The Spark –

The German Digital Award

For the tenth time, Handelsblatt and McKinsey award The Spark – The German Digital Prize to exceptional and innovative start-ups whose ideas have the potential to fundamentally and sustainably change markets.

Jury

The high-profile jury selected the winners of The Spark 2024 based on their expertise.
The 2025 jury is currently being composed and will be announced shortly.
The experts in 2025 are:

DR. FABIAN BILLING

Managing Partner Germany McKinsey & Company

SEBASTIAN MATTHES

Chief Editor Handelsblatt

BARBARA KUX

Member of the supervisory board and member of the nomination committee of Henkel AG & Co. KGaA,

ROBERT GÖBEL

Co-Founder & Managing Director SPREAD GmbH

PROF. DR. NIKO MOHR

Executive Board Member Strategy/Transformation/AI
CEO Rittal & Rittal Software Systems

JAN CLAUDIO MUÑOZ

Partner BackBone Ventures

PROF. DR. VERONIKA GRIMM

Professor at the Technical University of Nuremberg (UTN) and Head of the Energy Systems and Market Design Lab and member of the German Council of Economic Experts

SABINE SCHEUNERT

Managing Director Eurocentral Dassault Systèmes

ALEXANDER LEUTNER

Co-CEO & Co-Founder Cellbricks Therapeutics

PROF. DR. ISABELL M. WELPE

Chair of the Strategy and Organization Research Group TU München

PROF. DR. MALTE BRETTEL

Professor and Head of Group Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group (WIN) – Center for Entrepreneurship
RWTH Aachen

GÜLSAH WILKE

Partnerin und Head of German Office at DN Capital & Co-Founder of 2hearts

ALEKSEJ MITRJASCHKIN

Partner Incharge Capital Partners

DR. SOPHIE CHUNG

CEO & Founder Qunomedical

THOMAS OEHL

General Partner Vsquared Ventures

(c) Marc-Steffen Unger

NOMINATION COMMITTEE

External topic experts, the Handelsblatt editorial team and a representative from McKinsey evaluate the applications after the end of the application phase. Taking into account the specific The Spark evaluation criteria, the 10 finalists of the award are determined by the nomination committee.

The experts on the 2025 nomination committee are: