THE FORGE Information

THE FORGE is an initiative of the DeepTech Campus Circle Hamburg, focused on defense, dual-use, critical infrastructure and space. We bring together the people who carry Europe's security on the technological level: decision-makers at corporate level, investors, public-sector players, startups and talent. Hamburg is the physical starting point, a representative campus where ecosystem, capital and competence converge. We do not run a fund of our own. Instead, we orchestrate access to capital, corporates, procurement and reach, through event, networking, pitch and hackathon formats, mentoring and venture clienting. The reason is clear: Europe must once again develop, finance and scale its security-relevant technologies on its own. The Baltic and Nordic ecosystem leads the way here, while Germany and Hamburg have ground to make up. As one of the country's most important critical-infrastructure locations, with Europe's third-largest port as a hub of critical supply, Hamburg is the right place to do it. From this follows the vision: Hamburg as a node in a European network of sovereignty, reaching from the local campus through the metropolitan region and northern Germany to the Baltic and Nordic frontrunners and on into Europe. We forge European sovereignty, technologically, industrially and in partnership. A place where ideas become deployable capabilities, and capabilities become European independence.