Guten Morgen zusammen,
I have good news: we will do our first Sprachcafe! We named it Lass uns Deutsch sprechen (I was tempted to use labern, but it was too late to get the team approval). It's a pilot event and we can't wait to collect your feedback. See you on Monday, the 9th of November. We have sehr limited spots. We managed to get a couple of more seats for our Everyday AI club next Tuesday, check the featured section below.
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📌 Pinned
Let's do some good news from Germany this time! Unfortunately, there is a lot of bad news in the signals section, but it will also pass... eventually.
First, two barometers. IAB labour one rose 0.3 to 100.1 in October, back in positive for the first time this year. The employment component jumped 0.6 points, the biggest rise since the recovery after Covid, and the unemployment component has made up for its drop at the start of the year. Ifo's is also UP. To 95.5 from 95.1 in September, also because companies plan fewer job cuts. Service companies and temp agencies want to hire, and so do makers of computers, electronics and optical products. Carmakers are cutting, while retail and construction plan with fewer staff.
We are also getting a lot of new companies: about 183k started in 2025, 7.7% more than in 2024 and the most since 2010! Growth-oriented startups (several founders, R&D, a limited company) recovered after flat years since the 2022 slump: up to about 3.1k (+19%), of which 1.4k are in tech services (+27%). Most of the growth comes from small businesses without a commercial register entry.
I wonder how many of small businesses are now freelancers that couldn't re-enter the job market. Was this good news? I guess, most of it.
How's your job search going right now?
👀 Jobs
3 job highlights of the week
🌍 Community board
Nadg is building Gallry, a space for indie artists to show work and connect without likes or follower counts, and is looking for Berlin-based artists to beta test it this autumn.
Last week I asked you where you think your income puts you: 35% comfortably middle class, 29% upper middle, 20% lower middle class, 9% struggling, 5% rich (but don't tell your landlord), and 2% earning outside Germany.
Have an ask, offer or useful project? Share it! You need beta testers for something you built. You're running a survey or research and need responses. You're stuck on a problem someone here has already solved. You're volunteering, mentoring, or building something non-profit. You learned something the hard way and wrote it up.
💸 Funded in Germany
Cygrid | Berlin | Prevents AI agents leaking company data | €2.66M pre-seed | Careers.
Evasive Robotics | Dresden | Coordinates industrial robots from different manufacturers | €2.1M+ pre-seed | Careers.
hansetherm | Hamburg | Heat pump sales and installation | €10M seed | Careers.
RhymeQ | Karlsruhe | Python-based software for quantum computers | $2.2M pre-seed | Careers.
Tendos | Munich | AI sales automation for building materials | €12M seed | Careers.
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📡 Signals
Pay & conditions
German companies are advertising fewer jobs with a home-office option, partly because they no longer have to work as hard to attract applicants. [more]
ver.di called the first nationwide warning strikes at private banks, because employers still haven't made a pay offer for about 150k staff. The next round of talks is on 2 November. [more]
Hiring & expanding
Brandstätter Group (Zirndorf, toys) plans to turn its closed Playmobil factory in Dietenhofen into a 100MW AI data-centre campus. [more]
Cutting & closing
Volkswagen (Wolfsburg, autos) faces what IG Metall calls the biggest labour conflict in its history over plant closures and a pay freeze; a strike is possible.
Sonnen (Wildpoldsried, battery storage) filed for insolvency two months after Shell sold it; about 400 jobs at its Allgäu headquarters are affected. [more]
Generali (Munich, insurance) plans to close its Aachen, Nürnberg and Stuttgart sites by 2030 and cut 800 jobs. [more]
Neoshare (Cologne, fintech) is reportedly letting go of about 100 employees. [more]
Holidu (Munich, vacation rentals) is cutting about 60 jobs, 8% of its workforce. [more, €]
Company health & ownership
Trench (Berlin, grid equipment) is being sold to US energy group GE Vernova for $9B. [more]
Hugo Boss (Metzingen, fashion) is now majority-owned by UK retailer Frasers Group, which raised its stake to 50.08%. [more]
Thyssenkrupp (Essen, industrials) listed its materials-trading spin-off TK Accelis at a €1.77B valuation, below expectations.
