, says Ostwald.