AI-Cup is a Bavarian-French start-up initiative to support the future generation of AI entrepreneurs and establish innovative AI start-ups in Europe. It is aimed at students or researchers across Germany and France, who can demonstrate not only excellent scientific skills in the field of "Artificial Intelligence" but who also have remarkable entrepreneurial skills.
On 23 October 2023, the AI Cup concluded with its final event. Seven innovative AI start-ups had been supported intensively for a year, including financial support via the Bavarian-French AI Challenge (BAFRAIC). To conclude the event, the winning teams presented their products and AI applications in captivating pitches. They focussed on using AI to offer practical solutions for current challenges in the economic, social and medical sectors.
Starting in October 2022, the winning teams had been supported financially, enabling them to dedicate all their time and energies towards developing and progressing their start-up businesses. This funded phase allowed them to pass many milestones, coached and advised by their respective universities' support services for entrepreneurs.
Are you interested in playing with data and solving real-time problems through AI-based algorithms? Or you are passionate about AI technologies and want to build an AI-based start-up?
If your answer is yes, then the AI-Cup challenge might be an excellent opportunity for you to turn on the competitive spirit and win price money of up to € 95,000 to found your AI start-up.
The topic of the AI-Cup is "AI for a better world". The data science challenge offers three different streams within which to compete:
The challenge is made of two components:
The eligible candidates were provided with data sets accompanied by a scientific question. For example, data-sets included smart meter data from E.ON, gas usage data from Trading Hub Europe and bus ticketing data from DB Regio.
At the end of the scientific challenge, the solutions of the participants were evaluated, and only the teams with the best solution took part in the entrepreneurial challenge.
The candidates with the successful scientific solutions also were expected to present a concept (business plan) describing their idea for creating an AI-based start-up. The future start-up had to bring forward "AI for a better world" and support (for example) in the areas of decarbonisation, smart mobility, people's well-being, etc.
As a main result of the AI challenge/competition, up to eight winning teams were offered mentorship for twelve months along with an average of € 95,000 price money in preparation for their start-up foundation. The future start-ups will need to be established or have a branch in Bavaria.
The AI-Cup official kick-off took place on 23. October 2021.
Timeline:
23.10.2021: AI-Cup Kick-Off event
09.03.2022- 29.03.2022: Registration for participation
30.04.2022- 10.07.2022: Scientific competition
22.07.2022- 22.08.2022: Economic competition
13.09.2022: Pitch Event
October 2022: Awards ceremony
Q4 2022 - Q4 2023: Mentoring and start-up support for the winning teams
The AI-Cup is an initiative led by Prof. Harald Kosch (Chair of distributed information systems) and Prof. Michael Granitzer (Chair of data science), in cooperation with the Transfer Centre of the University of Passau and involving the three hubs of the University of Passau: the Science Hub for Europe, the Digital Hub and the sustainable-development hub.
“The University of Passau is very honoured and pleased to be trusted by the Bavarian State Chancellery and the Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs, Regional Development and Energy to run this unique AI challenge. We are proud also to have BAYFRANCE, Atos and École normale supérieure Paris-Saclay as very close partners for ensuring the AI-Cup will be a success.”
Ulrich Bartosch, President, Harald Kosch, Vice-President
Atos is a global leader in digital transformation. As European number one in cybersecurity, cloud and high-performance computing, Atos provides end-to-end business solutions across industries in 71 countries.
"Atos is a proud partner of the 2022 Bavarian-French AI-Cup. As a European-based company with dual headquarters in Paris and Munich, we see a perfect cultural and business fit. I am particularly happy that our customers E.ON and Trading Hub Europe generously support our challenge with real-life use cases and datasets".
Udo Littke, Head of Atos Central Europe
The AI-Cup was open to students, doctoral researchers, post-docs and other young scientists at universities and non-university research institutions in France and Germany. Participating students who were set to complete their studies during the course of the competition or the period of the supporting package (mentorship/funding) were eligible to participate; the same applied to doctoral students after their doctorate.
Teams had to comprise of at least two members.
Only pre-founding teams were eligible for the funding, i.e. their start-up had not existed yet at the time.
If you have any queries, please write to us ai-cup@uni-passau.de
