Innovation Universität Heidelberg: Triggering a New Entrepreneurship Wave with NXTGN Startup Factory
Press release No. 80/2025
10 July 2025
Baden-Württemberg consortium receives millions in funding from federal government and industry – establishing an internationally visible innovation platform
The NXTGN consortium – a strategic grouping of Baden Württemberg universities and partners from private industry, with substantial participation by Heidelberg University – wants to trigger a new wave of business startups by means of an internationally visible innovation platform. As a central contact point for technology-driven business creation, the NXTGN Startup Factory aims to speed up the transfer of research results into practical application, and to cooperate closely with medium-sized industrial companies. Ruperto Carola will also give key impetus to innovations linking excellent research and sustainable transfer activities. Now that NXTGN has been successful in the Startup Factories Lighthouse Competition conducted by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, the federal government and industry are providing up to 20 million euros in funding over a period of five years to establish this platform.
Prof. Dr Katja Patzel-Mattern, Vice-Rector for Innovation and Transfer at Heidelberg University: “In the past two years we have succeeded in creating a vibrant consortium with NXTGN. The participating universities and partners from private industry have joined forces to galvanize initiatives linking excellent research, innovative startup culture and responsible entrepreneurship – initiatives that will sustainably boost the competitiveness of the region and the state, and promote social progress.” According to the Vice-Rector, the NXTGN Startup Factory will form a fixed point for transfer activities at Heidelberg University.
The NXTGN Startup Factory is based on three pillars. Besides strengthening startups on their way from research to market, the consortium wants – with its innovation platform – to enable structured, efficient cooperation between spin-offs and small or medium-size enterprises (SMEs). In addition, the linking of physical hubs and digital capacities is intended to activate entrepreneurial potential across the state. The goal of the NXTGN Startup Factory is, by 2030, to support over 300 deep-tech startups and facilitate at least 1,000 cooperation projects with SMEs, to mobilize a considerable amount of private risk capital and, in this way, help create more than 10,000 additional jobs in future-friendly sectors in the state of Baden-Württemberg.
The six regional INSPIRE BW Hubs are attached to the NXTGN Startup Factory. Dr Raoul Haschke, team leader of the transfer agency hei_INNOVATION at Heidelberg University and coordinator of these hubs: “Support for entrepreneurs is given directly at the level of the universities. We lay the foundations with briefings, advice sessions or exchanges.” INSPIRE BW Hubs are intended to provide for regional networking, Dr Haschke emphasizes, and through cooperation create a single startup ecosystem for Baden-Württemberg. At Heidelberg University hei_INNOVATION fosters the transfer of university research results into industry and society. The transfer agency is the central contact point for the support and implementation of transfer activities.
Participating in the NXTGN consortium – the name is derived from Next Generation – are, besides Heidelberg University, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, the University of Stuttgart, Ulm University, Hochschule der Medien in Stuttgart, the NXTGN Management GmbH, Campus Founders and Innovation Park Artificial Intelligence. The group is supplemented by private industry partners as well as Mätch VC, a new venture-capital fund for Baden-Württemberg start-ups. The federal government will support the consortium with up to ten million euros. Finance matching these funds equally has been pledged by private industry.
The Startup Factories Lighthouse Competition is part of the startup strategy of the federal government and aims to build up new key players in the startup ecosystem of Germany. Ten transregional and internationally visible lighthouses are to be established nation-wide. The precondition is a close connection to one or several strongly entrepreneurial universities and also, as appropriate, to non-university research institutions with high potential for innovation.