Jannik Tiedemann wasn't looking to build another healthcare startup when he walked away from Swedish telehealth unicorn Kry in 2022. He'd spent years inside digital health's growth machinery—strategy, expansion, the usual grind. But then his own body intervened.
A post-Covid health episode sent him careening through Germany's conventional medical system, and what he found there surprised him. Not because it was broken, exactly. Germany's healthcare infrastructure is among Europe's most robust. But the experience felt oddly transactional: long waits, brief appointments, a focus on treating what hurt rather than asking why it hurt in the first place.
That frustration—visceral, personal—became the seed for Circle Health, the Berlin-based preventive care platform that just closed a €9 million seed round led by Atlantic. Two years later, the company operates clinics in Berlin and Munich, serves over 7,000 patients, and is preparing to open locations in Hamburg and Düsseldorf. The path from idea to live operations, though, has been anything but linear.
An Unlikely Pairing with Shared Conviction
Tiedemann found his co-founder in Peter Malmqvist, the former CFO of Frontier Car Group who'd spent years navigating emerging markets before OLX poured $400 million into the used car platform in 2019. On paper, the match works: a McKinsey-trained digital health operator meets a battle-tested finance executive.
What mattered more was the less obvious alignment. Both believed Germany's healthcare system, for all its strengths, left preventive and functional medicine underserved. Not neglected, exactly—just perpetually secondary to acute care.
They incorporated Circle Health Europe GmbH in September 2022 under the initial name Skinera GmbH, pivoting to the Circle Health brand by mid-2023. The legal structure reveals their dual ambition: the company is registered to operate alternative medical health centers and develop software for health therapists across Germany and Europe. That combination—physical clinics plus digital infrastructure—has defined their approach from the start.
The Heilpraktiker Gambit
Here's where Circle's model gets distinctly German.
Rather than building around licensed physicians, the company employs Heilpraktiker—licensed non-medical practitioners authorized under German law to practice complementary and alternative medicine. It's a regulatory framework that exists in few other European markets, and it shapes everything from clinic economics to what Circle can and cannot claim about its treatments.
The typical patient pays €149 for an initial consultation, whether in-person or online, that runs 45 to 60 minutes. That's roughly triple the length of a standard GP visit. A €349 "Health Check" package includes stress analysis, optional bloodwork, and a personalized health plan. From there, the menu expands: gut microbiome testing, hormone panels, mitochondrial function assessments. Treatment options range from infusion therapy—vitamin C from €79, NAD+ from €249—to red light therapy, acupuncture, and colon hydrotherapy.
Most of it is self-pay. Circle notes that many services can be covered by private health insurance or supplementary alternative practitioner plans, but Germany's statutory health insurance system, which covers the vast majority of the population, largely doesn't reimburse these modalities. The company's website includes disclaimers throughout: "Statements may not correspond to approaches of conventional medicine." It's legally necessary, yes, but also an honest acknowledgment of where functional medicine sits within Germany's regulatory landscape.
Demand in a Skeptical Market
So does anyone actually want this?
The Berlin-Charlottenburg clinic, which opened in 2023, holds a 4.9-star rating across more than 180 Google reviews. Circle reports a Net Promoter Score above 90—a metric suggesting patients aren't just satisfied but actively recruiting others. Munich followed in January 2025, with the Lehel location earning a perfect 5.0 rating in its opening weeks. Hamburg and Düsseldorf are slated next, funded by the fresh €9 million raise announced in February 2025.
The round combined equity and debt from Atlantic, CRB Health Tech, Calm/Storm Ventures, and Kfund, with angels including Julian Kley from Avi Medical and Sebastian Johnston from La Familia. Investor TA Ventures also publicly backed the round via LinkedIn—a small signal, perhaps, but one that suggests broader confidence in the model.
The Software Layer Underneath
What separates Circle from a traditional Heilpraktiker practice—or from the handful of functional medicine clinics sprouting across Germany—is Circle OS.
The integrated platform aggregates data from wearables, lab results, and patient-reported outcomes to power personalized programs around metabolic health, hormonal balance, fatigue management, and gut health. Tech.eu described it as combining in-person diagnostics with AI-enabled clinical support and consumer-facing digital tools. Atlantic highlighted the AI element in its seed announcement, positioning Circle OS as infrastructure that could eventually support practitioners beyond Circle's own clinics.
The technical specifics remain high-level in public disclosures. But the strategic intent is clear enough: build owned clinics to prove demand, then potentially license the platform outward. It's the classic aggregator-to-platform playbook, adapted for healthcare.
Circle also runs an online shop selling at-home test kits—microbiome, leaky gut, SIBO—and supplements. More intriguing, perhaps, is a nascent B2B offering targeting employers with diagnostics, consultations, and wellness programs designed to reduce absenteeism. No named enterprise clients have been publicly disclosed as of early 2025, but the optionality matters for long-term unit economics.
The Hard Questions
Scaling brick-and-mortar healthcare is brutally capital-intensive. Circle's multi-city expansion plan will test whether the hybrid model can maintain margins while growing headcount. The company now lists 33 employees on LinkedIn, up from a founding team that included practice director Ellen Nagel in the early days. Clinic staff, software engineers, patient coordinators—each new location multiplies complexity.
Then there's the self-pay question. While private insurance reimbursement is possible, Circle is effectively serving the 10–15% of Germans with private coverage, plus those willing and able to pay out of pocket. That's not an insurmountable constraint—plenty of wellness businesses thrive on similar economics—but it does narrow the addressable market.
And then there's clinical validation. Functional medicine operates in contested territory. Treatments like ozone therapy, colon hydrotherapy, and certain IV infusion protocols have passionate advocates and equally vocal skeptics. Circle's disclaimers acknowledge this reality, but as the company scales, regulatory scrutiny may intensify. Germany's healthcare regulators have historically taken a light touch with Heilpraktiker, but that could shift if patient volume grows or adverse events occur.
What Winning Looks Like from Here
For now, Circle is executing the playbook that earned Atlantic's lead check: prove demand in Berlin, replicate in Munich, layer on digital tools, add cities methodically. The 7,000-patient base accumulated since 2023 suggests the market exists. The 90+ NPS suggests those patients are engaged—genuinely so, if the metric can be trusted.
Whether that translates to a venture-scale business hinges on questions the seed round is designed to answer. Can the economics work across multiple geographies, or does Berlin's unique demographic skew the data? Will Circle OS become a platform others adopt, or remain an internal tool that never justifies its development cost? And perhaps most critically: can functional medicine migrate from alternative to mainstream without losing the very characteristics—those long appointments, holistic diagnostics, root-cause obsession—that define its appeal?
Malmqvist and Tiedemann aren't the first founders to bet on preventive care. They may not even be the first in Germany to marry clinics with software. But with fresh capital, two live locations, and waitlists in Hamburg and Düsseldorf, they've bought themselves the runway to find out if their particular vision can scale.
Or, more precisely, to find out if enough Germans will pay €149 for an hour of someone's time to listen.
