ZEW Spin-off istari.ai Is AI Champion BW 2023

The Ministry of Economic Affairs, Labour and Tourism of Baden-Württemberg, as part of the 2023 Digital Summit, honoured the start-up istari.ai with the AI Champion BW award. istari.ai emerged victorious from a strong pool of contenders as the world’s first provider of a software-as-a-service solution for AI-based real-time insights into the economy. The concept behind istari.ai originated from a research project conducted by ZEW Mannheim and the University of Giessen, leading to the start-up’s establishment in 2019. The award was presented by Minister of Economy, Dr. Nicole Hoffmeister-Kraut, to the founders of istari.ai, Dr. Jan Kinne and Dr. David Lenz, in Stuttgart.

“The award underscores our steadfast trajectory: the ability to fully automate complex web searches and deliver reliable information. It can be used for all industries, all regions, and all types of queries,” says Kinne. In addition to his role at istari.ai, Kinne is an economist in ZEW’s “Economics of Innovation and Industrial Dynamics” and a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University.
 
In the past, data from corporate websites had to be painstakingly gathered and analysed manually. Today, artificial intelligence enables this process to be thematically driven, rapid, and fully automated. The birth of istari.ai stemmed from the notion of expanding the scientific concept of web mining beyond its original focus on collecting innovation indicators from company websites.
 
“We are delighted with Jan Kinne’s award, which once again highlights the innovative and application-oriented nature of ZEW’s research. istari.ai tackles a highly relevant topic and emerged within the esteemed research field of innovation economics and industrial dynamics at ZEW. Looking ahead, we aim to foster more spin-offs, not only within this research domain,” says ZEW’s Managing Director Thomas Kohl.