Eight universities in Saxony and two in Thuringia have founded the Startup Campus Alliance at Leipzig University today (April 9, 2025). They want to use the association to promote entrepreneurship and start-up culture in the long term and establish Saxony and Thuringia as the leading deep-tech start-up region in Germany.
Deep Tech (short for "Deep Technology") stands for technologies and companies that offer solutions based on significant scientific or technical innovations.
The founding members of the "Startup Campus Alliance" are:
- University of Leipzig
- Dresden University of Technology
- Chemnitz University of Technology
- TU Bergakademie Freiberg
- Dresden University of Applied Sciences
- Leipzig University of Applied Sciences for Technology, Economics and Culture
- Mittweida University of Applied Sciences
- HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management
- Friedrich Schiller University Jena
- Ernst Abbe University of Applied Sciences Jena
The "Startup Campus Alliance" aims to strategically combine the strengths of the universities in Saxony and Thuringia in the area of start-up support and thereby create effective synergies. Joint teaching formats, shared infrastructure and interdisciplinary cooperation create innovative support services for talented people and teams interested in founding a company.
A central component of the alliance is to make successes in the field of university spin-offs visible and thus strengthen the public perception of Saxony and Thuringia as start-up locations - both nationally and internationally. Furthermore, cross-university cooperation contributes significantly to the further development of the regional start-up ecosystem. After all, most start-up ideas already come from universities," says Leipzig University Professor Utz Dornberger, who was elected Chairman of the association. There were almost 100 new start-ups in Saxony in 2023, more than 60 of which were start-up projects from universities and research institutions.
attributable to start-up projects from universities and research institutions.
Utz Dornberger is a professor of development economics with a special focus on small and medium-sized enterprises. He also heads the Leipzig Self-Management Initiative (SMILE), Leipzig University’s start-up initiative.
"This alliance creates new spaces for intensive, profitable networking. It promotes the exchange between start-up initiatives and makes an important contribution to university innovation strategies and the sustainable strengthening of the region’s innovative power," says Eva Inés Obergfell, Rector of Leipzig University. Leipzig University is happy to contribute to the newly founded association with great commitment. "We bring very good experience and expertise to the table." This can be read, among other things, in the Stifterverband’s Start-up Radar 2025, "where we were rated particularly highly in the categories of start-up qualification and start-up support."
The organizational basis for the collaboration is the non-profit association "Startup Campus Alliance". The association serves as a coordinating platform through which the diverse activities of university start-up support can be efficiently bundled and strategically aligned. In addition, the association structure enables joint representation of interests in the Business Opportunities Ost (boOst) Ecosystem gGmbH, which is currently being founded in parallel to the establishment of the alliance. In addition to the savings banks in Saxony, SpinLab in Leipzig and TUDAG, talks are currently being held with other private investors. This strong partnership is intended to support the founding of innovative start-ups from within the universities.
boOst gGmbH is applying for the "Startup Factories" competition organized by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection, which supports selected German startup ecosystems in the development of knowledge-based spin-offs. The aim is to develop a model for a thematically or regionally oriented "Startup Factory" that operates as a private-law organization outside the university framework.
Current example: Spin-off for organic PET recycling
The PHL7 enzyme decomposes PET, used for example for plastic fruit trays from the supermarket, by over 90 percent in a record time of 16 hours. This is twice as fast as previous enzymes. This biological PET recycling saves resources, especially fossil and environmentally harmful energy sources. Biochemists Dr. Christian Sonnendecker and Ronny Frank from the University of Leipzig developed a business idea from these research findings, which have also been reported on in specialist journals, and recently founded the company ESTER Biotech.
