Munich - the Munichorn Valley for the unicorns of tomorrow?

Munich - the Munichorn Valley for the unicorns of tomorrow?

Google, Apple, Facebook - three companies that come to mind when you think of the 70km stretch of beach in San Francisco Bay. The streets are lined with dazzling letters from the "big names" in the technology and high-tech industries. Behind the panes, through which the sun shines 365 days a year, the ideas of tomorrow are conceived.

Is it the sun that got Steve Jobs to develop the iPhone in Silicon Valley? What is the real secret of Silicon Valley?

In addition to vitamin D, Silicon Valley offers everything that is needed for technological growth: the connection to top universities, flexible labor and capital markets and few bureaucratic obstacles attract founders and technology companies. The ecosystem of bright minds, capital and science creates one thing: network, network, network for unicorns and decacorns. In addition to the right team, a good idea needs the experience of founders, the connection to science and companies and of course the necessary vitamin B to be in the right place at the right time. This ecosystem has been perfected in Silicon Valley.

Can a city away from Francisco Bay create the right breeding ground for successful technology start-ups? And maybe even do it a little bit better – even more ecologically and socially acceptable?

Munich as a metropolis of innovation

In contrast to Silicon Valley, where the name of the well-known semiconductor material silicon already speaks for progress and growth, the language stem of the head of state of Bavaria, "bei den Mönchen", suggests tradition rather than innovation. And yet Munich has everything it needs to be a metropolis of innovation: top universities, (head) offices of large technology groups, the location with local recreation near the lakes right near the Alps makes Munich an attractive location for the founders of tomorrow. The city of Munich itself is also doing a lot to promote start-ups and innovation. Together with UnternehmerTUM, she has created the Munich Urban Colab, an innovation center in which sustainable solutions for the liveable city of the future are created.

The AI+MUNICH initiative aims to create the ecosystem needed for successful start-ups in a technology industry that has the potential to take technological progress to the next level: artificial intelligence.

The “man as machine” is itself a concept almost as old as Silicon Valley itself, but has only gained real presence in business and technology in the last decade. Almost unimaginable possibilities open up when machine learning makes processes more efficient and information is gained from structured data or new, synthetic data is generated that generates further knowledge. The challenge is to recognize this potential for all areas of the economy in detail and to develop ideas and concepts that outperform current methods with an AI component and to find new solutions for economic problems that are only made possible by AI.

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