TOP 30 AI-START-UPS FROM THE DACH REGION (Forbes)
Forbes has for the first time compiled a list of the 30 most promising start-ups from Germany, Austria and Switzerland (DACH) from the areas of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.
Methodology
(translated with deepl.com)
The focus is on early-stage start-ups, which is why only companies that are not “older” than three years were considered (cut-off date 1 March 2019). The start-ups on the list are all in either the pre-seed, seed or Series A phase. The companies were ranked according to the amount of funding they received from investors. This is because the level of funding reflects the valuations that the investors attribute to the company — and is thus the result of a market process. It is not a jury or journalists who decide as they see fit, but investors who invest money in the companies. This is also logical: because a start-up that has difficulties selling shares to investors will hardly be able to succeed in the market — no matter how good the technology is.
The order does not include Forbes’ assessment of the technology or business model of the companies. The data comes from Crunchbase. Financing rounds that are not listed there have therefore not been taken into account. In selecting the companies, we were guided by the Crunchbase categories, but editorially checked which role KI/ML plays for the business model of the respective start-up, and based our decision on this. The list includes start-ups whose product would never have been created without artificial intelligence, and those whose focus is elsewhere, but where AI plays an important role in refining the product.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator
All 30 start-ups after investment phase
1.
i2x
$ 16.4 million, Berlin
The company of former studiVZ Managing Director Michael Brehm is the clear number one on our list with a funding of US $ 16.4 million. The promise of the team around founder Michael Brehm: Analyze and improve sales pitches in real time.
2ND
German Autolabs
€ 9 million, Berlin
The two founders Holger Weiss and Patrick Weissert were previously in managerial positions at the card and navigation company Here. Now they want to build a digital assistant for the car, which makes the use of smartphone in the vehicle superfluous.
3RD
Merantix
$ 10 million, Berlin
The company of computer scientist Rasmus Rothe wants to be a platform that supports companies, the results of AI research in practical applications in various industries — such as automotive or the health sector — implement.
4TH
Wandelbots
€ 6 million, Dresden
The Dresden-based start-up offers technology that allows robots to be programmed without specialist knowledge and huge financial leaps. That the concept works, proves the investor funding of € 6 million (see article).
5TH
Piavita
6.5 million US $, Zurich
The Swiss start-up wants to revolutionize the work of veterinarians with a digital measuring device for horses. There was a $ 6.5 million funding from investors (see article ).
6TH
Fresh Energy
€ 10 million, Berlin
The Berlin start-up measures consumption data with its intelligent electricity meter (Smart Meter) and analyzes it with machine-learning methods. The energy company Innogy, from whose Innovation Hub the company emerged, has invested € 3 million.
7TH
aifora
€ 3 million, Dusseldorf
The Düsseldorf-based company enables retailers to automatically optimize their prices, thus increasing both sales and profits. The team around the two founders David Krings and Thomas Jesewski has collected in a seed round three million € from the German VC Capnamic.
8TH
e-bot7
€ 2.7 million, Munich
The team around the three founders Fabian Beringer, Xaver Lehmann and Maximilian Gerer has developed a Chatbot software for customer systems, which should reduce the average processing time of a concern by 80 percent. Investors have invested over € 2.4 million in the company, most recently there was a € 2 million Series A round with the Munich VC 42CAP.
9TH
Scailyte
CHF 2.8 million, Sursee, Lucerne
Founded in 2017, the Swiss start-up uses deep-learning methods to examine individual human cells and thus provide information on diseases. What has lasted for at least four weeks should, according to Scailyte, be possible in just two to three days.
10TH
realxdata
€ 2 million, Berlin
The team around the founders Daniel Sprünker, Iñaki Merino and Titus Albrecht is working on a real estate platform based on big data that aims to improve asset valuations and portfolio optimization. There were € 2 million in a seed round last June.
11TH
Eyeware
CHF 1.9 million, Martigny, Valais
The start-up, based in the Swiss canton of Valais, started as a spin-off from the research institute Idiap, which also operates there, and develops eye-tracking software for cameras with depth detection.
12TH
Ares Genetics
€ 1.3 million, Vienna
The start-up, which belongs to the German diagnostics company Curetis, wants to develop algorithms that can quantify not only disease-causing germs but also their resistance to antibiotics.
13TH
Moon Vision
€ 1.2 million, Vienna
The start-up of the two founders Florian Bauer and Alexander Hirner specializes in object recognition. One of the products: the software “DishTracker”, which detects food independently and thus, for example, facilitates processes for paying in canteens.
