From Linz to Mistral: The story behind Europe's first industrial AI lab
In just over two years, a small startup in Linz, Austria, built one of the world's leading Engineering AI labs. Last week, Mistral acquired them in one of Europe's most important AI acquisitions to date.
Before the news broke, our GP, Andreas Schwarzenbrunner, sat down with Emmi AI co-founders Dennis Just, Johannes Brandstetter, and Miks Mikelsons for an honest conversation about the journey, the decision to join Mistral, and what it means for the future of industrial AI in Europe.
Keep scrolling to read an excerpt and watch the full interview.
An excerpt from: How an Austrian startup became the foundation for Europe's first industrial AI lab in under two years
Andreas: What were the trigger moments with customers that made you realize there was more beyond simulation, and inspired you to build an industrial engineering lab that enables so many use cases?
Dennis: We're still at the brink of starting the enablement and building capacity, but I think, as an idea, a business evolves. We started off by solely focusing on accelerating simulations. We've had the luck of having big customers from the start, like Siemens Energy, and in these projects, you get a better understanding of what the real problem is for your customers. Simulation is just one little piece of the puzzle, of the value chain, so you naturally learn it's not solely about accelerating one piece, but about helping these customers to build better products faster.
Andreas: What are some things that Mistral can now do with the team at Emmi on board?
Johannes: I think engineering is much more complex than just simulation, which is what we can provide. But simulation combined with data-driven simulation is the core for everything, including computer-aided design, computer-aided engineering, agentic workflows, fusing sensor data with simulation, or building digital twins.
Suddenly, this whole plethora of possibilities opens up, and you just need to listen to the high-stakes tech companies in Europe. They all want the same things. And, suddenly, these things are not hypothetical, like 'maybe we can do that in two years.' We can start them now. This is quite exciting.
From Our Investors' Desk
From deep sector expertise to our take on the future of tech and venture capital in Europe, here are some of our recent musings from social media.
Our General Partner Andreas Schwarzenbrunner shared his thoughts on Emmi AI's deal with Mistral. He backed the company from its earliest stages and knows Emmi's scaling journey better than anyone else.
Our Partner Stefan Klestil celebrated London-based Fintech Primer's massive Series C funding round. Speedinvest has been backing Primer since pre-Seed and can't wait to see what the team does next.
👉 What else we're reading:
Anthropic Sends Jolt Through Market for Buying Shares in Hot Pre-IPO Startups - Bloomberg
Europe’s few AI plays soar as US tech frenzy goes global - Financial Times
Europe’s AI future depends on UK-France-Germany DARPA alliance, says Nobel winner - Sifted
Thanks for reading — see you next month,
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