Last week I released the Company Benchmark based on Salary Trends 2026. It’s for Heads of People and Talent leads at Berlin tech companies, or whoever owns comp bands, offers, RTO policy, benefits, or AI policy. At smaller companies, that’s often the founder. It also works for recruiting agencies and consultancies advising Berlin tech clients.

Also new: I will be curating more events in the future. For now still Luma-heavy, but I am extending it to Eventbrite and Meetup soon. Subscribe to the calendar and bookmark it.

Did you know that Berlin was the sunniest German state in 2025? We had 2069h of sun. But don’t spread the news too much!

Typical Berlin governance? The senate comes up with an idea, but has, according to the Pankow district, no real plan on how to implement it. This time it was about creating "Ausgehviertel", zones where restaurants/bars stay open longer and neighbours need to accept more noise after 22:00. Great idea on paper (maybe not for the neighbours). But the Senate just couldn't say which exact neighbourhoods qualify or how loud is too loud. Pankow is now pushing back: fine with the concept, but not fine with being handed the conflicts without the criteria.

Related, the Senate is pushing a Bundesrat initiative to make cashless payment mandatory in every German shop. Businesses would have to offer at least one digital option (with cash staying an option). The real motivation is tax evasion: Berlin audits only about 1% of its 80k cash-heavy businesses each year. Bundesrechnungshof estimates €10B are evaded annually. Some would argue that the money still gets spent.

I recently experienced a very authentic Japanese izakaya-class restaurant/bar, Niko Izakaya. They even have Japanese toilets. Excellent and warmly recommended! (Try shochu and don’t skip the beef!)

If you look for more inspiration, check out the top 11 new openings in May from the official city blog. Also, if you haven’t yet visited, The Jewish Museum is celebrating 25 years with special events. One of the best museums I’ve ever visited.

A first in Berlin: CDU-led Senate is removing an existing bike lane on Unter den Eichen in Steglitz-Zehlendorf, converting it back to a car lane. CDU and SPD agreed at a top-level meeting that bike lanes on main roads could be narrower than currently required or skipped entirely if a bike route exists "in the immediate vicinity" on a side street. Making room for electric cars and buses?

Stats: German inflation rose to 2.9% in April, the highest level since January 2024, driven by energy prices with gasoline up 26.2% and heating oil up 55.1%. Core inflation (excluding energy and food) stands at 2.3%. [more]

Karneval der Kulturen marks its 30th anniversary in Berlin: "It definitely can't go on like this year" [more, €]

Protest in Berlin for the right to open-air raves [more]

As the swimming season starts, water quality is high at nearly all Berlin bathing spots [more]

Several hundred cases reported: Berlin cracks down on illegal short-term rentals [more, €]

Let’s read more. For inspiration, here is the list of 100 best novels published in English by The Guardian. If you’d like to run Handpicked reading club with me, drop me a note. I’d like to start with German novels.

Here is why your “trained” LLM still produces AI-speak: “When an author uses AI for "polishing" a draft, they are not seeing improvement; they are witnessing semantic ablation. The AI identifies high-entropy clusters – the precise points where unique insights and "blood" reside – and systematically replaces them with the most probable, generic token sequences.”

Why staring at walls (=meditation) improves focus and productivity. I do observe it in practice: the more regular my meditation, the easier everything feels.

Outside interests #1: LinkedIn is laying off 5% of its workforce across multiple teams. [more]

Outside interests #2: I’d like to draw your attention to the clipping marketing hack. Pretty disgusting?

Outside interests #3: JPMorgan (US, banking) is rolling out its consumer bank in Europe within weeks. The main product will be a savings account. [more]

Outside interests #4: China added a Germany-sized electricity grid last year. [more]

Outside interests #5: The EU plans to crack down on "addictive design" — endless scrolling, autoplay, push notifications on TikTok and Instagram, with regulation expected later this year. [more]

Langdock (Berlin, AI platform) reached $30M in annual recurring revenues.

Delivery Hero (Berlin, food delivery) CEO and co-founder Niklas Östberg will step down by 31 March 2027 under pressure from activist shareholder Aspex. [more]

Taxfix (Berlin, fintech), once valued above €1B, is defending its business against AI assistants. [more]

Dussmann (Berlin, services) raised 2025 group revenue 3.8% to €3.4B, a record. [more]

Burgermeister (Berlin, food & beverage) announced plans to open at least 20 locations in Poland over the next three years, following its first restaurant in Szczecin with a second planned in Łódź.

Trade Republic (Berlin, fintech) signed Brad Pitt as brand ambassador for its biggest ad campaign yet.

Mercedes-Benz (Stuttgart, automotive) is open to entering arms production if economically sensible. [more] Separately, it is selling its seven dealerships in Berlin and Brandenburg (1,100+ employees).

Helsing (Munich, defence tech) is close to a $1.2B round valuing the drone maker at $18B. [more]

Carl Zeiss Meditec (Jena, medtech) plans to cut up to 1,000 jobs by 2028/29, about one in six. [more] I was previously listing them as a company in Berlin “you probably don’t know about.”

Staffbase (Chemnitz, employee-communications software) is cutting 22% of its roughly 800 jobs worldwide, closing its Prague development site and dropping 25 of 186 roles in Chemnitz. It was East Germany's first unicorn. [more]

Tesla (Grünheide, automotive) is investing nearly $250M to expand battery-cell production at its Grünheide plant to 18 GWh annual capacity. [more]

Allianz (Munich, insurance) posted a record first-quarter profit, beating analyst expectations. [more]

Deutsche Bahn (Berlin, rail) is reviewing Flinkster car-sharing and Call a Bike as it refocuses on the core business [more]. It is also offering a summer family ticket for up to five people for €99.99 return on long-distance trains. [more]

New business formations rose in Q1 2026 — larger-company foundings up 2.8% year on year, total new registrations up 10.1%, according to Destatis. [more]

Reddit: people discussing the dropping quality of Wolt and other delivery services.

Reddit: someone posts a real Monet and asks users what the tells are that the AI-generated Monet is AI-generated.

Instagram: this Brooklyn Coffee Shop sketch went viral — how people see Berlin vs how Berlin really is. Sometimes.

Last week’s survey was pretty clear: most of you are responsibly saving for pensions.