We bring together the most ambitious students in Munich in an interdisciplinary add-on study program
We educate tomorrow’s top leaders in technology, the people who will drive Europe’s prosperity. We research emerging technologies, build products with industry partners and educate entrepreneurial personalities who make a difference.
- Years
- 25+
- Students per semester
- 26
- Acceptance rate
- 5%
- Alumni
- 1300+
With just 50 students a year, graduates have founded 600+ startups, created 25k jobs, and generated 385 m in tax revenue
Meet previous Centerlings
Co-founded Stylight, sold to ProSiebenSat.1 in 2016, and Alasco, where he sits on the board; now runs the Munich accelerator Schub Space.
Studied Public Policy at Harvard after CDTM and now works with governments and large-scale energy players on systemic change.
FINN became a unicorn in 2026 after a €140m Series D led by Portage.
Rose from the early La Famiglia team to General Partner, then Partner at General Catalyst; early investor in Personio and Parloa.
Personio is valued at $8.5bn, with around 1,800 employees and more than 14,000 customers.
Manages DeepMind's research in biology, chemistry, physics and mathematics; his team built AlphaFold, which won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
RobCo raised a €85m Series C co-led by Lightspeed and Lingotto, with Sequoia participating.
Co-founded TeleClinic, Germany's first telemedicine platform, sold to DocMorris in 2020; now building a US clinical-trials health-tech startup.
Co-founded Forto, which grew to around 1,000 employees and unicorn status; angel in Parloa, Langdock and Orbem.
Member of Think Tank 30, the young think tank of the German Club of Rome.
Partner at Lightspeed since 2022, with Helsing, Langfuse and RobCo in the portfolio; founded MergerSpot.
Left Zalando to co-found Outfittery in 2012. After the 2025 merger with Lookiero she chairs a group with over 3 million customers in 13 European markets.
Co-founded Forto, which raised more than $500m and reached a $1.2bn valuation; more than 75 angel investments.
Researches digital transformation and the future of work and co-founded TUM Blockchain. Since September 2026 she has also led Bavaria’s State Institute for Higher Education Research (IHF).
Luminovo raised an €11m seed led by Chalfen Ventures with Tencent and Cherry Ventures; founding member of the German AI Association.
Went from TUM computer science and a Harvard MBA to General Atlantic and Permira’s growth fund. She now invests in European deep tech, AI and life sciences.
Langfuse, the open-source LLM engineering platform used by more than 50,000 companies, was acquired by ClickHouse in 2026.
Ran corporate development at Hubert Burda Media and sat on boards of US companies. She now backs startups at Acton, through her angel group Buildery, and on the CDTM Venture Fund’s investment committee.
Langfuse, with 2,000+ paying customers and 20k+ GitHub stars, was acquired by ClickHouse in 2026.
Tacto raised €50m led by Sequoia and Index Ventures in 2023.
Our alumni in numbers
- 470+ founders started more than 600 startups between them, and 167 of them are founders at scale, with a company of 50 or more people, €5m annual revenue, €10m raised, or 500k monthly users.
- €9bn+ in total funding raised by startups founded by Centerlings.
- 17 unicorn founders behind 11 unicorns, roughly a quarter of all German unicorns.
- 250+ leaders at C-Level, VP or GM and above with 50 people in scope, or a P&L of €5m.
- 65+ in public, societal & research roles, leading an initiative with a €1m budget or ten people, or a national or EU policy they authored.
- 29 professors teaching and running research at universities.
Highlights from our Program
We aim to generate lasting partnerships and significant engagement across the European tech community.
Silicon Valley 2026Coming up soonLightspeed × CDTM Silicon Valley Learning Journey
A curated week connecting CDTM students & alumni with leading innovators, from campus visits and fireside chats to founder meetups and sessions with frontier AI labs.
- Stanford
- NVIDIA
- Lightspeed
- Y Combinator
- Anthropic
- Google HQ
London 2026CDTM London Ecosystem Trip
50 Centerlings spent four days inside London's tech & VC ecosystem, meeting founders, investors and AI researchers at the city's leading firms.
- Entrepreneurs First
- Index Ventures
- Google DeepMind
- Accel
- Lightspeed
- Balderton
- General Catalyst
New York City 2026Index Ventures × CDTM NYC Trip
28 Centerlings spent a week in Manhattan, with 18 company visits across tech, AI, venture capital and academia.
- Index Ventures
- Celonis
- Palantir
- OpenAI
- Anthropic
- DeepL
- Spotify
- Personio
- Columbia Business School
Munich 2026CDTM Product Design Fair
Four Managing Product Development teams showcased the products they built in twelve weeks with real partners: a payroll agent crew for tax advisors, hands-free navigation for visually impaired travelers on smart glasses, an AI social media workflow for small businesses, and a company brain for industrial teams.
- BMW Group
- Meta
- Poke
- Phoros
- Cherry Ventures
Stockholm 2026CDTM Stockholm Ecosystem Trip
50 CDTM students went to Stockholm to peek behind closed doors of 20 of the most exciting companies in town, from big names to rising stars. What stood out was not just the outcomes, the highest number of unicorns per capita in Europe, but the rules of the game: founders share what worked and what failed, and success compounds.
- Spotify
- Lovable
- Legora
- Tandem Health
- Sana Labs
- Creandum
- Northzone
- Norrsken
- Cherry Ventures
- Voi
- Epiminds
- Agteria
- Founders House
- SSE Business Lab
Munich 2026Trend Seminar: The Future of Industrial AI
Six weeks, countless conversations, and one big question: what is next for industrial AI? This semester's Trend Seminar explored the future of industrial AI together with its project partner, from emerging developments on the shop floor to the wider technological, societal, legal, environmental, and business changes ahead.
- Siemens
- Manex AI
- Augmented Industries
- Matterwave Ventures
- BMW Group
- RobCo
- Bergsonne Labs
- UVC Partners
- Accel
- remberg
- Tensordyne
- iteratec
Munich 2026Wargaming & AI Hackathon
An elective that put wargaming and AI side by side for a hackathon at CDTM: teams spent the time building against a shared scenario, with a kick-off on stage and a gong at the end of every round.
- Elective
- Hackathon
- AI
- Wargaming
China 2026CDTM China Innovation Tour
40 Centerlings spent two weeks across Beijing, Hangzhou, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Hong Kong: company visits, cultural immersion and world-class networking across China's tech ecosystem, from frontier AI to robotics.
- Xiaomi
- DeepSeek
- Unitree
- Tencent
- Tsinghua X-Lab
- Game Science
- Lightspeed China
- BrainCo
With plenty of learning experiences
Many students spend a semester studying or researching abroad: 700+ Centerlings have spent time at one of these institutions.
Students also collaborate with industry partners in a wide range of course formats, from Trend Seminar to Managing Product Development.