Barely three months after he stepped down as chief executive, the company Markus Fuhrmann started was in trouble. In August 2026 he moved to the supervisory board of Gropyus; on 3 November 2026 several of its subsidiaries filed for insolvency, citing an acute liquidity shortage.
Fuhrmann was no stranger to building fast. Before Gropyus he co-founded Lieferheld, the German food delivery service that became part of Delivery Hero. Philipp Erler, who stayed on as chief executive, came from the technology side of Zalando.
Gropyus, founded in 2019, had a plan that sounded like software ambition applied to concrete problems: build apartments in a factory, in timber, with robots, and design them on a digital platform so each one costs less and is built faster. The pitch fitted a country short of housing.
The money came from one source above all. Vonovia, Germany's largest landlord, put in €100 million in 2023, another €100 million in 2024, and a third €100 million in March 2026. Its subsidiary Buwog came to hold about a quarter. Total equity raised passed €400 million. A plant in Richen ran about 50 robots, and the group employed roughly 550 people across Vienna, Berlin, Richen and Steinhaus.
But the market moved the wrong way. The company points to high construction and financing costs and long approval times; German approvals for new apartments fell about 35 percent between 2020 and 2025. Parent company revenue slipped from €11.2 million in 2024 to €7.9 million in 2025, though the operating loss narrowed from €23.6 million to €12.9 million.
The end, for now, came from a gap in timing, not a lack of belief: a contractually agreed investor payment due did not arrive, and bridge funding from existing shareholders could not cover every entity. The parent, Gropyus AG, was said not to be affected.
The lesson is cold. When one investor is also your biggest customer and almost your only source of capital, your runway is a single promise. Building houses like software needs the cash discipline of construction, because walls do not scale on faith.