The Munich–Dresden corridor: Germany's deep-tech axis

A Forbes feature spotlights the Munich–Dresden corridor — a 400km stretch of Germany that has become the gravitational centre for the country's energy, industrial and frontier-tech startups. The two metropolitan areas are now home to nearly 3,000 startups, with over a quarter describing themselves as energy, industrial, clean-tech or zero-carbon mobility outfits.

Two complementary poles. Munich supplies the institutional capital and industrial client base — a deep VC market plus the Technical University of Munich and the Max Planck Society; Dresden brings semiconductor and manufacturing muscle through its 'Silicon Saxony' cluster, with a focus on photonics, semiconductors and quantum technology.

Infineon embodies the axis. Infineon Technologies has its HQ just outside Munich while building its largest-ever investment — a €5bn Smart Power Fab — in Dresden. Every third chip produced in Europe is made in Saxony. One company, both ends of the corridor.

Frontier startups are choosing it deliberately. QuantumDiamonds, building synthetic-diamond quantum sensors for non-destructive chip imaging, has secured €152M for a Munich manufacturing site. Proxima Fusion, a stellarator-based nuclear-fusion company spun out of Munich's Max Planck Institute of Plasma Physics in 2023, has raised over €200M in equity and grants — both citing the region's talent pool and patient capital as decisive.

The numbers. Per Dealroom data, Munich raises around €3bn per year with a total registered startup enterprise value over €101bn — more than a quarter of the combined enterprise value of all VC-backed German startups founded since 1990. Dresden operates on an intertwined scale roughly a fifth smaller, but highly targeted.

Read more: Forbes