Zeit AI raises €5M to give Europe’s mid-market its own data engineer

Zeit AI, a startup creating autonomous data engineering technology, has secured €5 million in investment to broaden its platform for mid-sized European firms. The funding round attracted participation from Y Combinator, the University of Oxford's Seed Fund, Sequoia Capital Scout Fund, ACE Ventures, and Hasso Plattner VC, alongside angel investors Christian Lindner, Mario Götze, Charlie Songhurst, Martin Schoeller, and Helsing CTO Robert Fink.

Co-founded in 2024 by former Palantir employees Leopold von Waldthausen and Marvin Bornstein, Zeit AI is developing ZeitMind, an AI agent aimed at automating data engineering tasks to assist companies in utilizing information scattered across their business systems.

Mid-sized businesses frequently rely on spreadsheets and manual processes due to their existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) or financial planning and analysis (FP&A) systems' inability to cater to unique reporting and analytical needs. Acquiring and maintaining the requisite data infrastructure typically demands specialized data engineering expertise, which can prove both challenging and expensive for these companies to acquire.

ZeitMind addresses this issue by connecting ERP, customer relationship management (CRM), and over 600 additional source systems. Its AI agent orchestrates data integration, cleansing, and the construction of analytics-ready applications tailored to each company's specific requirements.

The platform ensures data transparency, attributing results to individual transactions, and operates within German data centers. Co-founder Leopold von Waldthausen notes that mid-sized companies are increasingly in need of data engineering capabilities but often find it difficult to access specialized talent at a reasonable cost.

ZeitMind assumes the role of an autonomous data engineer, connecting systems, cleansing data, and building applications—all without the need for additional personnel. The newly acquired capital will be utilized for expanding Zeit AI's presence among mid-sized businesses and hiring more engineers to facilitate the deployment of ZeitMind.