User Group: Investor

  • MARKT-PILOT secures seed financing

    MARKT-PILOT secures seed financing

    The start-up from Esslingen offers mechanical engineering companies a novel software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution that enables companies to automatically research competitive prices and delivery times for their entire spare parts portfolio. This enables them to proactively address the increasingly dynamic and complex spare parts market. The result: agile and market-driven sales pricing for spare parts, transparency regarding delivery times and availability.

    The two founders Tobias Rieker and Amin Oumhamdi have already been working on the AI-based SaaS solution since 2016, which determines spare parts price and delivery time information from several tens of thousands of national as well as international web stores on a daily basis at the push of a button and compares it with information from machine manufacturers.

    “Thousands of parts are continuously required worldwide and not a single one is benchmarked with the market. Due to this lack of transparency, parts prices have so far always been calculated on the basis of a traditional cost-plus logic. The only solution for this problem is provided by our software, which lays the foundation for the paradigm shift from cost-plus to market-oriented parts pricing”, said CEO Tobias Rieker.

    Since its official founding in April 2020, MARKT-PILOT has already realized more than 70 customer projects and grown from two to 58 employees. This has made the company the market leader in the category “market intelligence for industry parts”. In November 2021, a second location was opened in Chicago.

    With Capnamic on board, the MARKT-PILOT team plans to scale the business and strengthen its leadership position. The 6.2 million euros will be invested in three key areas: Scaling the US market, expanding the software solution capabilities and strategic growth in the newly created 7.8 billion euros software category ‘market intelligence for industry parts’.

  • Startup:con Tübingen #4

    Startup:con Tübingen #4

    Was sind Geschäftsmodelle der Zukunft? Diese Frage stellen wir uns bei der Startup:con Tübingen #4 am 31.03.2022,  ab 16:00 Uhr im Brauwerk Freistil, Wöhrdstraße 25, Tübingen.

    Das Startup Center der Uni Tübingen lädt herzlich angehende Gründerinnen und Gründer sowie Gründungsinteressierte aus allen Disziplinen ein.

    Freut euch auf spannende Interviews mit Gründerinnen und Gründern, Führungen durch den neuen KI-Makerspace und viele Gelegenheiten zum Netzwerken. Trefft außerdem Patrick Klügel (Public Engagement Manager) und Julia Schmaus (Innovation Manager) am Cyber Valley Stand.

     Das (vorläufige) Programm:

    16:00 – Begrüßung und Interview mit Vivat Lingua Gründerin Adelheid Kumpf und dem Co-Founder von NFT-MAKER Kristian Portz
    16:30 – Netzwerken und 1. Führung durch den KI-Makerspace   
    16:50 – Interviews mit den Gründern von A.S.S.I.S.T. und your.company   
    17:10 – Netzwerken und 2. Führung durch den KI-Makerspace   
    17:30 – Open Stage Pitches   
    18:00 – Netzwerken, Netzwerken, Netzwerken  

    Treffpunkt ist im Brauwerk Freistil in der Wöhrdstr. 25 in Tübingen (kurzfristige Änderungen sind aufgrund der Pandemielagemöglich) und die ersten 100 Anmeldungen erhalten ein Freigetränk.

    Registrierung

    Hier könnt ihr euch anmelden.

    Weitere Informationen findet ihr hier.

  • Meshcapade wins new start-up award

    Meshcapade was founded in 2018 by Naureen Mahmood, Talha Zaman, and Director Michael Black of the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen. Mahmood is the CEO of the company, which now employs around 15 people. “We are proud to be the first team to win the new Max-Planck-Gründungspreis,” she says. “We hope it will get more people interested in our great technology and the innovative work being carried out in our region. We are also grateful to Max Planck Innovation and Cyber Valley for their invaluable support during the pre-launch and early stages of our company.”

