Editor’s Note: This post has been created in collaboration and with financial support from Startup Luxembourg. If you’re also interested in partnering with us, just reach out.
Nestled in the heart of Europe, Luxembourg might just be Europe’s most cosmopolitan country – making it an ideal place for startups. Home to a globally-minded and multilingual population, an impressive digital infrastructure, and a commitment to innovation rooted within the private and public sphere, Luxembourg certainly holds some of the core ingredients for startup success.
A small nation with deep historical roots, Luxembourg offers rich cultural stories, beautiful landscapes, fairytale architecture and depth of character. It now also counts around 500 startups and has gained a global reputation as a reliable data hub with impressive connectivity, cybersecurity and data processing capacities – as well as being regarded as a launchpad for reaching the whole EU market.
Luxembourg’s young but dynamic startup ecosystem is positioning itself internationally, becoming a multicultural -hub renowned for global startups. Startup Luxembourg is the brand that has been created for this purpose. It is both a brand and a web portal providing an overview of what Luxembourg can offer to innovative and tech ventures, but also highlights all players (incubators, accelerators, innovation hubs, institutions, acceleration programmes, etc.) in the ecosystem. Startup Luxembourg’s blog and social networks relay all the key news and a directory has just been released, listing all Luxembourg startups.
Here, we take a look at 10 startups that have been founded in Luxembourg and showing strong potential for the year ahead – aiming to disrupt different markets such as SaaS, real estate and wellbeing. We curated this list after intensive research and consideration of the Luxembourg ecosystem. We also leveraged expert insights from Startup Luxembourg, but ultimately came up with the list independently. All of these startups were born post-2019.
EmailTree: Founded in 2019, this startup is setting up a new standard in customer service. Their end-to-end solution reads emails (or any kind of text requests), processes the information to understand the different situations and issues, and prepares optimal and quick reply suggestions. According to the team, this results in a 60% decrease in average resolution time per email, 1 minute average resolution time per email and 25% sales increase. So far, it has raised a total funding amount of €5.2 million to help automate even more work processes, with the latest round in January 2022. AI tech that automates tasks and can efficiently respond to consumers helps companies become more consumer-centric, and ultimately, this creates better outcomes for all. It’s something that is growing in popularity so we think this startup has an exciting year ahead.
Next Gate Tech: SaaS startup Next Gate Tech is a data-driven FundTech startup that provides intelligent automation solutions for the asset management industry. The solution relies on next-generation technology to offer data management as a service, and smart automation of back-office processes, as well as analytics tools to provide automated NAV Oversight, Risk Oversight, ESG oversight and so forth. The aim is to make processes more efficient whilst reducing risk. Founded in 2019, it has been able to secure a total funding amount of €7.2 million. In June 2022, the company raised €5 million in funding from NewAlpha Asset Management, Middlegame Ventures and Expon Capital to drive further the digital transformation in the fund industry operations processes.
kodehyve: Proptech startup kodehyve is on a mission to digitize the real estate industry, bringing it up to speed for the digital era. Founded in 2020 Kodehyve has built a property development operating system (or ERP) providing an end-to-end solution to the real estate ecosystem as a whole. The OS powers property developers and their collaborators to plan, manage, commercialize and analyze their new construction projects more efficiently all while providing a seamless user experience to all stakeholders involved, ensuring full compliance with applicable regulations and leveraging data. It essentially pulls data from scattered sources and professionals into one powerful platform. In November 2022 the startup raised €2.6 million
Greenworlder: Social media platform for sustainability, Greenworlder aims to inspire more responsible lifestyles. Greenworlder’s multifaceted platform features a social network feed, chat and group functionality, a B2C marketplace, and a dedicated news section based on reliable sources. Its team support honest, reliable social media that does good for people and the environment, bringing more transparency and trust to sustainability. Founded in 2021 it has raised a total funding amount of around €2.8 million.
Circu Li-ion: Founded in 2021, Circu Li-ion is a startup aiming to tackle the climate crisis through maximising the lifecycle of lithium-ion cell batteries. While batteries become more commonplace as our society electrifies, another issue pops up – how to ensure batteries themselves are as sustainable as possible and don’t become another pollutant. Circu Li-ion enables a circular lifestyle for batteries in a 3-step process. Firstly, dismantling batteries, then the diagnostic of cells and then finally, reassembly based on reused components. It’s all automated and working on scale. GreenTech is expected to be big business in 2023, so this is definitely one to watch.
Fiveoffices: Launched in 2022, Fiveoffices is shaking up the real estate space, pivoting it to better cater for new ways of working and ways of living. Fiveoffices connects guests (aka companies looking for office space) with hosts (companies with empty space), so they can share office space. The search, match and workflow platform easily allows companies to work together to sustainably manage office space, and it also enables a decreased office carbon footprint. It’s about creating a shareable and sustainable future for offices.
Cascade: This startup is on a mission to provide modern and affordable admin, compliance and governance solutions. Founded in 2019, Cascade’s SaaS platform centralizes client data by structuring registries and providing a complete AML/KYC framework. As a result, companies can automate processes for multiple day-to-day activities (Register function, Transfer Agency, Compliance & AML/KYC, Sales, Risk, Project Management, Set Up among others)and become much more efficient and compliant. It replaces many external applications used by operational teams, therefore ensuring better control from a team management point of view.
Gonuggets: Founded in 2022, Gonuggets is an interesting startup offering an AI platform for digitally native brands (DNB) to grow their multichannel e-commerce revenues and profits, without scaling up complexity and risks. With the digital transformation, there are few businesses that don’t have an online presence nowadays, but, for small companies, it can be time-consuming, costly and complex to manage. With AI-based tech and automation, Gonuggets aims to help SMEs scale their brands online with minimal effort and risk, giving brand owners more time to focus on their products.
Kidola: Born in 2020, Kidola’s innovative platform aims to simplify the lives of parents and childcare providers. Via the platform, those working in childcare see their admin work reduced and parents can get daily reports and updates on their children. The aim is to be a companion for childcare so that parents have more oversight over what really matters, and childcare professionals can share more information without more work. The startup began 2023 with a €600k raise and is already active in both Luxembourg and Belgium.
ARSPECTRA: This startup, which was recently selected in the EIC accelerator programme, is creating a new vision for surgery by harnessing augmented reality. The medtech startup specializes in developing advanced surgical navigation platforms in partnership with renowned European and US experts and research institutions. ARSPECTRA uses unique proprietary tech to bring augmented and virtual reality to the healthcare market to improve surgical outcomes – and it’s growing fast.
By the way: If you’re a corporate or investor looking for exciting startups in a specific market for a potential investment or acquisition, check out our Startup Sourcing Service!