Did you know we have a new event calendar we curate weekly? It includes events on Luma and elsewhere. You can subscribe to get updates in the future — I haven’t yet decided on the format. You can also submit your event.

News on your future travel options. New train connection in June: Prague-Berlin-Hamburg-Copenhagen. (More coming in 2028: Oslo, Milan, Naples). Related, Flix will be expanding its fleet of trains significantly in the next two years (for example, Berlin-Hamburg 10x daily). Ryanair is giving up on BER, but Eurowings (owned by Lufthansa) isn’t: they are increasing the BER fleet, adding Bologna and will increase the frequency of flights to the Canary Islands. And, a direct flight from BER to Sylt is back in July, operated by Air Uniqon.

Speaking of travel, you should consider Slovenia. Flight connections from BER suck, but you can fly into Graz, Zagreb or Trieste. If you want to try some great Slovenian wines, join us this Sunday at the Grape Odyssey. Use HANDPICKED for 20% off.

This is why we can’t have nice things: IBB spent a third of the €1.25M budget of Reparaturbonus, a program where you could get a subsidy to repair broken electrical devices, for the program management itself.

This is an interesting chart. You either are good at producing electric cars, or you will become irrelevant: an extremely important development for Germany.

Startup Verband had Kanzler Merz at the 7th German Startup Awards ceremony. Founders of the year were Julie Lepique (Femtasy, Berlin) and Dr. Jarek Kutylowski (DeepL, Cologne). The complete list of winners is here.

How about holding companies liable for hallucinations? According to a German court, a company is liable for false statements ("hallucinations") by its AI chatbot on the website. Which makes sense, but it’s also an impossible problem to solve. The court “allowed” an appeal to the Federal Court of Justice. I rarely get a good automated answer, so I wouldn’t miss them.

Stats: Finally some good news! German industry's order backlog hit a record high in March, up 8.4% year on year, the highest since the series began in 2015. [more] Related, this was a good insight from The Guardian: “Germany urged to stop admiring Beijing and wake up to ‘China Shock 2.0‘”

770,000 people celebrate in Berlin — the best pictures from the Karneval der Kulturen [more, €]

Berlin's fire brigade was called out to significantly more incidents in 2025 [more]

The family of the Ebola patient has been admitted to Berlin's Charité [more]

Hundreds of new social-housing flats are being built in Lichtenberg [more]

After 20 years of planning and construction, Berlin's Hindu temple on the Hasenheide opens in June [more, €]

How to just do a thing? Excellent advice: stick your head in a box temporarily. And then only do that thing until it’s done. It does wonders to me.

It’s been a while since I shared a short story. This one, They’re made out of meat, is from Terry Bisson, and this one, Onions, is mine from another time.

Outside interests #1: Google declared war on the Web. [more] Related, AI is killing good content. One of the victims is All About Berlin, an excellent blog that helped thousands, including me.

Outside interests #2: How about this as workers’ participation? Samsung chip-division workers will get an average $340k bonus as AI profits soar. A last-minute union deal prevented an 18-day strike. [more]

Outside interests #3: SpaceX has officially filed for an IPO. Separately, Elon Musk lost his legal case against Sam Altman and OpenAI.

Outside interests #4: EU decoupling from the US in payments: Mollie (Amsterdam, payments) reported record 2025 revenue of €274M, with over a quarter coming from the DACH region, now its largest growth market.

Outside interests #5: Related, Wero (Europe, payments) aims to grow from 7.2M to 12M customers in Germany by year-end, part of a €750M bank-backed challenge to PayPal, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. [more]

Outside interests #5: Google, Meta, and TikTok face EU complaints from the vzbv, BEUC, and two dozen consumer groups over fraudulent financial ads; only 27% of 900 flagged ads were removed. [more] Things aren't fun at Meta - leak form all-hands meeting informing employees AI will be trained on them ahead of mass layoffs. [more] And Cloudflare's CEO on how they laid of "measurers". [more]

Cohere (Canada, AI) acquired Berlin/Montreal AI startup Reliant AI. [more]

Swapfiets (Amsterdam, bike subscription) acquired Dance (Berlin, e-bike subscription), forming a service across 45 cities with 290k members and over 75k e-bikes. Dance stays on as a brand.

Axel Springer (Berlin, media) posted its first results since the split: 2025 pro-forma revenue of €2.2B and adjusted EBIT up 29.4% to €241.4M, with Q1 2026 EBIT up 123% to €54.1M. [more]

Delivery Hero (Berlin, food delivery) confirmed a Uber takeover offer at €33/share, valuing it at around €10B. Some investors want more (over €40). Uber holds 19.5% plus 5.6% via derivatives. [more]

Helsing (Munich, defence) and OHB (Bremen, space) formed a joint venture, KIRK, to bid on the German military's "Spock 2" space-based reconnaissance system. [more]

Clark (Frankfurt, insurtech) lost its unicorn status and is now valued at €613M. [more]

Ottobock (Duderstadt, medtech) is threatening short-seller Grizzly Research with a lawsuit and BaFin complaint after its report briefly sent the prosthetics maker's shares down over 10%. [more]

The German government wants to buy a 40% of Franco-German tank maker KNDS (Leopard 2, Caesar howitzers), to be on parity with the French government.

Amazon faces a class action from about 220k German customers over Prime Video ads. The Bavarian court will decide whether it can charge €2.99/month extra to keep the service ad-free. [more]

Housing completions fell 18.0% in 2025 to 206k homes, the lowest since 2012 and a second straight sharp drop. [more]

Reddit: what do you think about a “long walk” date? I think it’s fine to go for a walk, but with a good pit stop. It’s also true that adults should be able to communicate their wishes and desires openly. But it has limits. Once a match informed me, “I eat meat and fish", expecting I would invite her for dinner as a first date. Unlikely.

Instagram: How to identify AI-generated images. It would be good to have a quick scanner as an app. Maybe your next vibecoded project?

Instagram: Unbelievable policy suggestions by AfD’s Höcke. If he comes to power, I’ll be writing this newsletter from exile.

Last week’s poll was about moving to Brandenburg, and if you add up the numbers, it’s a pretty serious possibility/reality for many of you. Sad to see so many people leaving Berlin!