BMW billionaire Stefan Quandt gives $7.7 million to university startup platform

Stefan Quandt, the German billionaire who is BMW AG's largest shareholder, has donated €6.9 million ($7.7 million) to the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology to fund KIT FORGE, the university's new entrepreneurship platform.

The institute announced the gift on Nov. 11 at the kickoff of KIT FORGE. The money will support the ongoing development of the platform, which is designed to help students and researchers turn their work into companies.

Quandt is a KIT alumnus and sits on the institute's supervisory board. He studied industrial engineering in Karlsruhe at the University of Karlsruhe. KIT was formed in 2009 when the university merged with the Karlsruhe Research Center, creating one of Germany's largest research institutions.

KIT already runs the KIT-Gründerschmiede, or KIT Founders Forge, which pools the institute's startup activities and is one of the largest university-based startup centers in Germany. KIT has spun out companies in fields from artificial intelligence testing to advanced materials, and it takes stakes in some of them.

A donor with an investor's record

Quandt has spent much of his career as an investor outside BMW. Through his holding company, Aqton SE, he has invested in companies across several industries.

Quandt, 60, is deputy chairman of BMW's supervisory board. He holds about a quarter of the carmaker, and with his sister, Susanne Klatten, controls close to half of its voting shares. The siblings' stake traces back to their father, Herbert Quandt, who saved BMW from a takeover by Daimler-Benz in 1959 and built it into an independent premium carmaker.

The Quandt family has given to education and research for decades, including through the Johanna Quandt foundation, named for Stefan Quandt's late mother.

Forbes ranks Stefan Quandt among Germany's richest people, with a fortune drawn mainly from his BMW shares and the dividends they pay.

Figures were converted at €1 to $1.12.