AI Startup Hub
Research artefacts should not end in a paper. This hub collects the ventures that carry results of this chair into practice – founded companies, an open-source venture, and ideas still in incubation – together with the teaching that prepares the next founders.
SherpAI
Founded 2026 · EXIST start-up grant (BMWE/ESF)
SherpAI builds a learning data quality layer for enterprise systems: software that integrates into ERP and CRM systems, identifies faulty data structures, corrects them in context and completes missing information. The venture grew directly out of this chair’s research on entity matching and AI-based application systems; Prof. Grum is originator of the idea and mentor to the founding team. A twelve-month EXIST phase carries the team from demonstrator to market-ready product, with ERP manufacturers as integration partners.
SensGuitar
Open-source venture · launched with a Kickstarter campaign
The SensGuitar is a guitar set up as a cyber-physical system. The instrument perceives how it is being played, processes that information digitally and adapts to the player – an AI-based application system with strings. The venture is deliberately open source, so the community can work together on the best version of music-related products; instruments are produced at material cost rather than for profit. It is also the most personal proof of a conviction taught at this chair: that AI-based systems can be built into any bounded system one cares about – even a guitar.
Neuronal Consulting
Founded 2019 · the chair holder’s own company
Neuronal Consulting brings artificial neural networks to the physical processes of the real world: neuronal process modeling, simulation and optimization for industry – the same method family this chair researches, applied under commercial conditions. Founded before the professorship, the company keeps one foot of the research line firmly in practice; there is, as its motto goes, no off-the-shelf neuronal network.
In Incubation
Further ventures are in incubation at the chair – ideas from research and teaching that are being shaped towards founding, accompanied through the AI Excellence Community and, where the fit is right, towards EXIST funding. They will appear here when they are ready to.
Learning to Found
Founding can be taught. From summer semester 2027, the chair plans the AI Startup Seminar (AISS): students develop an AI-based business idea from research artefact to pitch – covering validation, data-driven business models and the funding landscape from EXIST to venture capital (state: under planning). Members of the AI Excellence Community are additionally supported with startup options and mentoring.