Engineering’s New Coworker: DTCF Backs Synera in EUR 40 Million Series B

There are companies that talk about AI transformation. And then there are companies already running it inside the engineering workflows of BMW, Airbus, and Volvo. Synera is firmly in the second category, and that is exactly why we are joining their EUR 40 million Series B alongside Cherry Ventures, Revaia, Spark Capital, UnternehmerTUM and UVC-Partners. 
 
Synera is not a copilot that advises. It is a platform that acts. It connects the entire engineering development process, from design and simulation to costing, manufacturing, and reporting, into a single environment where teams can build and deploy AI agents that execute tasks like real specialists. 
 
The results are already visible at scale. BMW reduced a design process from three weeks to two minutes. Airbus compressed a request-for-tender workflow from 50 hours to seven minutes. IMS Gear cut time-to-quote by 99%. Six of the ten largest automakers by revenue already rely on Synera, and more than 170,000 engineering workflows are live in production. 
 
This is not experimentation. This is infrastructure. 

The Conviction Behind the Capital 

What convinced us was not just the technology, but also the constant user expansion within customers across teams and applications. This holds especially true for engineers, who are notoriously hard to win over with new software. The fact that Synera has become part of the core engineering toolchain at some of Europe’s most demanding manufacturers tells you something that no demo can. 

Europe’s competitive advantage has always been its engineering depth: the accumulated expertise, the precision, the ability to translate complex requirements into physical products. Synera gives that expertise a way to scale. Instead of walking out the door with retiring engineers, institutional knowledge gets embedded into repeatable, auditable processes that can run continuously across the product development lifecycle. 

„At DTCF, we are drawn to the moonshot bets: companies that do not just improve existing processes but redefine what is possible,“ said Romy Schnelle, Managing Director at DTCF. “Synera is one of them. Embedding AI into the engineering workflows of Europe’s manufacturers is not a productivity story, it is a competitiveness story. We are proud to bring our network of corporates, Mittelstand companies, and public sector organizations to the table. These are exactly the partners Synera needs to scale.” 

For DTCF as a fund, the fit goes beyond the investment case. „Synera provides the platform that enables companies to embed AI into their development processes at scale, while keeping full transparency and control,“ said Alexander Paß, Investment Manager at DTCF. „Engineers remain focused on what matters most, product and process innovation, while iteration cycles and cross-functional alignment are progressively taken over by AI agents. Only through this shift will the next generation of products reach the market with the quality, performance, manufacturability, and time-to-market needed to succeed in an increasingly competitive world.“ 

The Bigger Picture 

The conversation around AI in Europe has been dominated by chips, infrastructure, and foundation models. Those matter. But the next phase of value creation will happen at the application layer, where AI is embedded into the workflows that actually produce things. 

Europe already has the engineering foundation. What it has historically lacked is the software layer to amplify it. That is the gap Synera is closing, and it is a gap with significant strategic implications, not just for individual manufacturers, but for European industrial competitiveness at large. 
 
At the policy level, that ambition is increasingly explicit. “Bringing AI and industrial know-how together – Made in Germany. That is precisely where our strength lies. This is how we secure Germany’s competitiveness. This is how real flagship projects emerge with the potential to become global tech champions,” said Gitta Connemann, Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy and the Federal Government Commissioner for SMEs.*  

Political backing of this kind matters. For deep tech companies with long development cycles and high capital needs, the alignment between private investors, industrial customers, and public policy is not a nice-to-have. It is what allows the most ambitious bets to reach their full potential. Synera sits at exactly that intersection, and this round reflects the confidence that all three sides of that equation are moving in the same direction. 

This round positions Synera to accelerate that buildout: expanding the platform, deepening integrations across the engineering toolchain, and scaling into new industries and geographies. 
 

Read the Full Conversation 
 

Curious to go deeper? Our Investment Manager Alexander Paß sat down with Synera CEO Dr. Moritz Maier to explore what agentic AI for engineering actually means, why now is the right moment, and where the category goes from here.  [Read it here.] 

________________ 

*This article includes a statement originally made in German by Gitta Connemann, Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy and the Federal Government Commissioner for SMEs. “KI und industrielles Know-how zusammen bringen – Made-in-Germany. Genau darin liegt unsere Stärke. So lässt sich Deutschlands Wettbewerbsfähigkeit sichern. Auf diesem Weg entstehen echte Vorzeigeprojekte mit dem Potenzial, globale Tech-Champions zu werden.” The German original is the authoritative version. The English translation above has been provided for accessibility and may differ slightly in phrasing.

For media requests please contact:
DeepTech & Climate Fonds: Stephanie Stein, s.stein@dtcf.de

About DeepTech & Climate Fonds
The DeepTech & Climate Fonds (DTCF) invests up to €50 million in high-growth deep-tech and climate-tech companies in Germany and Europe. As an anchor investor and partner of long-term-oriented European investors, DTCF supports companies with extended development cycles and substantial financial needs in implementing sustainable growth strategies and actively contributes to expanding the technology ecosystem. The fund acts as a bridge between investors, SMEs, and innovative high-tech startups in the fields of climate, computing, industry, and life sciences. Funded by resources from the German Future Fund and the ERP Special Fund, DTCF plans to invest €1 billion over the coming years to strengthen the European technology ecosystem. More information