Hamburg’s Deep-Tech Takeoff: When Science Becomes Startups

What if we could radically reduce our dependence on raw material imports? What if rare earths and other critical raw materials found in smartphones, electric cars, and computers no longer had to be transported laboriously across the globe, but could be recovered from old devices nearby? This is exactly what Exaere, a Hamburg-based startup, is working on. They have developed a biochemical process to recover critical metals. This deep-tech project is a prime example of the enormous potential of science for green technologies.

Deep tech refers to technologies based on scientific breakthroughs that seek answers to real, often global societal challenges. Such startups differ fundamentally from software startups, and the path from groundbreaking idea to market maturity is particularly long and full of hurdles: they require longer development cycles, highly specialized expertise, are subject to complex regulatory processes, and demand a much greater time and capital investment than digital business models. Success here requires more than a good idea: a strong, supportive ecosystem.

This is exactly where Impossible Founders comes into play: Europe – and Hamburg in particular – boasts excellent research and science. The real task is to transform groundbreaking discoveries into successful and scalable companies. The Exaere team and their concept convinced and became one of the winners of Future Founder, the first startup program under the umbrella of Impossible Founders.

Impossible Founders is a comprehensive, structuring platform for deep-tech startups in Hamburg. Active since November 2025, it supports and accelerates the journey from the first scientific idea to a scalable company, always in close collaboration with scientists and founders. Potential analyses are conducted, business models developed, founding teams built, and necessary connections to investors and industry partners established.

The content focus is on green technologies, new materials, AI, and data science. Arik Willner, a physicist active in deep tech for many years, is the initiative’s managing director and sums up the vision: “We want to strengthen spin-offs and entrepreneurship so that the best deep-tech solutions come from Hamburg in the future – and go from here to the whole world.”

Impossible Founders is based on a unique partnership between science, business, foundations, and politics, underpinned by a financial commitment of over 50 million Euros. This impressive commitment reflects the ambition to further expand Hamburg’s role as a top innovation location. Impossible Founders’ partners include the founding foundations - the Michael Otto Foundation and the Joachim Herz Foundation - as shareholders, as well as the Otto Group and Hamburger Sparkasse as sponsors. The commitment of Prof. Dr. Michael Otto and Benjamin Otto underscores their long-term corporate responsibility for strengthening the deep-tech ecosystem.

This alliance also convinced the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs: Hamburg and Impossible Founders were selected as one of ten winning locations in the nationwide “Startup Factories” competition and now receive up to ten million euros from the federal government.

For the Otto Group, engagement with Impossible Founders expresses a firm conviction: both startups and established companies benefit from collaboration. Startups provide innovative solutions and agile approaches, while established companies offer scaling experience, networks, and market access.

“We believe in the transformative power of collaboration,” emphasizes Petra Scharner-Wolff, CEO of the Otto Group. “Our long-standing commitment – from strategic investments to our venture-client unit Otto Dock 6 – reflects our firm belief that only together can we create future-proof and sustainable innovations based on European values that strengthen Germany as a business location.”