Ulm VR health startup xenko lands €144,000 EXIST grant
What's the deal? xenkoDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, a startup spun out of Ulm UniversityDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, has secured a €143,500 EXISTDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → grant from Germany's Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWE). The money funds three full-time positions for its founding team.
What's the endgame? xenko is building a digital health platform that uses Extended Reality (XR) to encourage physical activity during the working day. Employees use VR headsets to access mobility exercises, Pilates, yoga, meditation, and recovery sessions, regardless of location or working hours.
The platform tailors a training plan, virtual environment, and avatar to each user. "Through real-time whole-body feedback, the user's own movements are transferred into the virtual environment and linked to those of a trainer avatar," said chief executive officer Jana Funke.
Who's behind it? Funke completed her PhD under Professor Enrico Rukzio at Ulm University's Institute of Media Informatics, researching how exercise programmes should be designed for XR. She founded xenko in 2024 with Nadja Pirchheim (marketing and product design), Benjamin Bayer (XR development), and Jessica Seyfried (content development).
The details: The €143,500 total splits into three full-time grants plus €30,000 in in-kind funding and €5,000 for coaching. All four founders had previously received Woman-EXIST scholarships through the University's Entrepreneurs Campus. The funding period began September 1, 2026.
Who's the customer? xenko targets companies with occupational health management schemes, which already promote staff wellbeing through perks like gym memberships and standing desks. In the long term, it also sees potential in the physiotherapy sector.
The signal: The grant reflects how public funding programmes like EXIST continue to channel academic research into commercial startups, with workplace health and immersive technology emerging as a growing intersection.
Read more: uni-ulm.de
Image credit: Generated with Gemini
