Picus Capital meets KIT-Gründerschmiede
03.08.2023
Dr. Rolf Blattner
Backstage
Exciting visit of Picus Capital in Karlsruhe. Our team member Rolf was also there at the end of July as well as the three KIT spin-offs Semorai, Bytefabrik.AI and Kimoknow.
At the invitation of KIT-Gründerschmiede, Picus Capital GmbH, an important player for early stage technology investments, visited Karlsruhe on July 26, 2023. Picus Capital was founded in 2015 by Alexander Samwer, one of the founders of Zalando SE. In the meantime, Picus Capital has successfully made more than 170 investments in over 20 countries and is represented at five locations worldwide.
For the visit to the Smart Production Park Karlsruhe, Picus Capital had brought four portfolio companies from China. In addition, start-ups from the KIT Gründerschmiede, such as Semorai GmbH, Bytefabrik.AI GmbH and Kimoknow UG, as well as industrial companies such as Siemens AG, Bürkert Werke GmbH and WIBU-SYSTEMS AG were invited with representatives for an exchange on site.
The delegation was welcomed by Ralf Eichhorn, City of Karlsruhe, Dr. Rolf Blattner, KIT Gründerschmiede and Lukas Wolter, CyberForum e.V.. In addition to very interesting presentations by the hosts and the teams, the Smart Production Park and the site of the Höpfner brewery were visited during a joint tour.
The response from participants was overwhelming. Melody Xu, from the Chinese company stardust.ai, summarized, “we had a great time in Karlsruhe. Thank you again for the great gathering event. We would love to connect more with KIT for future collaboration.” The head of the delegation Alexander Kremer from Picus Capital was also enthusiastic about the reception, “It was a very wonderful event with you and I very much hope that further points of contact will arise. Thank you once again for your efforts. Hope we stay in exchange.” And that the exchange between the Chinese and German start-ups as well as the representatives of the companies also worked excellently is shown by the statement of Yongli Chen, Edgenesis.com, “I’ll definitely introduce Karlsruhe to my Chinese entrepreneur friends, and follow up with the opportunities generated on that day, specifically, Bürkert Fluid Control Systems could use our solution to build smart factories quickly, and Bytefabrik could be a great partner to offer joint solutions together.”
At this point, we would also like to thank Sabine Dietlmeier, City of Karlsruhe, who did a great job organizing the event.
