German e-motor technology cuts energy losses by up to 70% as Additive Drives secures €25 million

Dresden-based Additive Drives, a manufacturer of high-performance 3D-printed electric motor technology, has raised over €25 million to reduce global energy consumption and enable new types of electrification.

The financing is made up of Nordic Alpha Partners, who acquired a significant minority stake, and existing investor AM Ventures, who has backed Additive Drives since its Seed Stage.

“We wanted to work with Nordic Alpha Partners because they have a unique toolkit for industrial scaling and navigating industrial transformations,” said Philipp Arnold, Chief Financial Officer at Additive Drives. “We have been cash-positive from early on and we were looking for an operational partner that could really enable us to tap into hypergrowth and expand globally even faster.”​

In the wider European electrification and advanced propulsion landscape during 2025, EU-Startups has reported a steady flow of capital into companies developing electric motors, drivetrains and adjacent infrastructure.

In Germany, Munich-based Hyperdrives raised €3 million in a pre-Seed round to advance high-performance electric motor drives for automotive, aerospace and marine use, placing it geographically and technologically close to Dresden-based Additive Drives.

Elsewhere in the value chain, Dutch EV-charging specialist Deftpower secured €12.5 million to scale its AI-driven smart-charging platform across Europe, while Finland’s Donut Lab closed a €25 million Seed round to develop modular electric motors and platforms for land, sea and air mobility. In the marine segment, Sweden’s Zparq combined equity financing and EIC Accelerator support to commercialise electric drivetrain systems.

Taken together, these rounds represent at least around €43.5 million in disclosed funding flowing through closely related electrification technologies in 2025, situating Additive Drives’ €25 million raise at the upper end of recent European investments in high-efficiency electric motor and propulsion innovation.

“It is truly rare to see a founder team build something so pioneering and at the same time have such a strong financial performance less than five years after inception. It requires them to make great decisions consistently, and that’s what they’ve done,” said Nikolaj Magne Larsen, Partner at Nordic Alpha Partners.

Founded in 2020, Additive Drives is a German manufacturer of electric motors, combining proprietary 3D and conventional manufacturing processes with efficiency, lightweight design and magnet-free designs and components. The company is led by founders Philipp Arnold, Axel Helm and Dr. Jakob Jung.

Amazon, Airbus, Audi, Schaeffler, and BMW count themselves among Additive Drives customers.

According to figures provided by the company:

• Electric motors and the systems they drive account for around 53% of global
  electricity consumption.
• Additive Drives’ technology for industrial customers reaches up to 98% energy
  efficiency, lowering overall energy loss by 70%.

This performance reportedly exceeds the most advanced IE5 benchmark defined by the International Electrotechnical Commission. In fact, Additive Drives’ technology delivers performance that effectively reach es IE7 performance.

For industrial customers, this means tremendous gains in energy efficiency, lower total cost of ownership, and improved sustainability performance in high-demand applications.​Mitigating energy loss from these motors is one of the most direct ways to improve energy use and support the global re-industrialisation agenda.

At the same time, Additive Drives’ motors allegedly deliver the highest thrust-to-weight ratio, opening up for entirely new types of innovation and applications. The most important measure for electric vehicles, aerospace, aviation and advanced robotics in order to attain longer range, lower energy usage and improved systems reliability.

“Additive Drives is a great example of the fact that Europe is still leading the game when it comes to highly advanced industrial technologies. They are already accelerating global electrification, and I’m sure we will see entirely new product categories emerge as a result,” said Laurits Bach Sørensen, co-founder and Senior Partner at Nordic Alpha Partners.

The company says their technology occupies a ‘sweet spot’ for Europe’s electrification agenda: scalable and immediately applicable across booming but energy intensive industries such as AI (data centres), quantum computing, eMobility, and robotics.

Improved energy efficiency translates directly into less heat dissipation and thereby less need for large cooling infrastructure, solving a key issue for some of the most critical areas of technology development for Europe.

In the past, electrification has been exposed to third-party and supply chain dependencies in relation to access to rare earth and minerals for magnets and other components. However Additive Drives is able to manufacture motors without rare-earths, reducing dependency on geopolitically sensitive supply chains and strengthening European industrial sovereignty.

Additive Drives’ production technology further enables rapid deployment. In fact, prototypes can be manufactured in just 21 days, cutting development cycles and down-time.

“Additive Drives is a prime example of the innovative power of the German Mittelstand,” said Arno Held, Managing Partner at AM Ventures. “We are proud to have supported the team from day one, building a technology leader in e-mobility. By introducing our trusted co-investor Nordic Alpha Partners, we are helping accelerate the next growth phase on the path to create a European champion for a more sustainable future.”

The post German e-motor technology cuts energy losses by up to 70% as Additive Drives secures €25 million appeared first on EU-Startups.