Successful Exit for HTGF: Valispace Joins Forces with Altium in a Strategic Acquisition 

February 27, 2024

• Altium and Valispace are joining forces to accelerate the execution of a shared vision for empowering engineers. 
• HTGF was the first institutional investor and led the seed round in 2018 and has closely supported Valispace throughout all phases of their growth journey. As part of the deal HTGF will sell its shares. 
• Louise Lindblad, co-founder of Valispace: “We’re now excited to, together with Altium, continue our mission of empowering engineers to build great products, accelerating the path to the future in which new technologies and products improve people’s lives.” 
• Christian Ziach, Principal at HTGF: “It has been a great pleasure to work closely with the start-up over the past 6 years and I am excited about the synergies that will result from the acquisition.”

27 February 2024, Bonn, Germany – Altium, a leading provider of design software for the electronics industry, has acquired Valispace. Valispace’s capabilities in Systems- and Requirements Engineering will complement the Altium 365 cloud platform for product and electronics design. High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF), one of Europe’s leading seed investors, was the firstinstitutional investors and has been a close supporter of the team since the seed investment in 2018. 

We are thrilled to announce this significant milestone in Valispace’s journey. This is also great news for existing customers: they will not only continue to have access to Valispace’s cutting-edge collaboration software, but will also gradually benefit from capabilities that seamlessly integrate with detailed electronics design processes; closing the loop between system definition and its implementation. 

Marco Witzmann, Co-founder of Valispace

Altium’s extensive experience in developing tools for thousands of engineers with essential electronics design software will ensure that the Valispace team can continue to bring the best collaborative and AI assisted systems- and requirements experience to engineers. 

Accelerating a shared Vision 

Altium and Valispace are joining forces to accelerate the execution of a shared vision for empowering engineers. 
Products are becoming more and more defined by their electronics: While in the 1980s a car would contain around 20 chips, today this number has grown to more than 2000. At the same time there are continuously higher demands to track regulatory and other requirements down to the component level, and modern systems engineering practices are needed more than ever to manage the rising complexity of products. Engineers therefore rightfully demand modern tools that allow them to develop future products with an end-to-end solution for which Valispace at Altium will be a major building block.  

We’re grateful for everyone who has supported and encouraged us on this journey, amongst others our family, friends, and investors. And we’re now excited to, together with Altium, continue our mission of empowering engineers to build great products, accelerating the path to the future in which new technologies and products improve people’s lives.

Louise Lindblad, Co-founder of Valispace

For HTGF Principal Christian Ziach, Valispace was the first deal he accompanied from A to Z, and there were several encounters even before the company was founded.

Before my time at HTGF I met the founding team of Valispace at the startup weekend SPACE in Bremen in 2015 and our paths crossed again on a trip to Silicon Valley in 2016 and finally at a conference in Adelaide in 2017. My interest as a seed investor was piqued because their product was addressing a problem I faced while I was working as a space system engineer. Finally, we got together. Call it fate. IIt has been a great pleasure to work closely with the start-up over the past 6 years and I am excited about the synergies that will result from the acquisition. 

Christian Ziach, Principal at High-Tech Gründerfonds

About Valispace 
For hardware engineering teams that develop multidisciplinary hardware products, Valispace is a game-changing Systems and Requirements Engineering Tool, that joins system design and requirements engineering in an AI-assisted and data-driven approach. This enhances collaboration, ensures faster iterations, getting the product First Time Right, and fosters innovation, making the full engineering process, from requirements to system design and verification, more efficient. 

About Altium 
Altium is a global software company headquartered in San Diego, California, who is accelerating the pace of innovation through electronics. For over 30 years, Altium has been delivering software that maximizes the productivity of PCB designers and electrical engineers. From individual inventors to multinational corporations, more PCB designers and engineers choose Altium software to design and realize electronics-based products. 

About High-Tech Gründerfonds 
The seed investor High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF) finances tech start-ups with growth potential and has supported more than 700 start-ups since 2005. With the launch of its fourth fund, HTGF now has about 1.4 billion euros under management. Its team of experienced investment managers and start-up experts support young companies with expertise, entrepreneurial spirit and passion. HTGF’s focus is on high-tech start-ups in the fields of digital tech, industrial tech, life sciences, chemistry and related business areas. To date, external investors have injected about 5 billion euros of capital into the HTGF portfolio via more than 2,000 follow-on financing rounds. In addition, HTGF has already successfully sold shares in more than 170 companies.  
Fund investors in this public-private partnership include the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, KfW Capital and 45 companies from a wide range of industries.  

Media contact  
High-Tech Gründerfonds Management GmbH  
Tobias Jacob, Senior Marketing & Communications Manager 
T.: +49 228 – 82300 – 121 
t.jacob@htgf.de