Leader or Laggard: Why AI First is systemically-relevant for our industries

What does the next global revolution of our working lives look like – and who will set the tone in it? Kai-FuLee, former CEO of GoogleChina and one of the world's most renowned #AI pioneer thinkers, describes in his fascinating short stories collection "AI 2041: Ten Visions for our Future", co-authored with novelist ChenQiufan, how #artificialintelligence will have completely turned our world upside down in less than 20 years. How it will bring about new ways of communicating, more health, prosperity, and traffic safety. And finally, how it will give rise to new boom industries.

So far the good AI news.

The challenging ones were already described by Lee some years earlier in his bestseller ?AI Superpowers“, in a quite startling way: China and the U.S. are accordingly setting the tone in the #AIrevolution that has long been underway – Europe's companies are not even in third place. Lee's reasoning is: While Europe widely remains in AI hibernation, the US and China are embracing, promoting, and substantially funding AI. Politics, universities, corporates, and investors alike. Chinese and US start-ups already dominate or will dominate to a great deal the future of AI-based industrial and consumer solutions. Start-up and unicorns such as SenseTime, Momenta,?UbtechRobotics, or SambaNova, are working their way to the top of the new boom industries.

And this situation is currently not improving at all from the EU's point of view – actually it is seriously worsening. It is about to threaten the existence of many of our industrial companies. According to the OECD study "Venture Capital Investments In Artificial Intelligence" European companies are simply not competitive in AI. E.g. Germany, as global industrial leader, is being substantially outperformed on AI-investments. China′s VC companies invests about 10 times as much as German VCs and the U.S. VCs even 15 to 20 times more – and this is happening year after year. Making the gap also bigger every year!

I‘m writing this because as European entrepreneurs, this development should deeply shake up all of us. In Europe and especially in Germany, companies substantially rely on constant innovations and breakthrough thinking as key drivers for economic success as well as regional and individual prosperity.?What we haven’t yet realized to a sufficient extent: AI definitely is key among the future technologies and prosperity drivers.

Without being pessimistic: The situation is serious! I’m personally convinced that, with the current #techstack and #businessmodel, many companies in Germany and Europe will not be able to maintain their market position in 2025 and beyond!

On the other side, there are so many great innovators, founders, and talents around, ready to make the difference, ready to lead, ready to partner and ready to disrupt.

And the business opportunities just for the manufacturing industry are tremendous. Overall, we speak about a mid- to long-term market opportunity of a 100-1.000 billion $ – based on AI and digital solutions.

So what do we need to do?

First of all: We need a genuine #AIwakeupcall. Let’s use 2022 to create a substantially better awareness, sense of urgency and call for action in our area of responsibility – public, parties, corporate, unions, and universities. Let’s try hard together to re-establish Europe as home for AI technologies, innovations, and a prosperous future. As courageous tech leaders instead of cautious tech laggards.

For this, more than ever, we also need more political support and commitment throughout the #EU. The European Tech Champions Initiative #ETCI, which German Minister of Finance ChristianLindner (#FDP, #BMF) recently announced in cooperation with France's #FinanceMinister colleague BrunoLeMaire, is a first, important and motivating step in this direction. With the planned billion-dollar funds, young tech start-ups could finally gain faster and easier access to European investors. But much more needs to be done from all of us, to stay in business and to stay ahead!

At K?rber, we have focused on exactly those technologies and tech start-ups for years. As a major #companybuilder in the AI market and market leader for artificial intelligence in manufacturing and supply chain, our Business Area K?rber Digital initiated successful new market players like FactoryPal (AI-powered manufacturing efficiency solutions), InspectifAI (end-to-end AI solutions for visual drug inspection) or our latest venture tribehero (AI-based gamification engagement for repetitive workers). And with DAIN Studios, we offer proven and best-in-class AI-consulting. As #homeforentrepreneurs, we spend around 2.5% of our annual total revenue alone directly in #digitization and AI.

In 2022, we’re now taking the next step. With our #AIFirst?initiative, we are building a strong and leading ecosystem to the benefits of our customers, partners and people.

There are great people, founders, and companies around in Europe and Germany, who have a strong vision, understanding and dedication towards AI and are true digital pioneers and entrepreneurs. Fortunately, we had and have the chance to work with many of them. For instance, Sabina Jeschke, Florian Heinemann, Niko Mohr or Christoph Klenk with their very clear digital vision and experience, had and have a great impact on our digital journey. John Deere – recently classified to become one of the most important AI companies – has been an early role model for us at K?rber; the same is true for celonis. And with many of our customers and business partners we share the vision in AI and the believe on the game changing power and impact in the manufacturing industry: For instance, our customer WEPA is clearly a digital innovator and leader in the Hygiene Industry. With our strategic partner geek+ we drive and implement newtec and robotics solutions together with our customers on a global scale. And by partnering and investing in companies like Merantix or Project A Ventures we are supporting the AI start-up community and at the same time we are strengthening our AI competencies and our ecosystem.

Our goal: By 2025, we want to generate 1/3 of our total sales with software and digital solutions, enabling us to shapen the future of AI as the most influential technology in this decade. By doing so, we will create significant and measurable value in our industries and for our customers! Supporting their #smartfactory and future-oriented business transformation agenda. This will also include new ways of working and inspiration, new partnerships, new coaching environments for our talents, and an even more sustainable environmental approach. This way, we are aiming, and we are very confident to continue being a technology and ESG leader in our industries, for our customers, partners and people.

Which brings us back to the starting point and our common challenge for the near future:?Let’s make it very clear:?We must push the AI transformation with a significantly higher speed, agility, and financial power than before. And most of all, with your commitment, dedication, and contribution! AI is systemically relevant for our future. We need to catch up to stay on top and to stay successful.

A huge and exciting challenge. Let’s face it together!

What’s your opinion? Looking forward to your feedback and comments.