Openlaw, a Munich-based startup that digitizes company formation across Europe, raised $3.3 million in seed funding, the company announced April 16, 2026. The Y Combinator-backed venture claims it has compressed what used to take German entrepreneurs six to eight weeks into a process that can wrap in as few as three days.
Moonfire Ventures led the round. The investor list reads like a who's who of early-stage capital: Y Combinator, Zeno Ventures, Flex Capital, Combination VC, Palm Drive Capital, Mento vc, and Orange Collective all participated. YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim joined through Y Ventures, according to co-founder Felix Gerlach, who shared details of the raise in a LinkedIn post.
An API for bureaucracy
What Openlaw built is something of a backend for legal paperwork. The company describes it as an "incorporation API" that handles the tedious choreography of starting a business: document prep, notary appointments, trade registrations, tax filings, bank account setup. The platform does this through partnerships with accounting software providers and digital banks including Qonto, Holvi, sevdesk, and Kontist by Shine.
The company operates Beglaubigt.de in Germany, branding itself on its website as "Europe's first digital notary." By April 2026, it had processed company formations for more than 25,000 customers, according to Tech.eu.
Openlaw has pushed beyond incorporation. In November 2025, it rolled out a digital business address service with what it calls an AI-powered mailroom in Hamburg, Berlin, and Munich, per a Y Combinator launch post. Bookkeeping and ongoing compliance round out the service menu.
Founders with exits on the resume
CEO Alexander Sporenberg brings M&A experience from Razor Group, the European e-commerce aggregator that hit unicorn valuation. There he oversaw north of 100 deals, according to Y Combinator's profile of the company. Co-founder Gerlach previously founded Passbase, an identity verification startup whose assets were sold to Parallel Markets in March 2023.
"We bootstrapped for a long time until we had built a solid customer base and real traction," Gerlach told deutsche-startups.de in an April 27, 2026 interview. "In short: first build, win real customers, and then close the round with substance."
The team went through Y Combinator's Fall 2024 batch, which kicked off September 29 and culminated in Demo Day on December 4 in San Francisco, based on investor posts corroborating the accelerator's timeline.
Moving fast after the close
Openlaw wasted little time deploying its new capital. Two months after the seed round closed, the company acquired Firma.de out of insolvency through a competitive auction. Law firm GvW Graf von Westphalen announced the transaction July 10, 2026. The deal consolidated two of Germany's digital incorporation platforms, with Openlaw positioning itself as the leader in fully digital company formations.
The team size is listed as 15 on the Y Combinator directory, though job postings suggest it may be up to 20, indicating potential recent hiring. The discrepancy suggests the company has been hiring.
A crowded field
European legaltech is no longer a niche. The sector pulled in €504 million across 34 funding rounds in 2025, a notable sum last reported by Tech.eu Funding Explorer data cited by StartingUp on April 16, 2026. Openlaw faces competition from the UK's SeedLegals for incorporation services and from Ledgy in equity management, among others.
The Y Combinator jobs page for Beglaubigt.de frames the opportunity plainly: "just closed a $3.3M seed round led by Moonfire Ventures, with Zeno Ventures, YC, and Jawed Karim (co-founder of YouTube) backing the vision."
It is not yet clear whether that vision will translate to dominance across European markets. For now, Openlaw is doing what any well-funded startup does: hiring, acquiring, and trying to stay ahead of a pack of competitors chasing the same inefficiencies.
