# Pau’s List

European startups I find genuinely exciting — the model labs, robotics teams, and rocket companies quietly making Europe’s future look brighter. No rankings, no sponsors — just the ones I’d tell a friend about.

## Where I’d start

A few I keep coming back to.

Black Forest Labs: Generative image and video AI models. Black Forest Labs is a generative AI lab building state-of-the-art text-to-image and video models, including the open FLUX family, from the team behind Stable Diffusion. Headquarters: Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany. Categories: Foundational AI, Developer Tools, Open Source. Legal name: Black Forest Labs Inc.. Legal domicile: Delaware, United States.

Isar Aerospace: European orbital rockets for small satellites. Isar Aerospace builds Spectrum, a two-stage orbital launch vehicle for small and medium satellites, manufacturing the majority of the rocket in-house in Munich to give Europe its own independent route to orbit. Headquarters: Ottobrunn, Germany. Categories: Space, Hardware, Defense. Legal name: Isar Aerospace SE.

Polybot: Autonomous AI robots that harvest greenhouse crops. Polybot builds fully autonomous farming robots that learn dexterous tasks like picking tomatoes end-to-end from human demonstrations, aiming to make diverse, sustainable polyculture farming economical. Headquarters: Tübingen, Germany. Categories: Robotics, Applied AI, Hardware. Legal name: Polybot GmbH.

[Discover all](/discover)

## Lately

Funding, launches, and milestones from across the list.

-   [

    launchGenesis AI

    GENE-26.5 goes full-stack with a human-like robotic hand

    ](/companies/genesis-ai)
-   [

    acquisitionPrior Labs

    SAP acquires Prior Labs, backing it with over €1B

    ](/companies/prior-labs)
-   [

    launchSereact

    Cortex 2.0 lets robots simulate the future before they move

    ](/companies/sereact)
-   [

    fundingSereact

    $110M Series B to scale the robotic brain and cross the Atlantic

    ](/companies/sereact)
-   [

    fundingNeura Robotics

    Reportedly raising €1B with Tether at a ~€4B valuation

    ](/companies/neura-robotics)
-   [

    milestoneRocket Factory Augsburg

    RFA One comes together at SaxaVord for its maiden flight

    ](/companies/rfa)