Burda Principal Investments partners with UnternehmerTUM and TUM Venture Labs to launch BurdaGP, a new European gaming initiative
Burda and Burda Principal Investments (BPI) are excited to announce the launch of BurdaGP, a new European gaming initiative. Developed in close cooperation with TUM Venture Labs Software & AI, BurdaGP supports the next generation of European gaming founders, products, and platforms.
Gaming has become a powerful driver of innovation, connecting entertainment, technology, and interactive media. With Munich’s strong positioning in AI and its growing gaming ecosystem, BurdaGP strengthens Burda’s role at the forefront of this dynamic and fast-evolving landscape.
Why Gaming – and Why Now
Digital lifestyles, particularly among younger generations, are increasingly shaped by interactive media experiences. Gaming has become a dominant cultural force—an ecosystem where technology, storytelling, and communities converge. With advances in AI, content creation, and distribution, the boundaries between gaming, media, and social platforms are dissolving.
For Burda and BPI, gaming is a strategic growth field that naturally extends a long-standing focus on content, communities, commerce, and technology. The gaming initiative aims to position Burda as a thought leader in a rapidly changing industry while creating clear paths for value creation ranging from venture-grade investments to developing products scalable within the Burda ecosystem.
“Gaming is where digital behavior scales. Thanks to smartphones and AI, gaming has reached a historic high: Here in Germany, six in ten people play games. They’re not just passive users—they create, collaborate, and express identity through interactive worlds. With this collaboration, we combine Burda’s strength in digital content and platforms with the proven innovation engine from TUM and UnternehmerTUM to forge the next generation of European gaming talent”, says Christian Teichmann, Member of the Executive Board at Burda.
“Gaming has proven to be an early innovation supercharger: Some of the most valuable companies globally, like Nvidia or Google DeepMind, have their roots in gaming,” says Philipp Gerbert, CEO of TUM Venture Labs. “Building on the tech and talent engine around the TUM Computer Games Lab, we are thrilled, to pool the entrepreneurial and domain expertise of TUM Venture Labs and Burda to build Europe’s premier gaming hub – similar to what we are driving in other innovation areas.”
A Strategic Partnership for Europe’s Gaming Future
BurdaGP represents a strategic step for Burda and BPI as they expand their roles as a platform for innovation in digital entertainment. The initiative connects Burda’s media assets, brands, and audiences with BPI’s investment expertise and UnternehmerTUM’s world-class venture-building capabilities and academic excellence. Together, they aim to turn Europe’s top gaming talent and ideas into venture-grade companies and new digital experiences.
Together, TUM Venture Labs, UnternehmerTUM’s early-stage startup program XPRENEURS and BurdaGP provide a structured incubation track — guiding teams from early concepts to investor-ready ventures. The program is linked to the Gaming Chair at the Technical University of Munich, led by Prof. Johanna Pirker, enabling direct access to frontier research in gaming engineering, AI, and interactive systems. The first phase is planned for March 2026, launching with the #19 batch of XPRENEURS with selected modules like storytelling, design, and customer strategy. This synergy ensures a continuous flow of high-quality, research-driven ideas while creating early investment opportunities for BPI and strategic integration paths into Burda’s ecosystem.
Building the Foundation for Burda’s Future Growth
Beyond investments, BurdaGP is designed to feed innovation directly into Burda’s future business portfolio—leveraging insights from gaming to inform the development of new products, platforms, and community-driven formats across the Group.
This collaboration underlines Burda’s ambition to lead at the intersection of media, technology, and culture, while strengthening its access to talent, research, and scalable digital ventures in Europe. BurdaGP not only positions the company as a thought leader in gaming but also as a driving force in shaping how interactive entertainment and media evolve in the coming decade.