    President of the Max Planck Society, Martin Stratmann, is delighted that the prize has been awarded to a Cyber Valley spin-off: “This sends out a positive signal for novel software ‘made in Germany’ in general and ‘in Cyber Valley’ in particular”, he explains. “I hope the award will help to motivate other researchers who want to launch their own companies, so that Cyber Valley will become a ‘Start-up Valley’.”

    The Stifterverband played a key role in supporting the transformation of the original science award for research between basic research and application, to an award for outstanding Max Planck spin-offs. "I’m really pleased that the Stifterverband will be able to use the new Max-Planck-Gründungspreis to make an important contribution to further Max-Planck spin-offs,” says Michael Kaschke, President of the Stifterverband.

    The awarding ceremony for the winning Meshcapade team will take place on June 21, 2022 in Berlin.

    After that, the prize will be awarded to a successful Max Planck spin-off every two years. The winning team will be selected from the applications received by a broad-based jury chaired by Klaus Blaum, Vice President of the Max Planck Society. Prize winners will receive € 50,000.

    The Max-Planck-Gründungspreis des Stifterverbandes is one of the building blocks of the MAXPreneurs Initiative, whose objective is to better exploit the spin-off potential within the Max Planck Society. This new initiative is intended to raise entrepreneurial awareness among Max Planck researchers and to boost the start-up culture within the Max Planck Society and at the Institutes. Another objective is to identify more people who are interested in launching a business, and to motivate them to initiate concrete start-up projects and to provide them with close support. In addition to Max Planck Innovation, the other partners in the MAXPreneurs Initiative are the Planck Academy and the Max Planck Foundation.

    To help achieve these objectives, a new start-up incubation programme known as “MAX!mize” was also launched as one of the core elements of the MAXPreneurs initiative. An experienced team of start-up experts at the Max Planck Innovation technology transfer organization provides entrepreneurial Max Planck researchers with exclusive support during the implementation of their start-up projects and organizes the incubation programme, which includes workshops and networking events with other entrepreneurs, start-up and industry experts as well as investors. In addition to continuous close support, the programme also provides access to funding and experienced mentors who use their entrepreneurial experience to support the budding entrepreneurs throughout the process of launching a successful spin-off.

  • ATTENTION project to improve road safety

    ATTENTION project to improve road safety

    The funding is being provided by Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action in response to its call for funding applications in the area of “Artificial intelligence as a key technology for the vehicle of the future”.

    Urban traffic has limited space, varying flows and different road users. Despite increasing automation and traffic networking, the fact that traffic areas are used by multiple parties is and will continue to be a major risk for vulnerable road users (“VRUs”). VRUs are road users whose risk is higher because they are not inside a protective enclosure like the body of a car. They include pedestrians and cyclists. To maximize safety in automated traffic, the severity of the injuries sustained by vulnerable parties in unavoidable collisions needs to be minimized. ATTENTION’s aim is to develop a method that uses learning algorithms to predict VRU injury in real time.

    Data-driven artificial intelligence (AI) methods are being used to determine the risk of injury for a specific situation based on video data from the automated vehicle, virtual tests and digital human models. This will help make traffic safer and more efficient thanks to risk minimization strategies for the automated vehicle. Prof. Dr. Syn Schmitt and his team at Stuttgart University’s Institute for Modelling and Simulation of Biomechanical Systems are concentrating specifically on this aspect. The research on a digital human model also reflects the vision of the SimTech Cluster of Excellence as well as creating a connection between the field of simulation science and the focus of Cyber Valley research. The work uses the whole-body and body-part human models developed by Schmitt’s team and combines them with AI methods to generate the models’ movements and thus synthetic training data. The latter will then be used for an injury prediction model that can be evaluated quickly and covers a variety of collisions. An important aspect of this modeling is the need to consider who the parties to the collision are. “The project enables us to start testing our models and computation methods under real conditions in an applied research environment, the aim being for our industry partners to drive the transfer to real-world application. I’m looking forward to it and can’t wait to see the results,” said Syn Schmitt.

