Synera (formerly known as ELISE), a deep-tech startup developing a Generative Engineering software to automate the product development process raises 3 million euros. “We are very excited about our seed round financing as it enables us to extend the functionality of our software”, says Dr. Moritz Maier, co-founder of Synera. The round is led by Cherry Ventures and UVC Partners, who invest alongside BMW i Ventures and Venture Stars, and is intended to speed-up product development of Synera as well as its market entry. Martin Junker, Managing Partner at Venture Stars says: “We were highly impressed by the ambitious founder team – we are excited to partner with them and support the future growth plans of the company.”
„Product development processes are increasingly complex and require the input of several stakeholders across an organization. The Synera platform can significantly increase the speed at which specifications are collected and products are designed – we were impressed by the successful implementations of the product at such an early stage”, adds Filip Dames, Partner at Cherry Ventures.
Synera aims to fundamentally change the process how parts are designed. Today engineers usually start their product design journey on paper, imagining how the product will look like at the end. Advances in additive manufacturing, however, nowadays allow for many more degrees of freedom and entirely new shapes and structures that the human brain can hardly come up with. Synera, hence, instead starts with collecting the requirements of parts, such as its loadcases, size, costs etc. and subsequently helps you shape a product out of it. Along the way Synera allows the engineer to include requirements from various other stakeholders, therefore skipping lengthy feedback loops that stretch product development timelines today.
„Synera enables engineers to automate multiple time consuming steps of the product design process.”, says Tobias Jahn, Principal at BMW i Ventures. “We observed high efficiency gains during the initial usage at the BMW Group and are convinced that such achievements are also possible at scale throughout the rest of the organization.” Co-founder Sebastian Möller resumes “The way we develop technical products tomorrow will be fundamentally different from today”. In an exclusive beta phase with leading OEMs and Tier1s from the automotive and aerospace industry such as BMW, MAN, Ariane Group and Brose, Synera has validated its software over the past 12 months and demonstrated huge value-add, saving engineers up to 90% of time in designing products. “After several years of research and development, we have shown our proprietary software to selected partners for the first time and are overwhelmed by their feedback”, co-founder Daniel Siegel says. Benjamin Erhart, partner with UVC concludes: “We are looking forward to supporting the team with our expertise in building B2B businesses and with leveraging our industry network. In the long run, we expect a broad adoption of Synera– and we are in for accelerating this journey.”
About Cherry Ventures
Cherry Ventures is an early-stage venture capital fund founded and led by former entrepreneurs and focusing on seed-stage companies in B2B and B2C. Having started as angel fund, Cherry today manages three funds investing amounts between €500k-4M in the seed stage.
Cherry’s founders have been involved in Zalando, Quandoo and Groupon and the fund has previously been among the first backers of Auto1, Flixbus, Flaschenpost, Dash Dash, Rekki, AMBOSS and many others. Cherry aims at supporting its portfolio companies in the best possible way through the entrepreneurial expertise in the team. Based in Berlin, Cherry invests all across Europe.
About UVC Partners
Unternehmertum Venture Capital Partners (UVC Partners) is a Munich- and Berlin-based early-stage venture capital firm that invests in technology-based startups in the areas of industrial technologies, enterprise software and mobility. The fund typically invests between € 0.5 – 3m initially and up to € 12m in total per company.
Portfolio companies benefit from the extensive investment and exit experience of the management team as well as from the close cooperation with UnternehmerTUM, Europe’s leading innovation and business creation center. With over 180 employees and more than 100 industry partners, UnternehmerTUM can draw from many years of experience in establishing young companies. This cooperation enables UVC Partners to offer startups unique access to talent, industry customers, and other financial partners. The portfolio includes investments such as FlixBus, Carjump (Free2Move), KONUX, Blickfeld, 3YOURMIND and Vimcar.
About Venture Stars
Venture Stars is a Munich based venture capital firm focused on early-stage investments in innovative, digital B2C and B2B business models. The team of serial internet entrepreneurs currently manages two funds typically investing €500k – 2m EUR initially and up to 4m in total per company. Having started as an incubator, Venture Stars has a tradition of working very closely with the founders of its portfolio companies. Venture Stars’ support goes beyond capital and includes know-how, network and operational manpower on topics such as strategy, organizational development, financing and exit.
About BMW i Ventures
BMW i Ventures, BMW’s EUR 500 million venture capital fund, invests money and resources in startups in the fields of autonomous driving, digital car and automotive cloud, e-mobility, artificial intelligence and data, industry 4.0, shared and on-demand mobility, customer digital life, and energy services. The firm has already partnered with innovative companies such as Bright Machines, Carbon3D, Chargepoint, Claroty, DesktopMetal, fair, Graphcore, Moovit, Tekion, Trifacta, Xometry, Yellowbrick and Zum. BMW i Ventures invests in all stages from seed to growth companies.
