The initiative forms part of a broader effort by Chancellor Friedrich Merz's government to revive Europe's largest economy. Germany has struggled with stagnation, high energy costs, and intensifying global competition. The fund will offer multiple vehicles to attract private capital into areas banks are often reluctant to finance. Officials said the goal was to amplify the impact of more than $1tn in planned public spending over the next decade. Subscribe to our Newsletter to increase your edge. Don't worry about the news anymore, through our newsletter you'll receive weekly access to what is happening. Join 120,000 other PE professionals today....
For 14 years while Syria's brutal civil war raged, Germany provided a safe haven for those fleeing the violence. Now, a year after that conflict ended with the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024, many in Germany ' including the country's leader ' want those same Syrians gone. In November, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced a controversial plan to deport Syrian refugees 'in the near future.' He also urged the 1 million Syrians in Germany, most of whom are Muslim, to voluntarily return. This hardened stance toward Syrian refugees, expressed at the highest level of government, has been interpreted as Merz's attempt to stave off Germany's rising far-right party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD). In the February 2025 national election, the AfD won almost 21% of the vote, making it the second-largest party in the parliament. The government's perceived rationale is that in getting tough on immigration, Merz will steal some of the thunder on an issue that has seen the AfD swell its support....
Black Forest Labs, a German AI image-generating startup, says it has raised $300 million at a $3.25 billion valuation, marking one of the largest investments in a Europe-based AI startup this year. Its funding comes as investment in the continent's AI sector overall, while still lagging far behind the U.S., has risen this year. New backers Salesforce Ventures 1 and Anjney Midha (AMP) co-led the financing, which included participation from a slew of other investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Nvidia, Temasek Holdings, Bain Capital Ventures, Air Street Capital, Visionaries Club, Canva and Figma Ventures. Founded in 2024, Black Forest has raised a total of $450 million in funding, per Crunchbase data. Its headquarters are in Freiburg, Germany, but it also has a lab in San Francisco. The company is known for its Flux foundation models of AI generation. It touts that its open models are 'the most popular image models' on Hugging Face, and that companies such as Adobe, Canva, Meta and Microsoft are 'building' on its models....
The Bendlerblock is an imposing neoclassical building near the center of Berlin'severe and symmetrical, with a red-tile roof. It once served as the headquarters of the Wehrmacht, and it's where officers who plotted to kill Hitler in 1944 were executed by firing squad. Now the complex houses Germany's defense ministry, which oversees the armed forces. I went to the Bendlerblock this past summer to meet with German military officials and see how they're responding to an aggressive Russia and a mercurial America. Two sergeants escorted me to the office of Lieutenant General Christian Freuding. At the time of our meeting, Freuding was in charge of the ministry's Ukraine unit, but he had just been named the next chief of the army, a role he assumed in October. His actual, ambivalent-sounding title is inspector of the army. Freuding is gaunt and soft-spoken, with something of an aristocratic bearing. He doesn't come from a long line of military officers, he told me, but his grandfather served in both world wars and was imprisoned by Allied forces in 1945....