    One of the main outcomes of the project will be a position and movement database for pedestrians and cyclists. This will draw on an analysis of data from Bosch’s accident research and will serve as the basis for biomechanical and AI-based prediction of movements. This will be followed by a crash simulation that will supply potential injury patterns. These will be compared against real accident data and stored in another collision and injury database. To predict injuries, AI will be used to create an injury risk index, which will provide the basis for determining action to be taken. The action will then be implemented in a virtual demonstrator.

    The project is being administered by TÜV Rheinland. Other partners are Robert Bosch GmbH and QualityMinds GmbH, representing industry. The research institutes involved are the Fraunhofer Institute for High-Speed Dynamics (EMI) and Stuttgart University’s Institute for Modelling and Simulation of Biomechanical Systems. Mercedes-Benz AG is an associate partner on the project.

    At a glance:

  • Cyber Valley networks continue to grow

    Cyber Valley networks continue to grow

    “As we enter the next phase of Cyber Valley, we are even more focused on helping new, innovative, AI companies grow”, said Michael J. Black, Cyber Valley spokesperson and Director at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems. “Consequently, we are expanding both our start-up and our investor networks. In MBG we've added an experienced, powerful and very well connected VC firm to our ecosystem. And with the addition of mxlar, preML and Bergsonne Labs our growing network of entrepreneurs and innovators has gained in strength, breadth, and excellence.”

    Austrian start-up mlxar (machine learning extended architecture) is using AI to create 3D architectural models for the gaming industry. The mlxar technology makes it possible to creatively build architecture assets faster than is currently common – earning the start-up the Main Award at AI GameDev last December, among other accolades. “Architecture design is a manual, inefficient and time-consuming process – this is a problem when designing one building, and it’s a huge problem when designing an entire city, level or world. Our AI innovation is not a replacement for the designer – it is a way of making expert knowledge scalable and ultimately creating new type of creative tool”, said Ben James, CEO of mlxar. “We joined the Cyber Valley Start-up Network because it offers our startup the opportunity to contribute to – and benefit from – an ecosystem in which research and entrepreneurship can further drive our innovations forward.”

    The start-up preML from Lahr in the Black Forest provides AI-based technologies for manufacturing companies to automate their visual quality inspection quickly and cost-effectively. “Our company is very technology-oriented and works at the forefront of the current state of science”, said David Fahrenbach, preML’ls co-founder and managing director. “As a former student of the University of Tübingen, I am particularly pleased about the admission and am looking forward to the contacts and projects that will arise through the network.”

    Bergsonne Labs is a Stuttgart-based company focused on bridging the gap between laboratory science and commercial technology, with a specific focus on the research and development of micro-scale mechatronic solutions for various applications including sports technology, robotics, and consumer products. “As a multi-disciplinary hub bringing together world-class scientists, researchers, entrepreneurs, and businesses from around the region, the Cyber Valley Start-up Network clearly provides the ideal setting in which to grow Bergsonne Labs”, said the company’s founder Jonathan Fiene.

    Investor Network now counts six members

    In addition to the Start-up Network, the circle of venture capital firms is also expanding. MBG joins the Cyber Valley Investor Network. Active in the market as an investment company for more than 50 years, MBG brings experience, network and continuity to start-ups. “Artificial intelligence is going to shape the world of the future. That is why it is important to us to support the growing ecosystem. Having Cyber Valley as a partner and multiplier enables us to get in contact with innovative AI startups that we can support together”, said MBG CEO Dirk Buddensiek.

    Cyber Valley regularly hosts networking events such as talks, meet-ups, and tech workshops. The next event of the Cyber Valley Entrepreneurship series is scheduled for March 31 and will feature high-profile speakers on the topic of “AI and architecture”. More information about the event and how to attend can be found here.

