High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF) is Germany's most active early-stage venture capital fund, structured as a public-private partnership between the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, state development bank KfW, and a group of corporate co-investors including BASF, Bayer, Bosch, and Siemens. Founded in 2005 and headquartered in Bonn, HTGF was created specifically to close the seed-stage funding gap for German technology startups – a structural problem that persisted after the dot-com bust left early-stage capital scarce across continental Europe.
The fund operates across four successive vehicles: HTGF I (€272 million, launched 2005), HTGF II (€304 million, launched 2011), HTGF III (€320 million, launched 2017), and HTGF IV (€400 million, launched 2023). Total committed capital across all funds exceeds €1.3 billion. The standard deal structure is a €1 million seed ticket for approximately 15% equity, with follow-on reserved for the strongest performers. By 2025, HTGF had backed more than 700 startups and recorded over 175 exits – making it one of the most prolific seed investors in Europe by deal count.
HTGF's mandate covers deep technology broadly: software, industrial automation, medical devices, chemistry, energy, and – increasingly – blockchain and digital assets infrastructure. Its crypto and Web3 exposure remains a minority slice of the overall portfolio, reflecting the fund's broader mission to back German-origin science and engineering rather than financial speculation. The fund's blockchain investments tend to focus on infrastructure, enterprise applications, and regulated digital asset services rather than consumer tokens or DeFi protocols.
Notable investments
- Iota Foundation – distributed ledger technology designed for machine-to-machine payments and IoT data integrity, one of HTGF's most visible blockchain bets
- Bitwala (now Nuri) – German crypto banking startup that combined a regulated bank account with Bitcoin wallet functionality; the company filed for insolvency in 2022, making it one of HTGF's clearest crypto-sector losses
- Finoa – institutional-grade custody and staking infrastructure for digital assets, headquartered in Berlin
- Cashlink – tokenization platform for securities, operating under Germany's electronic securities act (eWpG)
- Tangany – white-label crypto custody API targeting banks and fintechs across the DACH region
Outside crypto, landmark portfolio names include Staffbase, SimScale, and Mambu – the latter reaching unicorn status as a cloud banking platform.
Team
HTGF is led by Managing Director Alex von Frankenberg, who has been with the fund since its founding and serves as CEO. Dr. Guido Schlitzer leads the CFO function. The investment team numbers around 60 professionals across sector-focused verticals; crypto and fintech deals typically flow through the digital infrastructure vertical. The fund's structure means investment decisions involve both the professional team and the corporate limited partners, which can slow decision-making relative to pure private funds.
Recent activity
The close of HTGF IV in 2023 at €400 million – the fund's largest vehicle to date – signaled continued institutional confidence in the model despite a difficult European venture environment. New corporate LPs joined the fourth fund, broadening the industrial base beyond founding partners. In 2024 and into 2025, HTGF maintained its pace of roughly 40–50 new investments per year, with increased attention to deep tech categories including AI infrastructure, quantum computing, and climate technology. Crypto deal flow slowed relative to the 2021–2022 peak but did not stop entirely; regulated tokenization and custody infrastructure continued to attract tickets.
HTGF's model has proven durable across multiple market cycles. Its dependency on public co-funding insulates it from the LP redemption pressure that crimped purely private funds during 2022–2023. The main structural limitation is geographic: the fund's mandate is anchored to German-origin startups, which concentrates both opportunity and risk in a single national innovation ecosystem. For crypto founders specifically, HTGF offers patient capital, industrial network access, and regulatory credibility in Germany – but not the global crypto-native connections that dedicated Web3 funds provide. Its track record in the sector is mixed, with Bitwala/Nuri a notable failure and Finoa and Cashlink representing more promising long-term bets in regulated digital asset infrastructure.