Scaling Deeptech for the Energy Transition: BRYCK’s Tobias Grün Ahead of Tech Tour Energy & Decarbonisation 2025
The Ruhr region — Germany’s industrial heartland — is transforming into a hub for innovation, energy transition, and deeptech entrepreneurship. At the center of this transformation is BRYCK, the innovation hub and startup alliance connecting researchers, founders, corporates, and investors to shape Europe’s future.
In this exclusive Tech Tour interview, Tobias Grün, Member of the Executive Board at BRYCK, shares his vision for scaling deeptech startups, building meaningful ecosystems, and unlocking opportunities for innovation-driven growth. His insights come at a pivotal moment — ahead of Tech Tour Energy & Decarbonisation 2025 (26–27 November, Essen, Germany), hosted by BRYCK, where industry leaders will connect with global investors and innovators to accelerate sustainable change.
TT: BRYCK has become a central player in building the innovation ecosystem in the Ruhr region. Could you tell us more about the vision behind the BRYCK Startup Alliance and how it supports deeptech startups in scaling their impact?
TG: The vision behind BRYCK Startup Alliance is to enable more technology, deeptech, coming from the universities, to penetrate the market, especially at the scaling phase. There are a lot of first-level, early-on projects coming from the universities, but the first hurdle is for a potential entrepreneur to really make a product out of the tech.
The second big hurdle is actually related to the innovativeness of deeptech itself. If solutions are not as innovative, they have an easier way to enter the market. What usually happens is that a brand new invention, something based on science or research, is so fundamentally new to the market that it’s a lot harder for those teams to actually scale. And at this phase we assist and support teams, by being very close to the relevant industry, in order to scale. Because players in this industry will be the ones applying the new technology in the markets and within the technical fields they’re in. So we need to have collaboration very early on between the technology side (meaning the startups & researchers on one side), and the corporate and industry partners on the market side, to adapt those technologies and to make them work on a broader scale.
The third party that comes into play are of course the investors. So with our own investment fund at the early stage, but also with our broad investor network during the scaling phase, we bring in all three sides. We bring in the startups, the technology, we bring in the market, the industry, the demand – and we bring in the money to finance the necessary risk and take this new technology to market.
TT: The Ruhr area is often called Germany’s industrial heartland. How is the region evolving into a hub for energy transition and decarbonisation, and what role does BRYCK play in shaping this transformation?
TG: As the industrial heartland of Germany, NRW is also the energy provider of the country. Large energy companies stem from the region and are therefore heavily involved in the efforts we, as an industry and as a society, are undertaking right now to foster the energy transition, which everybody supports — especially on the industry side, even if not always publicly. From the industry and market perspective, it’s clear that we will create an energy transition towards carbon neutrality, which also means electrifying much of our energy use. That is probably the largest step we are taking right now: building the grids we need, the storage we need, and the production we need to electrify our energy demands — and by that, defossilise them.
In the region, large-scale projects are already under deployment. We are investing heavily in grid capacity, production, storage, and also the consumption side. At the same time, there is enormous demand for innovation. Research, invention, and startup incubation are responding to this need. Many innovations that may have been dormant, or are now being researched, are emerging — because they see this strong demand. So while we are building large- and small-scale state-of-the-art battery systems, and as battery prices keep falling, research is still ongoing. Batteries are not only penetrating the market and showing economies of scale right now, but major inventions are still being developed.
This means that while the market is industrialising, it is also under very high innovation pressure — but with a lot of opportunities. Everything is happening at once, and everyone is aware of it. What we need now is to bring in innovation, in a structured way: to make the right connections, identify the right innovations, the right teams, and the right startups, and bring them into this transformation process that is happening in the industry anyway. That is our task, and I think we are well set up in this region because everybody wants to do it. We want to be, again, Germany’s — and maybe Europe’s — “energy heart,” and we want innovation to happen here first.
TT: The BRYCK Startup Alliance brings together science, business, innovators, and investors. What makes this ecosystem unique, and how does it help bridge the gap between university spin-offs, industry, and market opportunities?
TG: The ecosystem that we create and work with, as I described before and as you stated in the question, brings together entrepreneurs, investors, researchers, and industry. What makes it unique is that we believe it’s about the actual people who drive success — those who create successful implementations, successful startups, and successful market outcomes.
We don’t just want to build a platform where people meet by chance. Instead, we want to create meaningful connections. We bring together many startups, investors, and corporates, but it’s not just about having a lot of contacts. It’s about understanding all sides and then creating connections that have a high probability of success. That could mean a high probability of making an investment or of creating a collaboration between a startup and a corporate.
To do this, we invest a lot in getting to know the people behind it all — the founders themselves. It’s not just about the product story of the startup or the general demand of the industry. It’s about knowing who in a company is working on a specific project, who has a task to fulfill, or who wants to create a new product or market. Then we can match them with the right people, the right solutions and ideas, to make it happen. That’s the uniqueness we want to bring in.
