The German startup ecosystem is off to a strong start in 2026: Between January and June, 3,053 new startups were founded. This represents a 52 percent increase compared to the second half of 2025 and means more startups were founded than in all of 2024.
Companies focused on digital sovereignty. The EU, both companies and end users, are completely dependent on US software and operating systems. There is a bit of movement around governments using Linux, but there is nothing happening around replacing iOS and Android.
You already have iode, /e/, Graphene OS and Jolla. How many other startups do you need? The problem is not lack of software. What is needed is legislation to force compatibility with de-googled phones. It’s up to EU, not startups.
Also, EU needs sovereignty in defense badly. It’s hard to fight American corporations when you still need US to defend you. Defense startups are welcome.
GrapheneOS is leading Android custom rom, but it isn’t a startup and doesn’t support much hardware.
The others are LineageOS based and have weak points when it comes to security, privacy, and frequency updates.
All Android custom roms are still directly tied to Google’s software development (AOSP).
Sailfish OS (Jolla) is Linux based, but is proprietary, so not really an open platform.
So seems like Jolla is the only company really developing an independent mobile OS.
Exactly!! It’s a government policy and regulatory problem, not a market problem.
Germans are the least trustworthy partners when it comes to military. So no, we don’t need them to create new ways to slaughter their neighbours.
We still don’t have an EU replacement for Visa/MasterCard, Intel/amd, nvidia/amd, but building these takes more than a couple of chatgpt prompts
Germany bad!
Why? Because of what happened 60 years ago? Or do you have more recent examples?
60?