SPRIND, the Federal Agency for Breakthrough Innovation
SPRIND is Germany's Federal Agency for Breakthrough Innovation, based in Leipzig and owned by the Federal Republic. It finances people with radical new ideas through challenges, grants, equity stakes and convertible loans. Finance meets SPRIND in two places: the prototypes it funded for the German EU Digital Identity Wallet, which banks will have to accept, and its stakes in deep tech companies next to private investors. Dated events are in the calendar below.
How SPRIND finances
SPRIND was founded in 2019, its sole shareholder is the Federal Republic of Germany, and it is financed from the federal budget. On its own page it names three instruments: start-up funding, investments and convertible loans, and funding for research and development. It also runs challenges, open competitions in which several teams get money in stages and the best ones go on.
The SPRIND Freedom Act (in German) gave the agency the right to acquire and sell stakes in private companies, including silent participations. It may buy up to 25 percent of a company without asking the federal government, as long as the stake serves a breakthrough innovation. That makes SPRIND an investor that sits in funding rounds next to venture funds and corporates.
SPRIND as an investor: Focused Energy
The laser fusion company Focused Energy from Darmstadt raised 240 million dollars in a Series A, according to PwC Legal (in German), which advised SPRIND. SPRIND invested next to RWE, the European Innovation Council Fund, the Beteiligungs-Managementgesellschaft Hessen, Futury Capital from Frankfurt and the US investor Prime Movers Lab. Almost all of the money goes to the former RWE nuclear power plant site in Biblis in Hesse, where the company plans its first laser fusion power plant.
The round mixes public money from SPRIND, the EU fund and the Hessian investment company with money from a utility and from venture funds. The page on deep tech venture capital covers the wider funding system in Germany.
The EUDI wallet prototypes and banking
On behalf of the Federal Ministry of the Interior, SPRIND ran the EUDI Wallet Prototypes competition. Teams built wallet apps in three stages: first an identification like the state ID card, then further certificates such as driving licenses, then a login to websites and apps under a pseudonym. Online banking is one of the uses SPRIND names. The Frankfurt company Lissi was one of the teams.
The wallet matters to every bank in the EU. Under the amended eIDAS regulation, private parties that must use strong user authentication, banking included, have to accept the European Digital Identity Wallet when a customer asks for it. What that means for account opening and KYC is on the EU Digital Identity Wallet for banks.
Upcoming Finance Loop events
What is SPRIND?
SPRIND is the German Federal Agency for Breakthrough Innovation, in German Bundesagentur für Sprunginnovationen. It is a company owned by the federal government, based in Leipzig, that finances radical new ideas and helps put teams together around them.
Can SPRIND invest in companies?
Yes. The SPRIND Freedom Act allows the agency to acquire and sell stakes in private companies, and it can take up to 25 percent without federal approval. It also gives convertible loans.
What does SPRIND have to do with the EUDI wallet?
SPRIND ran the competition for prototypes of the German EU Digital Identity Wallet on behalf of the Federal Ministry of the Interior. The results inform the federal government's decisions on the wallet that people in Germany will use to identify themselves to authorities and banks.
SPRIND and Finance Loop
Finance Loop covers the two SPRIND subjects that reach finance: digital identity for bank onboarding in its Risk & Compliance track, and deep tech financing in its Investment & Digital Assets track. Finance Loop meets the people behind both at its events in Frankfurt, Munich, Berlin and Hamburg, and membership starts on the membership page.
Finance Loop helps organizations that want to present their work to this audience to host an event, sponsor a meetup or join the partner program.
Finance Loop is a professional network and has the goal of driving the adoption of emerging technologies in finance, such as AI, digital payments, cloud and blockchain solutions. Finance Loop helps its members build skills and personal networks in these fields: Investment & Digital Assets, Payments & Digital Money, Digital Infrastructure & Sovereignty, and Risk & Compliance.