  • AI & Architecture

    AI & Architecture

    Die nächste Ausgabe unserer Entrepreneurship-Serie steht vor der Tür, und wir betrachten erneut künstliche Intelligenz (KI) und dessen Auswirkungen auf eine bestimmte Branche. Diesmal konzentrieren wir uns auf KI als wirkungsvolles Instrument für Architekten und die Architektur-, Ingenieur- und Bauindustrie (AEC). Unsere Referent:innen aus den Bereichen Forschung, Start-up und Investment teilen ihre Perspektiven, Lösungen und die Chancen, die sie in KI sehen.

    Wissenschaftler:innen, Gründer:innen, Studierende und alle, die sich für das Thema interessieren, sind herzlich eingeladen, am Donnerstag, den 31. März, 14:00-15:30 Uhr dabei zu sein.

    Sprecher:innen

    David Weber
    CEO von Architizer

    Diellza Elshani
    Doktorandin am Institut für Computational Design und Construction und Exzellenzcluster IntCDC an der Universität Stuttgart

    Benjamin James
    Founder & CEO von mlxar GmbH

    David Fehrenbach
    Co-Founder & Managing Director von preML GmbH

    Alex Diehl
    Senior Advisor bei Cyber Valley & Angel Investor

     

    Registrierung

    Bitte hier registrieren. Das Event findet via Zoom und in englischer Sprache statt.

     

    Kontakt

    Julia Schmaus – Innovation Manager
    E-mail: julia.schmaus@cyber-valley.de
    Telefon: +49 7071 601 1546
    Mobil: +49 151 6452 0213

  • Cyber Valley project awarded funding

    Cyber Valley project awarded funding

    The university competition invites researchers and citizens to actively participate in the research process and work together to meet the challenges of the future. The jury selected the best 15 project ideas from 270 submissions. The Stuttgart-based Cyber Valley project will receive 10,000 euros to run the short story competition until the end of 2022.

    Cyber Storys

    “Should a robot clean your room? Should a computer decide which school you can go to? How do you imagine your life with artificial intelligence? Shape the future with your ideas!” This is the call with which Cyber Storys will be launched from March 28, 2022. Pupils from Baden-Württemberg from the seventh school year onwards can submit their visions for the future with artificial intelligence online, either individually or as a class group, by June 3 and thus provide new impetus for future AI research in the form of narratives. The competition is open to all types of schools and is also aimed at vocational schools. A jury will select the winners at the Stuttgart Science Festival.

    Cyber Storys provides insight into AI research and makes AI ethics tangible with the help of one’s own creativity. The project focuses on young people and young citizens, in line with the motto of the Year of Science 2022 – “Nachgefragt!”. It enables them to contribute their visions of the future to research and science to learn from these impulses. Through the creative form of participation, Cyber Valley aims to awaken young people’s curiosity about AI and impart knowledge. After all, only those who have basic technology skills can classify AI, shape it, and represent their own interests.

    AI teaching materials and writing workshops

    To help create exciting stories, Cyber Storys offers a variety of support. Free educational materials such as an artificial intelligence e-learning course, a workbook, and a teacher’s guide provide basic AI knowledge. The materials will be available at the end of March on the short story contest website. How AI can be addressed in the classroom is the topic of the “Train the trainer” workshops for teachers. In writing workshops in city libraries in the Stuttgart/Tübingen area, young people are supported in the writing process and can meet researchers. Dates will be announced via the project website.

    Networking of institutions in the region

    Cyber Storys is coordinated by Cyber Valley and is created in cooperation with many institutions. The city libraries of Stuttgart, Tübingen, Leinfelden-Echterdingen and Esslingen are participating with, among other things, writing workshops, themed shelves with media related to AI, and readings of the winning stories. The educational materials are offered by Cyber Valley in collaboration with the Stuttgart Research Focus Interchange Forum for Reflecting on Intelligent Systems (SRF IRIS) at the University of Stuttgart and the Landeszentrale für politische Bildung Baden-Württemberg.

