AI Founders Connect, the AI founder network of Hesse
AI Founders Connect describes itself as "a fast-growing community for AI founders, visionary investors, and forward-thinking corporates to shape Hessen's AI Ecosystem". It started in 2024 as informal founder meetups in a Frankfurt pub. Since then it has grown to more than 800 members and has held over 50 events, at venues such as Google Frankfurt and NIO House.
Daniel Pietschmann and Daniel Orbegoso co-founded AI Founders Connect. The network covers the Rhein Main Neckar region and names NIO, Seibert Group, Google Cloud and the Wirtschaftsinitiative FrankfurtRheinMain as partners.
What AI Founders Connect wants
The stated mission is to "establish Hessen as a rising center for AI innovation in Europe". AI Founders Connect sees the AI scenes of Frankfurt, Darmstadt, Mainz and Wiesbaden as separate circles and wants to join them into one network. It offers matchmaking between founders and investors and ecosystem insights from its own AI-powered platform, and it promotes responsible AI development.
Darmstadt is home to hessian.AI, the Hessian Center for Artificial Intelligence, which is also part of the EDITH consortium described on the EDITH Hessen page. Frankfurt adds the banks, insurers and investors. A founder with an AI product for finance finds researchers and buyers less than an hour apart by train.
Building AI for finance: the rules a founder meets
An AI startup that sells to banks or insurers meets the rules of its customers. Under the EU AI Act, the company that develops an AI system and puts it on the market is the provider and carries the heaviest duties. For high-risk uses such as consumer credit scoring these include risk management, technical documentation, logging and human oversight. The bank that uses the system is the deployer and builds on the provider's instructions for use and test results. Both sides must make sure their staff have sufficient AI literacy, a duty set out in Article 4 that applies to every AI system, high-risk or not.
The second rulebook is DORA. A bank that buys software or a cloud service from a startup records the contract in its register of ICT third-party arrangements, and contracts that support critical or important functions need clauses on audit rights, exit plans and help with incidents. Founders who sell to banks get asked about these clauses early. BaFin supervises German banks under both sets of rules. The EU AI Act in financial services page and the hub answer on DORA go into detail, and the page on AI use cases in finance shows where banks use AI today.
AI Founders Connect and Finance Loop
AI Founders Connect is an event and network partner of Finance Loop and appears among the partner logos on the About page.
What is AI Founders Connect?
AI Founders Connect is a network for AI founders, investors and corporates in Hesse and the Rhein Main Neckar region. It began in 2024 with founder meetups in a Frankfurt pub and now counts more than 800 members.
Who can join AI Founders Connect?
The network addresses founders of AI companies, the investors who fund them and the corporates that want to work with them. Its website lists a core team of nine people with roles in community leadership, business development, partnerships and operations. Membership details and the next dates are on ai.founders-connect.de and on the network's LinkedIn page.
Where do AI founders meet in Frankfurt?
AI Founders Connect holds its events in Frankfurt and the region, at host venues such as Google Frankfurt and NIO House; dates are on ai.founders-connect.de and on its LinkedIn page. AI Hub Frankfurt runs AI Week Frankfurt, and Frankfurt Data Science holds meetups on data and AI. Finance Loop collects dates on AI in finance in its events overview. AI Founders Connect is also one of the networks described in AI in Frankfurt, together with hessian.AI and AI Hub Frankfurt.
How do I start an AI startup in Frankfurt?
Peers and investors are the first step: founder meetups such as those of AI Founders Connect and the startup programs at TechQuartier bring both. A founder who builds for banks should read the provider duties of the EU AI Act and the DORA contract rules before the first pitch, because bank buyers check both.
AI Founders Connect and Finance Loop
AI Founders Connect is one of Finance Loop's event and network partners. Founders who build AI for banks, asset managers and insurers meet the people who buy it at Finance Loop events, where AI runs through all three tracks.
Finance Loop is a professional network and has the goal of driving the adoption of emerging technologies in finance, such as AI, tokenization, stablecoins, and DeFi. Finance Loop helps its members build skills and personal networks in these fields: Investment & Digital Assets, Payments & Digital Money, and Risk & Compliance.