Furo’s founders left Silicon Valley — and it’s paying off

Furo, a startup that creates software for industrial battery storage systems, moved its founders back to Germany after early career stints in Silicon Valley and has since secured $4 million in funding from primarily U.S. backers. The round was led by U.S.-based TQ Ventures with participation from Neo, Sandberg Bernthal Venture Partners and Munich’s Center for Digital Technology and Management (CDTM). The company is incorporated as a Delaware C Corp.

The three co-founders — Lena Sophia Voß, Leonie Wagner and Simon Wittner — say relocating to Munich made it easier to build customer relationships, hire technical staff and leverage local mentorship. Furo has already won enterprise business, including work with German rail operator Deutsche Bahn, and the founders point to proximity to customers and to technical universities as practical advantages for early-stage growth.

The team’s trajectory included time in the Bay Area through CDTM programs tied to TU Munich: some founders studied at Stanford and UC Berkeley and previously worked at firms including Apple, Google X and AI startups. Although they could have remained in the U.S. under visa offers and continued local roles, the founders chose to return to Europe because they judged the energy use-case — and the market urgency in Germany after repeated energy strains over recent years — to be stronger at home.

Furo maintains ties to the U.S. investment ecosystem, traveling several times a year to meet investors and handle administrative matters, while using lower local engineering salary levels and a strong regional network to extend runway and scale hiring. The company’s experience reflects a broader observation among some VCs that startups can benefit from being rooted in their home markets while keeping connections to Silicon Valley.