    Cyber Valley Public Engagement Manager Rebecca Beiter would like to use the prize money from the university competition for more dialogue: “Not only can we use it to host the writing competition, but we can use the stories as a low-threshold entry point for subsequent readings and dialogue formats between AI researchers and citizens.” Beiter is also excited about the networking and training in science communication, because in addition to financial support, the university competition offers workshops and training for the winning teams. The teams provide regular updates on progress and challenges in project implementation on the university competition blog: www.hochschulwettbewerb.net.

    The university competition is organized annually by Wissenschaft im Dialog (WiD) in cooperation with the German Association of University Communication and the German Rectors’ Conference and is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research as part of the Year of Science.

  • State government paves the way for Cyber Valley Campus

    State government paves the way for Cyber Valley Campus

    “As the heart of top AI research in Baden-Württemberg, the campus shall underline the ambition to be Europe’s hotspot for top researchers in global competition, also in terms of building structures,” said Science Minister Theresia Bauer. “Already on its fifth birthday, the growing Cyber Valley is overflowing. With the overall concept, we now have a roadmap so that we can still find working space for our young scientists and researchers after next year. I thank the Minister of Finance and the Rector of the University of Tübingen for enabling us to develop a viable overall concept instead of short-term solutions.”

    Minister of Science Theresia Bauer: “The concept underlines the ambition to be Europe’s hotspot for cutting-edge AI research”

    Finance Minister Danyal Bayaz said: “We are investing to make Baden-Württemberg the California of Europe. We strive to be at the forefront of artificial intelligence, and Cyber Valley is enormously important for that.”

    The Cyber Valley Campus will also host a planned ELLIS Institute, for which the state is currently in coordination with the Hector Foundation, and the University of Tübingen’s AI Competence Center, which is financed by Germany’s federal government and Baden-Württemberg’s state government and jointly operated with the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems. The concept that has now been approved forsees the construction of two additional buildings for research, teaching and seminars, as well as the purchase of an existing building on the future campus site.

    Finance Minister Danyal Bayaz: “We want to become the California of Europe”

    Professor Dr. Bernd Engler, Rector of the University of Tübingen, said: “Cyber Valley has become a magnet for outstanding AI researchers from all over the world. Not only the state of Baden-Württemberg, but also the federal government, companies and private foundations are currently investing large sums in bright minds and will continue to do so in the future. However, the researchers also need office space, laboratories and computing capacity. Therefore, it has been essential to also increase investments in infrastructure and to significantly accelerate the pace of building up Cyber Valley now, in order to realize the enormous potential of the location.”

    ELLIS Institute:

    With outstanding support from funds pledged by the H. W. & J. Hector Foundations to attract top AI scientists, the ELLIS Institute, backed by a scientific association, will be established within the Cyber Valley ecosystem. The foundation's commitment requires financial participation by the state. The state is currently coordinating arrangements with the Hector Foundation in this regard.

    ELLIS stands for European Laboratory for Learning & Intelligent Systems and was founded by leading researchers from Europe who work closely with basic researchers from industry. The overarching goal of ELLIS is to establish European cutting-edge research in the field of artificial intelligence as internationally competitive. Europe should not only contribute to how AI and machine learning are changing the world, but also make an economic impact by creating new jobs.

    More information on ELLIS: https://ellis.eu

  • Kick-off for AI in higher education

    Kick-off for AI in higher education

    With the funding initiative, the federal and state governments are striving to effectively develop the key technology of AI across the breadth of the higher education system. On the one hand, measures are supported that contribute to the qualification of future academic specialists. For example, universities will receive support in the development of degree courses or individual modules in the field of artificial intelligence. On the other hand, universities are supported in the design of AI-supported learning and examination environments.

