News Category: Start-up Network

“We’ve noted consistent and growing interest among start-ups in Baden-Württemberg in joining our network,” says Michael J. Black, Director of the Perceiving Systems department at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and Cyber Valley speaker. “While we are eager to expand, we are very selective when it comes to accepting new members. The profiles of these five new member start-ups speak for themselves: each of them has a strong team, deep technology, and offers highly innovative AI-based products that are very competitive in their respective markets.”

Aleph Alpha is an AI R&D company based in Heidelberg that researches, develops and operationalizes large generalizable artificial intelligence models for text, vision and strategy to ensure the digital sovereignty for public and private sector partners.

DeepScenario is an AI start-up based in Munich that provides highly accurate real-world traffic data for the development of automated driving. The company’s product helps automotive industry customers train, test, and validate their self-driving algorithms in critical scenarios.

MARKT-PILOT is a start-up from Esslingen am Neckar. The company provides market, competitive, and price transparency for mechanical engineering companies worldwide. With their Software as a Service solution (SaS), they offer an automated pricing system based on intelligent algorithms that provides insight and a paradigm shift from cost-plus to competition-oriented pricing of spare parts for mechanical engineering companies.

NODE offers plug-and-play software solutions for autonomous intralogistics. The focus is on driverless transport vehicles and mobile robots, which are turned into multi-vendor, autonomous and collaborative fleets by our software solutions. In so doing, the start-up from Stuttgart provides the basis for the widespread use of autonomous mobile robots (AMR) in production and intralogistics.

FreshIndex, powered by the Stuttgart-based company tsenso, is a B2B hardware cloud solution for food producers, traders, and retailers to rapidly assess the true quality, freshness, and shelf-life of food. Using a digital twin approach combined with uncertainty quantification, the properties of single individual food units, packages, or pallets can be reliably evaluated.

AIRAmed develops software as a service (SaaS) that compares radiological image data based on neural networks with reference data in the background and extracts measurable disease characteristics. Computomics applies advanced machine learning (ML) methods to analyze genomic data in agriculture more quickly, thus enabling more precise predictions in plant breeding.

“AIRAmed’s admission to the Cyber Valley Start-up Network highlights the growing importance of AI technology in medical applications,” said Michael Black, Director of the Perceiving Systems Department at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and Cyber Valley spokesperson. “As a leader in machine learning-based data analysis, Computomics shows the contribution AI can make to food security – especially in times of climate change and in light of the growing world population. AIRAmed and Computomics are up-and-coming companies that exemplify the Cyber Valley ecosystem’s great potential for innovation.”

AIRAmed: Reliable measurements for personalized medicine

In Germany alone, about 350,000 new cases of dementia are diagnosed each year. Imaging technologies are of crucial importance in the diagnosis of dementia and other neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and multiple sclerosis. Imaging-based structural changes precede the clinical symptoms of these diseases by many years. When it comes to prevention and selecting the right drug therapies, the best possible early detection and correct diagnosis are therefore essential. AIRAmed provides reliable measurement values as a basis for individual biomarkers in the context of personalized medicine.

“We want to bring top university research to the patients. With AIRAmed’s service, treating physicians can recognize specific illnesses much earlier on the basis of quantitative and objective measurement parameters. In turn, this enables them to initiate appropriate therapies at an early stage and monitor their success in the course of the treatment,” said Tobias Lindig, one of the founders and managing directors of AIRAmed. The software uses neural networks to compare radiological image data with a large reference sample of healthy individuals of the same age and gender. It then extracts measurable disease characteristics from these data. Structural changes in the brain are detected almost in real time and in the highest quality and quantified in the background through a comparison with reference data. “The result enables objective and rapid diagnostics as detailed therapy monitoring. This is entirely in the patients’ interest, as it improves quality of life,” said Lindig.

AIRAmed is a spin-off of the University Hospital Tübingen (UKT) and is located in Tübingen. The start-up has a cooperation agreement with the UKT regarding the acquisition of data for quality assurance, validation, and further development of the software. It is also involved in joint research projects with the Department of High-field Magnetic Resonance at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics.

Computomics: More efficient plant breeding thanks to AI

Tübingen is also home to Computomics, a start-up that was founded in 2012. Its team comprises leading experts in the fields of machine learning, plant breeding, and bioinformatics. To date, Computomics has more than 100 projects in twelve countries under its belt. Among others, the company cooperates with the University of Tübingen’s Quantitative Biology Center (QBiC).

“Around the globe, the agricultural sector faces the challenge of supplying new plant varieties for a changing climate and with fewer resources,” said Sebastian Schultheiss, founder and CEO of Computomics. “Until now, it has taken an average of 13 years to breed new varieties. In recent years, more and more data has been incorporated, for example for phenotyping, as well as drone images and climate, soil and marker data. We have developed unique machine learning methods that enable companies to improve traits such as yield, taste, color, texture, and shelf life.” By using AI models, millions of incidents of cross-breeding could be simulated in a very short time without having to plant them in the field. This would make it possible to calculate the yield of agricultural products much more reliably.

“We are pleased to be welcoming these new members to the Cyber Valley Start-up community”, said Michael Black, Director of the Perceiving Systems Department at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and Spokesperson of Cyber Valley. “These companies show that the AI ecosystem that we’ve built is thriving. Since it was launched less than a year ago, the Start-Up Network has gained significant momentum. The diversity of its members testifies to the broad scope of AI expertise in southwestern Germany and demonstrates the region’s strength as a tech hotspot.”

