Bits & Pretzels 2026: AI dominated the stage, but founders had other problems

Bits & Pretzels started in Munich in 2014 as a breakfast meet-up for founders. Twelve years on, organisers say the 2026 edition drew 7,500 people from September 28 to 30, and the main stage was full of AI language and big promises. Sessions carried titles like “Funding the trillion-dollar decade: venture in the age of AI” and “Bavaria’s AI moment: building Europe’s next tech powerhouse,” with Eric Schmidt and Markus Söder among the headline speakers.

But the conversations that mattered most were happening away from the stage lights. Early-stage founders kept coming back to the same practical headaches: getting hardware through regulation, bringing in parts from China, and finding enough growth capital. None of the entrepreneurs TFN spoke with said AI was their main bottleneck. Claire Houry of Ventech made the same point in more direct terms: the hard problems are still the boring ones.

That showed up clearly in the hardware crowd. Jonas Dengler, co-founder and CFO of Maple Aviation in Ottobrunn, said regulation is the only real bottleneck for the electric cargo drone maker, and that the company has already cleared European certification. Maple Aviation’s first flights with launch partner LMU Klinikum are set for December 2026, with a Series A planned for the second half of 2027. And that timing matters, because regional deep-tech firms often run straight into the funding wall right when they need to scale.

TFN pointed to Uplift Ventures’ new €100 million fund as one answer to the seed-to-Series A gap, but the broader numbers are still awkward for Europe. Domestic backers show up in just 54% of European rounds above $15 million, versus 80% in the US. Polingo’s Nicole Spielmann also showed how regulation can be both obstacle and design choice: the Frankfurt edtech startup keeps its children’s device off direct internet links, runs AI locally and still has to file three separate compliance registrations.

The funding mood depends a lot on where founders sit in the pipeline. aembiance’s Tino De Paoli and Leon Debatin said they were still too early for venture money, while amber’s Philipp Reißel sounded more upbeat after closing a €7 million Series A with Ventech and NRW.Venture. Yet the German Startup Monitor 2026, based on 1,803 founders, shows confidence in Germany over the US falling to 31% from 40%, even as capital deployed through September hit €8.0 billion and transaction counts stayed nearly 25% below 2021.

There was also a geography lesson running through the conference: Munich looks glamorous, but it is crowded, and Aachen or Cologne can be easier places to hire. Reißel said founders in Munich have to fight 10 other startups for talent, while smaller regions feel less congested. That may be the quieter truth of the whole event: AI gets the stage, but founders are still trying to ship products, hire people and survive the paperwork.