    The project “Integrated AI in Teaching at the University of Stuttgart” (Integrierte KI in der Lehre der Universität Stuttgart, IKILeUS) aims to bundle the existing expertise of many collaborating departments on AI in order to both communicate AI to the breadth of the student body in an interdisciplinary view and to use AI-based technologies in teaching to relieve the burden on teachers and to improve teaching. The topics will be addressed with a focus on specific courses and software solutions, while at the same time looking at further potential of other user groups and areas.

    The Tübingen AI Training (Tübinger KI-Training, TüKIT) has set itself the goal of developing sustainable effective and curriculum-accompanying innovative teaching formats for students of medicine and medical-related life science courses. TüKITZ Med is designed to teach basic concepts and methods of artificial intelligence competently, effectively, compactly and in a way that accompanies the studies to students who are not familiar with AI.

    “AI is one of the key technologies that we are also working hard to advance in Baden-Württemberg. It is crucial for the economic success of our companies and the innovative strength of our state. Our universities, students and society as a whole will benefit from the new federal-state funding, in that university teaching can be improved through the use of artificial intelligence or future academic specialists can be better qualified for new professional fields,” said Science Minister Theresia Bauer. “I am thrilled by the diversity of the projects from Baden-Württemberg – it shows the commitment and innovative drive with which our universities are dedicating themselves to this topic of the future.”

    About the funding initiative “Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education”

    The legal basis for the funding initiative is the federal-state agreement “Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education” adopted by the Joint Science Conference (GWK) on December 10, 2020. The federal and state governments will provide up to around 133 million euros in funding. The funding will be provided in a ratio of 90:10 by the federal government and the respective state. The agreement runs until December 31, 2025, and an independent evaluation of the funding initiative is scheduled for 2024.

  • Meet the AI GameDev winners

    Meet the AI GameDev winners

    “We will see gaming everywhere in our lives – and at the same time AI. And these two things will become more and more coupled. These intelligent systems will then feed into games and make them smarter and I think there’ll be a virtuous cycle of AI making games better and then games making AI better”, said Michael J. Black, Managing Director at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and Cyber Valley spokesperson. “I see the future being much more of a merger of the real world, the virtual world, and AI – providing the interface between the physical and the virtual.”

    Out of the numerous submissions for the gaming competition, seven nominees were selected for the award ceremony as their ideas all had the potential to step up the gaming industry either in terms of creation or interactivity. Out of them, three start-ups and research groups had the possibility to secure one of the three prizes. The winners are:

    Main award for mlxar: generating 3D architecture models for the gaming industry

    The Austrian start-up mlxar (machine learning extended architecture) took the first prize and won the main award powered by Square Enix for the most innovative AI solution. mlxar uses AI to generate 3D architecture models for the gaming industry. “Architecture design is a manual, inefficient and time-consuming process – this is a problem when designing one building, and it’s a huge problem when designing an entire city, level or world, which is exactly what happens in video game design and the film industry”, said Ben James, CEO of mlxar. “Our AI innovation is not a replacement for the designer – it is a way of making expert knowledge scalable and ultimately creating new type of creative tool that helps humans augment their own intuition and sensibilities.”

    Content creation capacity is outnumbered by content demand, which is why this market is already larger than all the other entertainment industries combined. mlxar’s underlying technology innovation allows for the creative generation of architecture assets at a faster pace than the current state-of-the-art competitors. Their algorithms evolve depending on the input, e .g. the desired style preferences and design constraints of the user. This results in infinite architecture solutions, including yet unknown designs. mxlar’s contribution secured the team a visit to Tokyo, Japan, where they now get the chance to examine a potential cooperation with Square Enix on practical use of their technology in production.

