Technische Universität München
UnternehmerTUM again ranked as Europe’s best start-up hub
TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF MUNICH
NEWS RELEASE
Financial Times rankings
UnternehmerTUM again ranked as Europe’s best start-up hub
For the second consecutive year, the British business paper Financial Times has named UnternehmerTUM as the leading start-up hub in Europe. A decisive factor behind this success is the powerful network available to tech start-ups.
“Our recognition yet again as Europe’s top start-up hub is an achievement for our entire ecosystem,” says Helmut Schönenberger, co-founder and CEO of UnternehmerTUM and the Vice President for Entrepreneurship at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). “It shows that research-based tech start-ups can grow quickly in Germany and Europe – thanks in particular to our strong international networking.”
“Europe's Leading Start-Up Hubs” covers start-up centers with at least one physical location in Europe that offer incubator and/or accelerator programs for start-up teams. The rankings covered 150 centers that meet the criteria. To compile the rankings, the Financial Times worked with the data gathering company Statista to survey start-up hub alumni, VCs, entrepreneurs and researchers. Furthermore, the performance of the start-ups were analyzed.
The ecosystem surrounding TUM generates over 100 fast-growing tech start-ups every year, including more than 70 TUM spin-offs. Start-ups supported by TUM and UnternehmerTUM raised more than 2 billion euros in private venture capital in 2024. The ecosystem includes more than 500 family businesses and corporations that cooperate with start-ups, place orders or collaborate in innovation projects with experts from UnternehmerTUM in digitization and AI, mobility, energy, the circular economy and construction. Other key players of the network highlighted by the Financial Times include investors, international research institutes, policymakers and public administrators.
Direct ties to researchers
TUM and UnternehmerTUM support start-ups with programs tailored to the various phases of building a business – from creating the business model to management training, and from market entry to a possible IPO. With the TUM Venture Labs, they support start-ups in 12 technology fields such as aerospace, artificial intelligence and robotics with direct ties to researchers.
“The best minds, the intensive collaboration of various disciplines and the focus on solutions to real problems form the foundation at TUM for the development of deep tech,” says TUM President Thomas F. Hofmann. “When this is supplemented by the entrepreneurial spirit that we pass down through the generations, excellent research can be converted into successful products that generate true added value in the fight against climate change, solving the problems of an ageing society or in ensuring food security.”
Further information:
• Europe's Leading Start-Up Hubs: https://www.ft.com/content/39afcd07-6cbb-48b1-9300-8f93e047b45d
• Entrepreneurship at TUM: https://www.tum.de/en/innovation/entrepreneurship
• TUM in rankings: https://www.tum.de/en/about-tum/facts-and-figures/rankings
TUM Corporate Communications Center contact:
Klaus Becker
Media relations
Tel.: +49 89 289 22798
klaus.becker@tum.de
The Technical University of Munich (TUM) is one of the world’s leading universities in terms of research, teaching and innovation, with around 700 professorships, 53,000 students and 12,000 staff. TUM’s range of subjects includes engineering, natural and life sciences, medicine, computer sciences, mathematics, economics and social sciences. As an entrepreneurial university, TUM envisages itself as a global hub of knowledge exchange, open to society. Every year, more than 70 start-ups are founded at TUM, which acts as a key player in Munich’s high-tech ecosystem. The university is represented around the world by its TUM Asia campus in Singapore along with offices in Beijing, Brussels, Mumbai, San Francisco and São Paulo. Nobel Prize laureates and inventors such as Rudolf Diesel, Carl von Linde and Rudolf Mößbauer have conducted research at TUM, which was awarded the title of University of Excellence in 2006, 2012 and 2019. International rankings regularly cite TUM as the best university in the European Union.