14TH
ImageBiopsyLab
€ 1 million, Vienna
The company’s software analyzes X-ray images in orthopedics and makes a diagnosis to the doctor. In addition, the company has developed predictive models to estimate the risk of a patient getting future problems with the knee joint.
15TH
Rasa
1.1 million US $, Berlin
In the previous year, the founders Alan Nichol and Alexander Weidauer were already on the “Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe” list in the field of technology. The goal of their company: to develop chatbots that really understand what the customer wants. Customers include UBS and Helvetia.
16TH
Deep Code
CHF 1.1 million, Zurich
Easier to write better code — this is what the self-learning programming assistant from Deep Code makes possible. The company was founded in June 2016 by Martin Vechev, Veselin Raychev and Boris Paskalev as a spin-off of ETH Zurich.
17TH
Kido Dynamics
CHF 1.1 million, Lausanne
The Swiss start-up is the youngest on our list — it celebrates its first birthday on April 1st. The company is working on a data analysis platform for Smart Citys. It was only in March that a growth loan from the Swiss Foundation for Technological Innovation (FIT) of over CHF 400,000 was issued.
18TH
Stenon
€ 0.9 million, Potsdam
Stenon was founded in Berlin — but quickly moved to the much more rural Potsdam. Sure, because the company of founder Dominic Roth developed a device for farmers for mobile soil analysis in real time. In addition to data measurement, Stenon uses machine learning models to generate recommendations for the optimal management of fields.
19TH
5Analytics
€ 0.9 million, Köngen,
Baden-Württemberg
The platform of the 2016 founded by Alexandra Bellanova, Sebastian Klenk and Stefan Soehnle start-ups should make it easier for companies to integrate AI into their production processes. Customers include Volkswagen, Telefónica and the pharmaceutical company Merck.
20TH
Legartis
CHF 1 million, Zurich
The software of the legal-tech company founded by lawyers David Bloch and Marc von Samson-Himmelstjerna automatically analyzes legal documents — and according to their own statements, much faster than previously possible. The investors include the Stämpfli publishing house.
21ST
Parashift
CHF 1 million, Sissach, Basel
The claim of the Swiss start-up is to put an end to tedious manual accounting work. Thanks to the AI-based document extraction process, the customer no longer needs to enter any manual data.
22ND
Apostera
1 million US $, Munich
The team around founder Victor Samoylenko and CEO Andrey Golubinskiy works on augmented reality software for autonomous driving. A seed round completed at the beginning of last year was led by the Ukrainian VC SMRK.
23RD
Raylytic
€ 0.85 million, Leipzig
Raylytic is after Wandelbots the second company on our list that comes from Saxony. The team around founder Frank Trautwein is active in the field of medical image data analysis — such as X-ray images. In a seed round, the technology start-up fund Saxony has invested € 850,000 in the company.
24TH
Checkout Technologies
€ 0.85 million, Munich
The company, with offices in Munich, Milan and San Francisco, intends to optimize the use of self-service cash registers in stores. The vision of the future: to create completely autonomous shops.
25TH
aiconix.ai
€ 0.77 million, Hamburg
The start-up is dedicated to the question of why some videos are seen and others are not. With its platform media makers should already be able to predict at the editing station when the viewer loses interest. Investors include the Next-Media-Accelerator of Axel-Springer-Verlag.
26TH
Brighter AI Technologies
€ 0.65 million, Berlin
The start-up around CEO Marian Gläser emerged from the incubator of the automotive supplier Hella. Originally, it developed software that transforms night-time shots into images that look as if they were made during the day for a better view while driving. Meanwhile, the technology is used for a different purpose — namely for the anonymization of image data.
27TH
SkAD Labs
$ 0.75 million, Ecublens, Vaud
The claim of the start-up: to build the next generation of engineering software for virtual product development. This should be able to reduce the development time by half.
28TH
Digital Claim
0.65 million US $, Vienna
The start-up sees itself as a one-stop solution for the management of recoveries. The software automatically clusters, classifies and analyzes documents — and initiates the recovery processes.
29TH
Enginsight
€ 0.42 million, Jena, Thuringia
The company specializes in cybersecurity and promises “maximum security through intelligent analysis”.
30TH
RetinAI Medical
CHF 0.40 million, Bern
The team wants to use AI-based image recognition to improve eye care. The company’s software is intended to detect various eye diseases at an early stage.
Text: Dominik Meisinger
The article was published in our March issue 2019 “AI”.
