KI Bundesverband
The KI Bundesverband, also known as the German AI Association, is the national association of companies that develop and apply artificial intelligence in Germany. It was founded in Berlin in March 2018 and had 635 members in May 2026, of which 569 were companies and organizations and 66 were individual experts. The association describes itself as the largest AI network in Germany.
The KI Bundesverband connects AI and deep tech companies with established industry and with policy makers, and it represents their interests toward the federal government and the EU. Members work in groups on fields such as finance and banking, cybersecurity, open source and regulation. Since a statute reform in 2025, companies that run their own AI teams can also become members.
Members and membership
The KI Bundesverband passed the mark of 500 members in April 2025, when DeepL and Black Forest Labs joined, and the lobby register of the Bundestag lists 635 members for May 2026. The board brings in founders and executives of Merantix, Black Forest Labs, Noxtua, Signatrix and the HR tech startup Empion.
At the general meeting in November 2025 the members changed the statute so that companies with their own AI teams can join as well, and the first corporate members came in June 2026. The new board wants to bring established industry and the AI firms of Germany closer together in this way.
Board and managing director
Rasmus Rothe, co-founder and chief technology officer of the venture studio Merantix, has chaired the board since November 2025 and was a founding member in 2018. The board for the term from 2025 to 2028 also includes Robert Kilian of Noxtua for regulation and finance, Andreas Blattmann of Black Forest Labs for technology and innovation, Philipp Müller of Signatrix for projects and industry, and Annika von Mutius of Empion for government relations and public affairs.
Jörg Bienert, the long-time chair and a founding member, is now honorary president of the KI Bundesverband. Daniel Abbou is managing director, and Vanessa Just, formerly the board member for finance, works as deputy managing director.
Working group Finance & Banking
The working group Finance & Banking covers AI in retail banking as well as in risk management and capital markets business. It wants to give members orientation between innovation and regulation, make concrete use cases visible and develop practical solutions for a responsible AI transformation in the financial sector.
The topics of the group include personalized decision logic, predictive analytics, fraud detection and risk scoring, along with AI agents in business departments and explainable AI. The group also deals with the EU AI Act, IT integration and data security, and Isabell Gollmer, Michael Altendorf and Simon Julian Greiner are its contacts.
Upcoming fintech and finance events in Germany
Policy and the EU AI Act
In June 2026 the European Commission appointed the KI Bundesverband and Robert Kilian to the advisory forum of the EU AI Act. Robert Kilian teaches AI regulation at Humboldt University of Berlin and was general counsel of N26 from 2015 to 2020, where he now sits on the supervisory board. He was also a long-time member of the FinTechRat of the Federal Ministry of Finance and the first president of the European FinTech Association.
The association publishes position papers on the EU AI Act in finance and other sectors, on the digital omnibus of the EU and on AI data centers. The KI Bundesverband is also a founding member of the European AI Forum, the umbrella group of more than ten national AI associations and clusters in Europe with over 3,000 members.
Sovereign AI and the SOOFI project
The KI Bundesverband leads the consortium of SOOFI, short for Sovereign Open Source Foundation Models, which develops an open AI language model in Germany. Six German research institutions and two startups take part, among them the University of Würzburg, Fraunhofer IAIS, DFKI and Merantix Momentum, and the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy funds the project with 20 million euros. The model is meant to be freely available to companies and society and to meet the requirements of the EU AI Act.
Open models of this kind can run in the data centers of a bank or insurer, which is one way to reach sovereign AI in finance. The association has also published a position paper on the AI gigafactories that the EU plans to build.
Offices in Berlin and the regions
The office of the KI Bundesverband is in the Haus der Bundespressekonferenz at Schiffbauerdamm 40 in 10117 Berlin. The team also includes the project lead of the AI Village in Hürth near Cologne, an innovation campus for AI and robotics in the Rhineland mining region, and a regional lead for Baden-Württemberg.
KI Bundesverband and Finance Loop
The KI Bundesverband is a partner organization of AI Hub Frankfurt, and a status report on AI in Germany by Daniel Abbou of the association is part of the opening night of AI Week Frankfurt 2026. Finance Loop held an official side event of AI Week Frankfurt 2025 on AI and tokenization in institutional finance. Finance Loop discusses AI in credit, trading and compliance with practitioners from banks and asset managers at its events in Frankfurt and Berlin.
Finance Loop is a professional network and has the goal of driving the institutional use 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, Digital Infrastructure & Sovereignty, and Risk & Compliance.