AmbiGate is a Tübingen-based software company that specializes in human motion sensing. The spin-off of the University of Tübingen has developed software that – combined with 3D camera systems or common smartphone cameras – precisely analyses human motion to offer a solution for one of society’s most widespread health problems: back pain.

Also based in Tübingen, Cytolytics has developed software that improves medical analyses and generates knowledge for research. Based on machine learning, the software speeds up flowcytometry analysis while at the same time ensuring more reliable results. Flowcytometry is used for routine diagnostics in hematology, infectiology and immunology, among others. Cytolytics is already collaborating with the Tübingen University Hospital.

In Mojin Robotics, an already well-known player has joined the Cyber Valley start-up community. Its “Care-O-bot®4” robotics platform offers individual solutions in all kinds of customer service scenarios, such as retail, hotels, museums, hospitals, and airports. In 2015, Care-O-bot® won the prestigious RedDot Design Award with the distinction “best of the best” and in 2017, Mojin’s service robot Paul won at the retail technology awards europe (reta) in the category “Best Customer Experience”. The company, which is a spin-off of the Fraunhofer IPA Stuttgart and is based in Leinfelden-Echterdingen, is currently working on its next product: a mobile service robot for the logistics and manufacturing industry.

plus10 has developed AI-based software tools to optimize automated manufacturing lines in the fields of consumer goods, medical devices and pharmaceutical production. For instance, its “Shannon®” virtual assistant system for machine operators helps increase productivity by delivering information about possible sources of error and identifying quick fixes. In addition, the “Darwin” software continuously learns about the behavior of automated stand-alone machines and provides feedback about technical improvements for each of machine. plus10 is also a Fraunhofer high-tech spin-off, operating from offices in Stuttgart and Augsburg.

Tactai has developed software and hardware products that bring the natural sense of human touch to online digital interactons across a wide range of applications, among them touchscreens, VR devices, and haptic sensors. The company’s “Dynamic Haptics Platform” can be used for both commercial and medical applications. Tactai was cofounded by Katherine J. Kuchenbecker, Director of the Haptic Intelligence Department at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart. The company is based in both Stuttgart and Boston, USA.

The Cyber Valley Start-Up Network is pleased to be welcoming a new member to its ranks. With the addition of Colugo, the network now counts a strategic consultancy that specializes in assessing AI-related potential and opportunities for businesses in the Tübingen region. The start-up also offers workshops and training courses that aim to support businesses in gaining the understanding of AI they need to apply it in their respective fields.

The Cyber Valley Start-Up Network was recently established with the aim of promoting technology transfer and entrepreneurship in the broad field of AI in the Stuttgart-Tübingen region. The network currently counts eight members and plans to keep expanding in the New Year. 

Stuttgart/Tübingen. Cyber Valley on Monday announced the launch its new Start-up Network as a platform for exchange between AI start-ups within the Cyber Valley ecosystem.

“By promoting dialog among experts in the field of intelligent systems, we are building a strong community of entrepreneurs in the Stuttgart-Tübingen region,” said Michael Black, Cyber Valley spokesperson and Director at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen. “With the Start-Up Network, we have taken an important step toward promoting tech transfer, which is one of the Cyber Valley initiative’s central goals.”  

As members of the network, start-ups are invited to attend Cyber Valley networking events such as talks, meet-ups, and tech brunches on a regular basis. Network members’ activities must be related to the field of intelligent systems. Moreover, the start-ups are required to be connected with Cyber Valley, either by being headquartered in the Stuttgart-Tübingen region, or by having members or alumni of Cyber Valley partner institutions among their founders. Membership in the Cyber Valley Start-Up Network is reviewed once a year to ensure that these requirements continue to be met. 

Cyber Valley invites interested start-ups that match these criteria to apply for membership to the Start-Up Network. “We want to help the start-up community in the region grow and are building this network to create a breeding ground for new ideas and innovation,” says Michael Black. 

The Cyber Valley Start-Up Network counts seven initial members:

• Deep Art: A joint venture between scientists at the University of Tübingen, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland), Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium), and the University of Freiburg, Deep Art applies an algorithm that allows everyone to create pictures in different artistic styles in just a few clicks.
• Layer 7 AI. Founded by scientists at the University of Tübingen, the consultancy specializes in taking the latest breakthroughs in machine learning and turning them into scaleable products. 
• Meshcapade was founded by two alumni of the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen. The company aims to make animating, simulating, and recognizing human bodies effortless, and to bring realistic virtual humans into simulation and 3D environments.
• Predictive Cueing is a Tübingen start-up offering motion cueing software that enables urban driving in a simulator. Its founder is an alumnus of the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen. 
• Reasonal is developing a new generation of machine learning algorithms to bring meaning, clarity, and civility to online conversations. It was co-founded by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen and from the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems in Kaiserslautern.
• Sagacity is a Tübingen-based start-up that seeks to improve customer and employee engagement with machine learning and artificial intelligence solutions.
• Scatterblogs offers AI solutions for analysts, decision-makers, and journalists. Founded by alumni of the University of Stuttgart, the start-up’s solutions enable users to detect important events through social media such as Twitter and Facebook in real time and to identify relevant content.

Start-ups interested in joining the Cyber Valley Start-Up Network are invited to contact the Cyber Valley management office at: contact@cyber-valley.de