The Cyber Valley AI Incubator batch 8 has successfully concluded with its Demo Day, where seven emerging AI ventures presented their innovations to an audience of founders, investors, researchers, industry leaders, and members of the wider AI community. Made possible through the generous support of the Carl Zeiss Foundation (CSZ), the program continues to foster research-driven AI entrepreneurship by helping innovators transform cutting-edge ideas into startup ventures.
The event opened with welcome remarks from Christoph Keplinger and Leila Masri of the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS), who reflected on the achievements of batch 8 and the growing impact of the AI Incubator. Phil-Alan Gärtig of the Carl-Zeiss-Stiftung, the program’s principal sponsor, highlighted the foundation’s continued commitment to advancing innovation and research-driven entrepreneurship.
In his keynote, “Towards Visual Intelligence: From Image Generation to Physical AI,” Axel Sauer explored the evolution of generative AI and the development of increasingly capable AI models. Drawing on the work of Black Forest Labs, he shared perspectives on the rapid progress of AI technologies and their potential to shape the future of visual intelligence and embodied AI systems.
The spotlight then turned to the batch 8 teams, who presented their final venture pitches before an expert jury consisting of:
- Daisy Paiva (ZEISS Ventures)
- Franziska Ivens (Silicon Allee Venture Lab at Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute)
- Christoph Keplinger (Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems)
With an exceptionally high standard across all seven teams, selecting the winners proved to be a challenging task.
The following ventures were recognized for their outstanding achievements:
Audience & Presentation Award: Sehnsora, founded by Mohammed Raihan Soniwala, Shweta Kadam, Yograj Yadav, and Abhishek Vijay Potekar
Best Business Model Award: CoGraph, founded by Magnus Hornstein and Bela Thrän
Use of AI Award: OptiGrocer, founded by Ifeoma Veronica Nwabufo and Pauline Ornela Megne Choudja
Each winning team received $10,000 in AWS Credits, generously provided by Amazon, to support the continued development and scaling of their AI solutions.