TT: BRYCK Startup Alliance has been recognized among the top initiatives in Germany’s “Startup Factories” competition. What does this mean for your long-term ambition of becoming a leading European innovation hub for deeptech?
TG: The recognition by the German government means two things for us specifically. First, it is a recognition in itself — standing out and being acknowledged for the excellent work we have done so far, and the work we will continue to do in the coming years. Second, it means we will represent part of the ecosystem to an international audience.
In a region or a country, you have many grassroots initiatives. For example, in the Ruhr region or in NRW, there are 700,000 students, a lot of research, and many local initiatives helping entrepreneurs take their first steps into the ecosystem. But if you look from the outside, at Germany or at the region, you cannot expect an investor from the US to know all 48 NRW initiatives at different university levels and understand what is happening.
What I think we will see in the next five to ten years is that if an investor from the US looks at Germany, BRYCK will be one of the top addresses they go to. They will say: “What’s going on?” And we will not only explain what’s happening within BRYCK, but also what is happening in the wider region. They will ask us, and we will be the point of reference. For example, in the field of energy, we want to be able to give that broader perspective, hopefully even across Germany. So while we want to avoid being too narrowly regional, we also want to show the ambition to be one of the leading programmes for Europe, with this broader, international outlook.
At the same time, this recognition allows us to dig deeper. Until now, we started our journey mainly with entrepreneurs, once they had already founded a company and had some visibility in the market, often through an accelerator approach. With this recognition and the funding that comes with it, we can go further back in the process — talking to researchers, to people who currently consider founding a company, or to those doing great research. We can then help build companies from that research by finding founders or entrepreneurs willing to bring the technology to market.
So right now, we are somewhere in the middle. We have top-down recognition, while also being personally involved in the stories of entrepreneurs. And we can now spread our attention in both directions — supporting early research and new ideas, while continuing to work with visible startups. That is the great opportunity we have now.
TT: Your organization has been a strong supporter of Tech Tour Energy & Decarbonisation. How do the value this investment programme creates, and what can participants expect when they join us in Essen this November?
TG: I think what the Tech Tour Energy and Decarbonisation programme provides is a truly European platform. As BRYCK Startup Alliance, we want to have a European outreach, but we are still an NRW initiative, rooted in this region. Tech Tour Energy and Decarbonisation is therefore a great way for us to expand our network across Europe, inviting European investors and startups to connect with us, and at the same time bringing ever better teams from our programmes into the Tech Tour platform. For us, this programme is an international exchange platform.
To be honest, when you organize something purely from a German perspective, it usually ends up being 80 or 90 percent German participants, with just a few international people or investors. Tech Tour is the exact opposite — Germany may even be underrepresented in this crowd. And that’s a good thing, because from an entrepreneurial point of view we need to grow into this international dimension.
From the very start, this is an international programme. Hosting it in Essen, at the industrial and energy heart of Germany, is a great opportunity. It invites the right people to join us here, and it allows us to connect our regional strengths with the broader European ecosystem.
TT: Looking ahead, where do the biggest opportunities lie for startups and investors in the energy transition — and how can Tech Tour help bring these opportunities to life?
TG: I think the largest opportunities for startups and investors are right now, and will be for the next 15 years. The market and the energy systems we have, along with governmental regulatory bodies, are open to embracing innovation. Especially in this space, if you look back over the last 20 or even 40 years, there was basically no innovation in how energy was produced, distributed, or used. It was very hard to bring new ideas into the system.
Now, although there are many moving targets, there is also enormous change underway. Regulation is listening very closely — not only to the big players and incumbents in the market, but also to startups and technology innovators. The key question is: how should regulation adapt to new technology, new models, and new opportunities? The incumbents are very open to adopting technology, working with startups, and even investing in them.
From an investor’s perspective, this is not the same as putting money into B2C software companies, which scale much faster. But in the energy market, scaling opportunities are no longer measured in decades as they once were. The pace is accelerating, and with the enormous demand for innovation to drive the energy transition, I think this is a great moment to invest.
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From enabling university spin-offs to fostering industry collaboration and attracting international investors, BRYCK is setting the stage for the next wave of deeptech breakthroughs in Europe. As Tobias Grün highlights, the Ruhr region is not just Germany’s industrial heartland — it’s becoming Europe’s energy and innovation heart.
To meet with Tobias in person, join him and 300+ other fascinating leaders from across the energy and investment landscape at Tech Tour Energy & Decarbonisation 2025 in Essen (26–27 November 2025). Exchange with 140+ seasoned venture and corporate investors, meet 60+ selected companies, and benchmark your strategy with Europe’s top experts in energy transition.
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