Munich-based Arcos raises €5.5 million to build and operate civil safety infrastructure across Europe

Arcos, a Munich-based startup that builds and operates civil security infrastructure, has closed a €5.5 million Seed funding round. The company launched publicly today.

The round was led by High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF), with participation from Bayern Kapital, Pact, Haufe, Robin Capital, and strategic business angels.

“Europe has understood that its safety is its own responsibility, and that this includes the infrastructure everyday life runs on: power, transport, water, data. We started Arcos a year ago because nobody was building the company that keeps watch over it. This round lets us grow the team in Germany, extend the platform and take our first steps into critical infrastructure, and then into further European markets,” Moritz Steigerwald, founder and managing director of Arcos, told EU-Startups exclusively.

Founded by Louis Wübben and Steigerwald, Arcos is a civil security provider. It builds and operates the infrastructure of civil security, including the highly secured infrastructure where the signals converge to the technology it runs on.

The company says the security industry is undergoing an unprecedented shift, with sensors being deployed at a scale never before seen in homes, commercial properties, railway stations, substations, and data centres.

It further notes that with fewer staff being available, sensors detect that something is happening. What matters is how quickly and reliably that turns into concrete action.

Citing attacks on substations, burning cable ducts along railway lines, and drone attacks over airports and industrial sites, Arcos argues that attacks on infrastructure that nobody watches around the clock succeed because no one is watching continuously. A structural shift at this pace can only be managed with new technology.

“This industry helps decide whether the country functions, and it is changing faster than ever before. More sensors, fewer people. What is missing is someone who looks. That is exactly what we are building with our technology and the offering of a full-service provider,” said Wübben, founder and Managing Director of Arcos.

Arcos claims to build and operate this infrastructure from start to finish. It understands every signal from every connected source; every decision is made in one place, every incident is handled through to closure, every step is documented. On escalations, people step in and make decisions where judgment matters. Arcos’s infrastructure replaces the collection of separate systems that operators currently make do with.

The company highlights that at Arcos, none of this is outsourced. “Whoever operates a control centre themselves knows what really happens at three in the morning. Whoever builds the software for it themselves changes it the next morning. Users, operators and developers are the same people: what is missing in operations is built in the same place, not requested from a vendor. This way, the system gets better with every new sensor instead of more complicated with every extension,” the company mentioned in the press release.

Arcos states that the same control centre, software, and processes serve all infrastructure, whether a home, a commercial property, a construction site, or a critical facility. What applies to one site applies to all.

“We combine signal processing and the operational process in one system. As a result, we see immediately in daily operations where workflows need to improve, and we can implement those improvements ourselves,” added Steigerwald.

The company plans to use this capital to expand its team in Germany, extend its platform, and prepare to scale in the critical infrastructure market. As a next step, Arcos aims to enter further European markets.