YC-backed Zeit AI raises €4.3 million to develop Europe’s “autonomous data engineer”

Zeit AI is a Munich-based startup developing an autonomous data engineer for European businesses, has raised €4.3 million ($5 million) in funding.

The round was backed by Y Combinator, the University of Oxford’s Seed Fund, Sequoia Capital Scout Fund, ACE Ventures and Hasso Plattner VC, the investment arm of SAP co-founder Hasso Plattner. The financing also attracted several prominent angel investors, including former German Finance Minister Christian Lindner, World Cup winner Mario Götze, Meta board member Charlie Songhurst, Schoeller Group’s Martin Schoeller and Helsing CTO Robert Fink.

“Europe’s industrial base cannot outsource the decisions that run it. Zeit AI is one of the few companies making sovereign infrastructure the default rather than the compromise,” said Jens Schmidt-Sceery, Partner at Hasso Plattner VC.

Founded in 2024 by Palantir alumni Leopold von Waldthausen and Marvin Bornstein, Zeit AI is developing an autonomous data engineering platform for Europe’s mid-market companies. Its product, ZeitMind, connects ERP, CRM and more than 600 other data sources, using an AI agent to turn this information into analytics-ready applications. The platform provides transaction-level traceability and processes data in German data centres.

Zeit AI says many mid-sized European businesses have access to large amounts of data but lack the tools and resources needed to make full use of it. Data and reporting requirements that are not supported by existing ERP or FP&A systems often lead to manual Excel-based workarounds, which the company says can consume up to 10 days of work each month.

With ZeitMind, controllers can describe their requirements in natural language, while the AI system automatically delivers the requested automation, analysis or application within the same day. The company also emphasises that customer data is processed exclusively within Europe, while the platform can be deployed without requiring additional internal IT resources.

“We could run this company profitably, but we are now supercharging the playbook we have put together over the past two years and expanding the team in Europe across Munich and an office in London that is to come,” Leopold von Waldthausen, CEO and co-founder of Zeit AI, mentioned in his LinkedIn post. 

Zeit AI’s customer base includes technology group Kolbenschmidt, agricultural machinery manufacturer Horsch, agricultural trading company Allgaier Agrarhandel, logistics firm Wahl & Co, Munich-based consultancy Stern Stewart & Co, and Luxembourg-based aviation company Jetfly Aviation.

The company plans to use the newly raised capital to expand its customer base and recruit engineers responsible for deploying and implementing its AI agent.