    Scientific award for GRAF: 3D-aware image synthesis from 2D images

    Katja Schwarz successfully qualified with GRAF and took home the Scientific Award powered by Cyber Valley for the most promising scientific performance. GRAF (Generative Radiance Fields) is a proposal for a framework for 3D-aware image synthesis from raw unposed 2D images. “The creation of 3D assets is key for developing realistic gaming environments and virtual reality. However, 3D content creation requires a large design effort, making it a time and cost intensive process”, said Katja Schwarz from the Autonomous Vision Group at the University of Tübingen. “Even with large design effort, results are not yet entirely photo-realistic.” GRAF addresses these challenges with a data driven approach. The goal is to learn 3D-consistent assets from data to reduce the cost of manual design efforts and improve photo-realism of the created content. Most existing data driven approaches require 3D assets for training. In contrast, their pipeline learns to generate 3D-consistent assets from raw unposed 2D images. This is particularly important because 3D ground truth data is difficult to obtain in real world settings while images are ubiquitous.

    The initial prize linked to this award was a Cyber Valley tour and meeting with top AI researchers, including a visit to the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS) Stuttgart and Tübingen, Germany. As the team is part of Cyber Valley, the prize will be adapted in an adequate manner.

    Audience award for Kinetix: Transformation of 2D videos into 3D animated content

    The French start-up Kinetix SAS won the audience award powered by IT-Farm. This project received the most votes during the AI GameDev award show. Kinetix democratizes the character animation using AI and they enable creators to transform any 2D video into 3D animated avatars so that anyone can populate and tell stories in the metaverse. The metaverse is a hypothetical iteration of the internet that supports persistent 3D online virtual environments through traditional personal computers and virtual and augmented reality headsets. As of now, 3D production is limited due to slow and technical animation techniques. “Animating one minute takes four weeks of work, even for trained professional 3D animators. We will allow non-technical creatives to access 3D character animation that is too technical for them today”, said Yassine Tahi, CEO of Kinetix SAS. “We leverage the latest research in deep learning with our research team to go beyond the state of the art.”

    Current 3D animation software requires deep technical expertise and is not accessible to most of the creators. It can only be used offline and lacks the aspect of collaboration. Kinetix seeks to bridge the gap between the rising demand and the cost as well as technical literacy needed to generate 3D animated content. Their solution allows creators to generate and edit 3D animated content through the automation brought by the recent breakthroughs in deep learning. Kinetix will get an exclusive business or fundraising mentorship by IT-Farm covering topics such as fundraising advice, sales pitch reviews, or business plan development.

    About AI GameDev

    During Thursday’s award ceremony, a jury selected the winners of the main award and the scientific award. “The two things we really paid attention to were the novelty and the scientific quality of the work”, said Michael Sedlmair, Professor for Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality at the University of Stuttgart and AI GameDev jury member. “If these two aspects were paired with lots of potential for great impact on the gaming market, that is how we knew we had a worthy AI GameDev award winner.” Along with Sedlmair, Remi Driancourt (GM & Director of Research, Square Enix), Hasegawa Isamu (Senior Manager, Square Enix), Shinya Kasuga (Partner, IT-Farm), Oliver Passek (Advisor for film and media, Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts, Baden-Württemberg), Johanna Pirker (Assistant Professor, Graz University of Technology), and Miyake Youichiro (Lead AI Researcher, Square Enix) were members of the jury.

    For AI GameDev, Cyber Valley joined forces with game developer Square Enix and venture capitalist firm IT-Farm and called for submissions throughout August and September. In October, Cyber Valley researchers as well as representatives of Square Enix and IT-Farm then nominated seven finalists for Thursday’s award ceremony.

    Cyber Valley’s fifth anniversary

    The AI GameDev marked the first festive gathering in the month of December which is a special occasion for Cyber Valley: the research consortium in the Stuttgart-Tübingen region was founded five years ago. Cyber Valley, as an internationally renowned hotspot for AI, has successfully grown in the areas of research and innovation over the past years: professorships within the ecosystem have been appointed, Cyber Valley research groups have been founded and a start-up network as well as an investor network have been set up. AI GameDev marks yet another highlight on an impressive streak of events aiming at applying AI in promising contexts, this time in the format of a gaming competition.