KI-Garage: AI Connect Summit 2026

KI-Garage AI CONNECT SUMMIT

The KI-Garage AI CONNECT SUMMIT 2026 is the flagship event of KI-Garage, bringing together key players from the AI and innovation ecosystem in Baden-Württemberg, as well as stakeholders from research and technology transfer.

The summit focuses on a crucial yet often overlooked phase of innovation: the transition from research to real-world application. This is where ideas are tested, prototypes emerge, and the foundation for real impact is built—yet also where many promising projects stall or are overlooked.

By connecting researchers and ecosystem enablers, the event creates a space to address one central question:
How can we accelerate the path from cutting-edge research to tangible, real-world solutions?

What to expect

The program combines strategic perspectives with practical insights and real project visibility. It highlights both the challenges and opportunities in the transfer phase and fosters meaningful exchange across disciplines.

Key topics include:

  • Turning AI research into applicable solutions
  • Overcoming barriers in the pre-market phase
  • Strengthening collaboration between academia and industry
  • Identifying where real-world impact and future advantages will emerge
  • Showcasing projects ready for the next step

 

Meet our Speakers

Wenn der Wind der Veränderungen weht, bauen die einen Mauern und die anderen... :
Keynote

Automate ESG reporting with help of Agentic AI :
Science Pitch

Using LLMs to detect violations of human rights :
Science Pitch

"𝑾𝒆𝒏𝒏 𝒅𝒆𝒓 𝑾𝒊𝒏𝒅 𝒅𝒆𝒓 𝑽𝒆𝒓𝒂̈𝒏𝒅𝒆𝒓𝒖𝒏𝒈𝒆𝒏 𝒘𝒆𝒉𝒕, 𝒃𝒂𝒖𝒆𝒏 𝒅𝒊𝒆 𝒆𝒊𝒏𝒆𝒏 𝑴𝒂𝒖𝒆𝒓𝒏 𝒖𝒏𝒅 𝒅𝒊𝒆 𝒂𝒏𝒅𝒆𝒓𝒆𝒏 ..."

"𝑾𝒉𝒆𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒊𝒏𝒅𝒔 𝒐𝒇 𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒏𝒈𝒆 𝒃𝒍𝒐𝒘, 𝒔𝒐𝒎𝒆 𝒃𝒖𝒊𝒍𝒅 𝒘𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒔, 𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒔 𝒃𝒖𝒊𝒍𝒅..."
That's the spirit Thomas Bönig, CIO & CDO of Landeshauptstadt Stuttgart, brings to his keynote at the KI-Garage AI Connect Summit 2026 — a sharp look at where Baden-Württemberg and Germany really stand on AI transfer, between ambition and application.

As CIO of one of Germany's largest state capitals, Thomas Bönig knows the challenge firsthand: AI strategies are everywhere — but how far have we actually come in putting them into practice? Expect an honest look at where we stand, what's still missing, and the potential that remains untapped.

Escaping the Jupyter Notebook: Why the Future of AI is on the Edge


We often associate the current AI boom with massive data centers and soaring cloud budgets. But as the cost of running models on centralized servers continues to escalate, a critical shift is underway toward Edge AI: running machine learning models directly on physical, local hardware.

But what actually is Edge AI and why is it becoming a necessity for the next generation of applications?

In this 15-minute impulse talk, Milan will demystify Edge AI, explaining how running models locally addresses the compounding issues of server costs, latency, and data privacy. Drawing on his hands-on experience building and deploying edge algorithms, he will share the practical realities of this transition. We will explore why a model that runs smoothly in a Jupyter Notebook often struggles when deployed on resource-constrained physical devices, and how researchers and builders can bridge this gap.

You will leave with a clear understanding of why the edge is the next frontier for sustainable AI, and practical insights on how to start moving your own algorithms from the cloud to the physical world.

Quantum Computing and AI: From Concepts to Application – Infrastructure, Readiness, and Challenges.

This panel explores the intersection of quantum computing and artificial intelligence — and how both fields can and should move step by step from largely theoretical concepts toward practical application. We will discuss where real synergies between quantum and AI are already emerging today, how mature the technological and organizational infrastructure truly is, and what obstacles still stand in the way — from hardware and software to talent, standards, and accessibility. At the heart of the conversation is the question of how research and early pilot projects can evolve into genuinely scalable applications — and what industry, research, and policy need to do concretely, right now, to make that happen.

