Short answer: to find seed investors in Germany, start with the 122 venture capital firms headquartered in Germany that invest at pre-seed or seed (Gatsbie data, October 2026), most of them in Berlin and Munich. Narrow them by your sector, check each fund's recent portfolio, then add business angels and public programmes to your list.
Who invests at seed in Germany
Gatsbie lists 233 investors headquartered in Germany. They include:
- 135 venture capital firms, 122 of them investing at pre-seed or seed
- 72 family offices
- 35 private equity firms and 18 growth equity investors
- 11 corporate venture capital arms
- 132 individual business angels based in Germany
Berlin (60) and Munich (59) are by far the biggest hubs, followed by Hamburg (19) and Frankfurt (8).
What German seed funds invest in
Most common sectors among German VC firms investing at pre-seed or seed:
- Enterprise software: 85
- Artificial intelligence: 74
- Healthcare and medtech: 71
- Financial services and fintech: 66
- Climate and cleantech: 59
- Data and analytics: 58
- Hardware and IoT: 54
A step-by-step way to build your list
- Filter by stage and sector first. A seed fund that never invests in your sector will not reply. Start with funds that match both.
- Read the thesis and the last ten investments. If the fund backed a direct competitor, it will probably pass.
- Check the cheque size. If you raise €500k and a fund's typical first cheque is €3m, move on.
- Add funds outside Germany that invest in Germany. Many European funds back German startups from London, Paris, Amsterdam or Zurich.
- Add angels. At pre-seed, angels and angel groups often move faster than funds.
- Look at public programmes. Germany has public seed funding and grants for founders (for example the federal EXIST programme for university spin-offs and the publicly backed High-Tech Gründerfonds). Check eligibility on their own websites.
- Personalise every email. Mention why this fund, in one sentence that refers to its thesis or a portfolio company.
Do it faster with Gatsbie
Upload your deck to Gatsbie and it scores every investor against your startup, including the German funds above, and explains each match. You can filter by headquarters, by where funds invest, by stage and by sector, and get a ready-to-send email for each fund.
Find seed investors for your startup or email us your deck and get your list back.
How we counted: public, active profiles in the Gatsbie database on 22 October 2026, by headquarters country. Sectors and stages are Gatsbie's standard categories from each fund's website first and other public sources second.