Nextcloud GmbH, the company behind the world’s most popular open source collaboration platform, and Munich-based growth investor Armira Growth have entered into a long-term partnership, with Armira Growth joining as a minority shareholder. Based on aligned goals and cultural fit, the partnership will further expand the ecosystem and increase adoption of digitally sovereign solutions for companies, public sector institutions and universities across Europe.
“Open source companies are the future of digital sovereignty, in Europe and beyond. We have seen a huge increase in demand for our solutions in response to geopolitical developments, and our ecosystem and community have grown to meet that demand. The partnership with Armira Growth is a validation of our journey and a great cultural fit. With Armira Growth’s expertise and long-term investment, we will scale Nextcloud as the European open source champion that provides digitally sovereign workplace solutions to customers,” says Frank Karlitschek, Nextcloud’s founder and CEO.
Only open source software prevents dependencies on individual providers and allows independent security audits. Everyone can read the whole code, contribute, or build on it. Contrary to the vendor lock-in of proprietary solutions, users can switch providers, take the code and data with them, or even fork the project.
From organic growth to European scale-up
Nextcloud was founded in 2016 without any external investment. The company has grown organically ever since – at 50% or more per year. The political developments in 2025 and 2026 saw the lead flow more than triple, accelerated by geopolitical challenges. The company has responded by doubling its workforce. At the end of 2025, the open source company announced plans to invest over 250 million euros in digital sovereignty over the next five years, backed by a 7-fold increase in employee numbers.
The spike in interest, especially from the public sector in Europe, where many organizations have made the decision for a move to digitally sovereign solutions, requires Nextcloud and its partner ecosystem to deliver. Public sector customers such as the German states of Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the Austrian Ministry of Economic Affairs. the French Ministries of Education, foreign affairs and ecological transition as well as Turkish, Singaporese and other federal government agencies in Asia Pacific, the Middle East, North America and South East Asia have chosen Nextcloud as their central collaboration platform.
Major partners have signed up over the last 18 months, including key players such as Dutch telecommunications provider KPN, French open source integration and service provider SMILE, and cloud provider Leviia, Germany’s Deutsche Telekom, IT services provider Bechtle and cloud provider IONOS, and Destek Bilgisayar in Türkiye, demonstrating the growing demand in the market and expanding on European capacity with both the investment and the recently launched program for independent software vendors (ISVs).
Sovereign artificial intelligence is a core part of Nextcloud’s product offering and roadmap. With Nextcloud Assistant, customers can use AI features such as live translated video subtitles, scheduled and recurring prompts with agentic actions and full user-data access with context and memories-based chat that can run entirely on their own infrastructure, so that sensitive data stays under their control. Together with the State Chancellery of Schleswig-Holstein, Nextcloud is developing AI for working with government documents. The the company is also set to fully agentic collaboration, AI-powered application building and more capabilities to boost productivity and efficiency in large enterprises.
“Nextcloud fits perfectly into Armira Growth’s strategy of investing in resilient business models with a distinct technological advantage. Its platform is backed by an impressive open source community, has expanded its ecosystem and is growing its customer base with already millions of employees in public organisations and private companies using it as a sovereign workspace. We are excited to support Nextcloud’s next phase of growth and to help them scale the platform, expand the ecosystem and grow the community,” says Christian Figge, Managing Partner at Armira Growth.
Armira Growth’s strategy to partner with Europe’s leading technology scale-ups
Armira Growth has a strong track record of scaling high-growth technology businesses. It partners with founders and management teams of software and technology-enabled companies across Europe as a long-term minority shareholder. In addition to capital, Armira Growth brings deep operational expertise and a network of more than 100 industry advisors, who will support Nextcloud’s long-term business objectives to create a European champion for digital sovereignty.
Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
About Nextcloud
Nextcloud is the world’s most popular privacy-focused collaboration platform. It is used by tens of thousands of private and public organizations and tens of millions of private individuals to stay in control of their sensitive data and ensure privacy compliance.
With Nextcloud, users can edit and share documents, chat and hold video conferences, and manage emails, contacts and calendars via easy web and mobile apps. The open source software has a modular design and can be extended with hundreds of apps. It runs on premises in a private cloud or with a trusted provider.
Learn more at www.nextcloud.com.
About Armira
Armira is a European investment holding specialising in partnerships with entrepreneur-led and family-owned hidden champions. Backed by an exclusive network of entrepreneurs and long-term family investors – and now complemented by global families and long-term oriented institutions – Armira provides full-lifecycle capital, from minority growth to majority investments ranging from €10 million to €1 billion, and applies a consistent value-creation framework focused on performance, people and acquisitions.
Armira manages c. €5 billion of capital. The firm has completed over 30 platform investments and built a network of 100+ industry advisors who actively support its portfolio companies. Armira’s mission is to be the trusted partner for the next phase of growth for Europe’s leading entrepreneur-led and family-owned hidden champions
More information: www.armira.de/en.
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