Automate ESG reporting with help of Agentic AI

AgnosQuant is an agentic AI layer built on top of SAP enterprise systems to automate and simplify ESG reporting. It integrates with SAP data across finance, procurement, supply chain, HR, and operations to collect, harmonize, and validate sustainability metrics without manual consolidation. Intelligent agents continuously monitor enterprise data, detect reporting gaps, map information to ESG frameworks, and generate audit-ready disclosures aligned with evolving regulations. By transforming fragmented operational data into transparent, traceable ESG insights, AgnosQuant enables organizations to shift from periodic compliance reporting to continuous ESG intelligence. The platform improves reporting accuracy, reduces compliance costs, minimizes risk, and provides leadership with real-time visibility into sustainability performance, helping enterprises make data-driven decisions and accelerate sustainable transformation.

Using LLMs to detect violations of human rights

As activists, journalists, scientists, politicians, and diasporas depend on the digital space in their day-to-day work, (authoritarian) states increasingly use the internet as an attack vector to intimidate and silence. Many incidents of this repression never surface, because victims are frightend. Those stories that get told, are scattered across news, social media, and reports by NGOs. To systematically collect and categorize those cases that are reported, I propose a data-pipeline incorporating LLMs to helping to help decipher different terminology, extract latent knowledge, and organize complex relationships between actors found in natural language. As machine-taught systems are used by attackers to find weaknesses and flood spaces with harmful misinformation, those systems can also be used by scientists and NGOs to also collect and learn from data to protect those targeted.

MachineWaves – From young stars to black holes with gravitational waves and machine learning

Massive binary stars constitute a unique laboratory in our Universe: the way they evolve from young stars to black holes (BHs) can teach us about almost every area of physics, from quantum mechanics to general relativity. The first detection of gravitational waves (GWs) – tiny spacetime ripples created by merging BHs – opened an unprecedented window onto the study of BHs and their stellar progenitors: yet, existing methods struggle to extract this information due to the complexities of astrophysical channels, only available as forward models. Rewinding the life of BBH systems will give us a completely new outlook on the young massive star population: I will make use of machine learning tools, primarily invertible neural networks and unsupervised learning models to overcome the challenges posed by astrophysical forward models and complex GW data, tackling the problem of rewinding the life of the BBHs observed with GWs and characterising their evolutionary pathway from death to birth.

EXAMATRIX: Smarter exams. Better learning. Built on real assessment data.

EXAMATRIX is an AI platform for exam creation and exam preparation, built on one model that learns from real exams. For educators, its AI turns their own teaching material into exam questions built to psychometric quality standards, not generic ones. For each question, it returns a clear quality verdict, predicting how the question behaves in a real exam, so weak questions are revised in advance rather than discovered after the fact. Once the exam has been taken, the real results flow back into the model, confirming or correcting each prediction and sharpening the verdicts and questions it produces. Each exam makes the next one stronger, a closed loop at the heart of the system. For learners, the same model provides practice that mirrors real exams, along with learning content prepared for them. EXAMATRIX starts in higher education and is built to extend across schools and vocational training, as a shared quality layer for exams worldwide.

Location & Details

📍 Urban Offices Stuttgart
Büchsenstraße 20 , 70174 Stuttgart

The venue provides a modern and collaborative setting in the heart of the city.

🥂 Catering
Drinks and snacks will be provided throughout the evening.

Why attend?

The KI-Garage AI CONNECT SUMMIT is designed for those who are actively shaping the future of AI from research to application… with a focus on Baden-Württemberg.

It is an opportunity to:

  • Engage with leading actors in the regional AI ecosystem
  • Gain insights into the most critical phase of innovation
  • Discover promising projects and collaboration opportunities
  • Become part of a growing network driving real-world impact

The KI-Garage is happy to announce to be an official side event of the KI-Gipfel by A11. The event will take place on June 30 at the MHP Arena in Stuttgart, bringing together leading voices from industry, research, and technology to explore the latest developments and future directions of artificial intelligence. The event focuses on practical insights, innovative applications, and meaningful exchange between experts and enthusiasts alike.
More information can be found at: https://www.a11.com/ki-gipfel

We value our collaboration with A11 and appreciate the mutual support that makes initiatives like this possible—working together to strengthen the AI ecosystem in its entirety. 

Register here!
AI Connect Summit 2026