Advanced Manufacturing Venture Capital Report – 2025 published

FCF Fox Corporate Finance GmbH is pleased to publish the “Advanced Manufacturing Venture Capital Report – 2025”. The report is part of the “FCF DeepTech Series”, which is a quarterly series of reports tracking European venture capital funding trends within four main DeepTech verticals.

The Advanced Manufacturing Venture Capital Report highlights venture capital investment activity in startups in the advanced manufacturing sector, with subsectors including additive manufacturing, robotic automation, sensors and IoT platforms, and industrial process software.

Key findings are:

• Significant increase in venture capital activity in the Advanced Manufacturing Sector: After a weak 2023, both the number of successfully closed transactions and the total capital raised in 2024 have risen sharply – by 80% to 345 deals and by 63% to €1.1bn – bringing the market back to 2022 levels. Together with the strong figures from Q1 2025 – 81 transactions totaling €383m – this points to a recovery of the VC market in this sector, despite the still challenging environment.
• Germany leads the ranking by deal volume: With a funding volume of €901m (2020 to Q1 2025), Germany is ahead of the UK (€851m) and France (€641m) – argely driven by the sector star “Neura Robotics” with a total transaction volume of €236 million over the past five years. Due to low transparency (only 52% of German deals publish financing volume vs. 79% in the UK and 70% in France), the actual volume in Germany (and leadership position) might be even stronger.
• Robotic Automation is the most important subsector: Accounting for 26% of all VC deals (351) and 45% of total equity raised (€1,9bn), Robotic Automation (solutions for automating production or manual processes) stands out as the most important of the four analyzed subsectors and attracts strong investor interest. This is also reflected in the Top 10 largest VC deals – 7 out of 10 in Advanced Manufacturing belong to this subsector, including Neura Robotics and Exotec.
• Two faces of the exit market – strong M&A activity vs. weak IPO market: The exit landscape in the Advanced Manufacturing sector shows two contrasting trends:
  1) M&A activity surged in 2024 with 18 successful acquisitions (+50% vs. 12 in 2023). Q1 2025 has already seen 3 company sales, indicating a healthy current environment and potentially signaling a further consolidation phase in the sector
  2) The IPO market for Advanced Manufacturing startups is virtually non-existent. Only one IPO – Boa Concept for €5m in 2021 – has occurred over the past five years. The generally weak IPO environment contributes to this negative trend
  Conclusion: Startups in this sector have the highest exit opportunities through the M&A market.

To access the full report, please click here.