Business Applications
Discover AI already in use in businesses and develop your own use case
Afternoon 14:00–17:00Rheinland Pitch AI Special · 18:00–21:00
Explore this day23–27 November 2026 · STARTPLATZ DüsseldorfAI WEEK
AI WEEK
DÜSSELDORF
For five days, Düsseldorf becomes the AI capital of the Rhineland.
What really works in AI?
That is why AI Week Düsseldorf brings the strongest voices in AI from business and research to Düsseldorf from 23 to 27 November, from Microsoft and Messe Düsseldorf to Schunk and Gelsenwasser.
On stage: SAP with local AI, without data leaving the premises, and AI agents being hacked live.
The brightest minds in Düsseldorf’s agency scene show how AI is changing images and video.
Your week. Your topic.
Five days to move you forward.
Mon–Thu: 14:00–21:00 overall, themed afternoon and evening event.
Arrivals 13:15 · welcome 13:45 · sessions 14:00.
Friday: arrivals 13:20 · welcome 13:40 · sessions 14:00 · ends at 17:00, with no evening event.
Local AI & Open Source
Understand when running your own model on your own hardware is worthwhile
Afternoon 14:00–17:00HPC in NRW · 18:00–21:00
Explore this dayCyber Security
Use AI, recognise risks, secure systems and test your own agent in “Roast My Agent”
Afternoon 14:00–17:00AI Tinkerers · 18:00–21:00
Explore this dayVibe Coding for Business
Masterclass: Turn your own business need into a first prototype to take away
Afternoon 14:00–17:00AI is changing society · 18:00–21:00
Explore Vibe CodingGEO
Improve your company’s visibility in AI answers.
Afternoon 14:00–17:00AI is changing society · 18:00–21:00
Explore GEOCreative AI
AI in image, video and audio: how agencies and creative teams can use new technologies
Afternoon 14:00–17:00Panel and closing until 17:15 · no evening programme
Explore this dayWhich day is right for me?
- Management, functional leads, staff functions
- Monday Thursday evening
- Communications, marketing
- Thursday (GEO) Friday
- Creatives and agencies
- Friday
Two afternoons that complement each other
Monday + Thursday: Discover successful business applications and see how requirements become prototypes.
Tuesday + Wednesday: Explore local models and understand security questions around AI applications.
Thursday GEO + Friday: Explore visibility in AI answers and creative AI applications.
Suggestions to help you choose. You are free to explore the full programme; GEO and Vibe Coding run in parallel on Thursday.
Interested in more than one topic?
AI Week Pass
–
excl. VAT · – incl. VAT
All five afternoons are open to you. Choose which ones to attend.
- Expert talks and hands-on sessions
- Evening programme under the participation terms
- One personal pass – no need to attend every day
Current prices in the ticket shop.
Get your AI Week PassDay pass
–
excl. VAT · – incl. VAT
- One themed afternoon of your choice
- Expert talks and hands-on sessions
- The associated evening programme, where available
Current prices in the ticket shop.
Choose a dayFor – more excl. VAT, all five afternoons are open to you.
Two day passes cost – excl. VAT in total. The AI Week Pass costs – excl. VAT, and you decide which afternoons to attend.
You can buy a pass even if only one afternoon is definite. Places in capacity-limited hands-on sessions are reserved separately after purchase; a pass does not guarantee a place in every session. AI Tinkerers requires separate free registration.
Programme highlightsReal questions.
All speakers Real questions.
People with experience.
AI at Messe Düsseldorf: from framework to operational practice
From guidelines and structures to AI personas in marketing: how AI arrives in everyday work at Messe Düsseldorf.
Profile & sessions
AI at Messe Düsseldorf: from framework to operational practice
From guidelines and structures to AI personas in marketing: how AI arrives in everyday work at Messe Düsseldorf.
Profile & sessions
Safe and sustainable AI in business: Where are we heading and what are leading companies doing?
From AI pilots to reliable enterprise operations: bringing security, agent governance and AI FinOps together.
Profile & sessions
Economic miracle 2.0 ahead!
Unlocking proprietary company knowledge: industrial AI and the transformation of a family business.
Profile & sessions
AI transformation does not start with AI.
How clear responsibilities and collaboration turn AI into real changes at SCHUNK.