Roadsurfer (Munich, camper rental) is now majority-owned by US investor Kennedy Lewis; the founders stay on. [careers]
YellowFox (Dresden, fleet telematics) acquired Berlin AI firm Peregrine Technologies, its video-telematics partner of three years. [careers]
Axel Springer (Berlin, media) is reportedly interested in buying TikTok's European business.
Marley Spoon (Berlin, meal kits) had its restructuring bridge financing raised to up to €11.7M and extended to March 2027. [more]
Audi (Ingolstadt, autos) is opening its first US factory under a $4B deal Trump credits to his tariffs, while German carmakers cut jobs at home. [more] Its CEO, Döllner, appeared at a Trump rally and was under heavy criticism here in Germany.
Mercedes-Benz (Stuttgart, autos) cut its 2026 profit forecast again after an unexpectedly sharp slump in China. [more]
Deutsche Bank (Frankfurt, banking) reported its third record quarterly profit in a row.
BASF (Ludwigshafen, chemicals) raised its outlook on higher prices, after cutting 8.6k jobs worldwide since 2024. [careers]
E.ON (Essen, energy) is launching a savings drive to cut debt and duplicate structures.
sennder (Berlin, freight tech) turned monthly EBITDA-positive after integrating C.H. Robinson's European business and now targets €1B in revenue. [careers]
Numbers
Germany was the third-largest recipient of robotics VC in 2026 at $1.7B, behind China and the US. [more]
📅 Events
This week we reviewed 98 upcoming events and handpicked 15.
Featured events
We still have a couple of spots at 🚨 Everyday AI Club for product teams. Three great live demos, followed by table discussions where you will meet several interesting people. Tuesday, 3rd of November, 18:30–21:00 at HomeToGo in Prenzlauer Berg.
Our picks
November Planning Workshop (online) | Thu, 29/10 17:00 | Online Event
Open Doors & Introduction at 42 Berlin | Thu, 05/11 17:00 | 42 Berlin
Unicorn-Exit: Er hat sein Startup für 1 Milliarde Euro verkauft | Mon, 09/11 18:30 | Berlin, Germany
Berlin Startup Stipendium FAQ Event | Tue, 10/11 12:00
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🧭 Career compass
Reddit: a developer built his wife a free, open-source job-search app called Dossier after her junior-developer search dragged on for ten months, and open-sourced it once she landed a role with it. It'll help your job search and draft a tailored resume. I haven't tested it, but it might help. In addition to sending tailored and non-AI sounding CVs, I suggest networking in person as much as possible.
LinkedIn ranked Top 20 German Startups based on headcount growth, engagement, job-view interest, and the number of hires poached from LinkedIn's Top Companies list, scored from July 2025 to June 2026. The 20 split across AI (Langdock, Peec AI, Blockbrain), defence (Helsing, STARK, SWARM Biotactics) and climate tech (1KOMMA5°, Cloover, Tanso) and more: check the full list on the link.
Speaking of startups, here is another reminder of the likelihood you will walk away empty-handed (but full of experience).
Microsoft dropped an AI-doomer bomb this week by offering voluntary severance packages to 60k employees, which is 27% of the workforce and doesn't mean all of them will leave. They are trying to balance its AI infrastructure build-out with capital efficiency.
Related, AI Promised Less Work. I Have Never Worked More., writes Orestis Ioannou. Coding agents made implementation cheap enough that he now runs several in parallel. This means loads of context switching. Welcome to the new reality. Software engineering is changing at a crazy pace and this might also reflect the salaries going forward. This sentence stayed with me "the capacity to implement those ideas has grown much faster than my capacity to think about them."
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