Three 28-year-old founders walked away from full-time offers at Apple, Google X, and Silicon Valley AI startups — and their bet on going home to Germany is already paying off. Furo, the Munich-based startup they launched just one year ago, has raised $4 million from mostly U.S. backers and locked in enterprise clients including German rail giant Deutsche Bahn.
The funding round was led by U.S.-based TQ Ventures with participation from Neo, Sheryl Sandberg’s fund Sandberg Bernthal Venture Partners, and Munich’s Center for Digital Technology and Management (CDTM). On paper, Furo is a Delaware C Corp. — but its operational heart is firmly in Europe.
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Why the founders chose Munich over the Bay Area
Furo’s founders — Lena Sophia Voß, Leonie Wagner, and Simon Wittner — first connected through CDTM, a program tied to their alma mater TU Munich that brought them to the Bay Area for studies at Stanford and UC Berkeley. They later joined Neo’s accelerator under the name Lumera Energy.
But when they decided to build software for industrial battery storage systems, they concluded the problem was more urgent in Europe. Germany, in particular, had gone through a series of energy crises over the previous five years, making electricity cost reduction a pressing concern for industrial companies.
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“If you are an early-stage company, very often it’s mostly about your network, and also about being close to your customers,” Voß told TechCrunch.
The decision to leave wasn’t forced. Voß said all three had full-time offers and could have stayed on visas. “It was a decision to go back to Europe not because we needed to, but because we see that right now, it’s a better time to build an energy startup in Europe instead of the U.S.,” she said.
The practical advantages of building in Germany
Being based in Munich has delivered concrete benefits, according to Voß. The founders’ network recommended them to their first customers, provided operational expertise, and offered mentorship. “Every time we have a challenge, we know exactly whom to call,” she said. Proximity to technical universities has also helped with hiring.
Salary costs are another factor. Engineering salaries in Germany are significantly lower than in the U.S., allowing Furo to stretch its funding further. Voß recalled that U.S. investors questioned whether the startup could source talent on its budget — which was actually at the top end for German salaries.
“So it’s definitely better that you can do more with the money,” she added. She also noted that talent quality is on par, and that workers are more accessible because there is less competition with Big Tech than in Silicon Valley.
A transatlantic model that keeps U.S. ties
Furo hasn’t severed its Silicon Valley connections entirely. The team returns to the U.S. three or four times a year for administrative matters and to meet with current and potential investors. The company’s bridge to the Bay Area remains CDTM, which participated in the funding round.
The approach echoes recent observations from venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, which noted that “there is now an advantage to having one foot in your home country, and one foot in Silicon Valley.”
For European founders weighing a move to the U.S., Furo’s trajectory suggests the calculus may be shifting. Access to American capital no longer requires a permanent presence in California — and in sectors like energy, where local market knowledge and customer proximity matter, building from home can be a competitive edge rather than a compromise.
Furo’s next challenge will be scaling its enterprise relationships across Europe while maintaining the investor relationships that funded its start. Whether its model becomes a template for other European startups remains to be seen, but for now, the founders appear convinced they made the right call.
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