Profile & sessions
Using AI in Critical Environments
Operational AI needs good data, clear processes and clearly assigned responsibility.
Profile & sessions
Business First – Agentic Software Engineering
From business idea to finished software with AI agents, driven by the business departments.
Profile & sessions
AI 2026: AI and AI agents in the enterprise: trends, theses and hype
Agents between experiment and operating infrastructure, cost per token versus the total bill, effects on employment and IT jobs: an assessment with recommendations.
Profile & sessions
Parasol Island × Black Forest Labs: Production Craft and AI Video
How high-end animation, VFX and AI-driven workflows come together – from the studio that worked on the FLUX 3 intro film.
Profile & sessions
Fields of application, opportunities and benefits of Industrial AI
Where Industrial AI fits into engineering, production and value creation, and what it delivers.
Profile & sessions
Secure AI with NVIDIA DGX Spark: connecting SAP while keeping data in-house
From choosing a language model to running it securely: using NVIDIA DGX Spark, Yavuz Yıldız explains how local AI connects with SAP and makes company knowledge useful in-house.
Profile & sessions
Bold by Design. Digital Doppelgänger.
AI models of real target audiences show in advance how people respond to an event – and make room for bolder ideas.
Profile & sessionsMore sessions to follow.
18:00–21:00
Rheinland Pitch Special KI
AI startups from NRW pitch
Nine AI startups from NRW pitch in three groups, each with five minutes to present and five minutes for questions. Meet founders, investors and potential business partners. Starts at 18:00 with arrival and networking; the official programme ends at 21:00. The final startup selection will follow.
Evening programme and registration ↗18:00–21:00
HPC in NRW
Computing power. What can your business do with it?
What could your business do with access to powerful computers and AI cloud services? What could you build or achieve that was previously too expensive, too time-consuming, or simply out of reach?
Evening programme and registration ↗18:00–21:00
AI Tinkerers Meetup
Live demos of working AI projects, no slides
AI Tinkerers Düsseldorf brings live demos of working AI systems, code and prototypes. Every contribution is a demo, with technical questions and direct discussion with the builders. No slide presentations or sales pitches. The meetup is held in English.
Free admission. 18:00–21:00.
Event details and registration at AI Tinkerers
Evening programme and registration ↗18:00–21:00
AI is changing society – how can we shape it?
How do we protect democratic debate, give everyone a stake in the future, and create economic opportunity as AI becomes part of everyday life?
The way we build and use AI is changing how we get information, talk to each other, and make decisions. We turn to AI for advice. We use it to create content and get work done. Businesses and public agencies are giving AI systems a growing role in their decisions. Who shapes what we believe? Who gets to decide? And who benefits?
Evening programme and registration ↗Companies shaping AI Week.
Participating companies
Service providers with sessions and talks
Partners
Creative AI
MastermindCreative AI Mastermind
Organisers
The people. The knowledge. The depth.
Expertise
Behind every theme are specialists who know AI in detail and understand what it means for an organisation. Examine the choices behind real systems, discuss their limitations and ask the questions that matter to your work.
Technical depth
Models, architectures, security and operations, explained through the decisions made in implementation.
Business perspective
Connect technical developments to the workflows, responsibilities and priorities in your organisation.
Direct expert dialogue
Discuss your questions with experienced practitioners and peers who share responsibility for making AI work.
Meet the contributors in the daily programme below. Further contributions are welcome.
From insight to implementation
Apply expertise.
With precision.
Bring a question from your work or a concrete AI project. Develop your approach with expert input, structured application sessions and time to work through the details.
Understand the decisions.
Expert talks of up to 20 minutes including discussion on Monday to Wednesday; five impulses on Friday. Explore concrete applications, decisions and lessons from practice.
Work through the implementation.
Practical sessions complement the talks. Depending on the day, these take the form of workshops, masterclasses or guided exercises. The daily programme gives the current details.
Advance your own project.
Bring a question from your work and explore the next steps with practitioners. On Thursday, Vibe Coding for Business provides time to build an application individually or as a team.
Each day has its own programme. On Thursday, choose between Vibe Coding and the parallel GEO workshop. Friday combines five impulses, two parallel hands-on sessions and a closing panel.
Turn knowledge into practice.
Develop your own use case
Monday’s hands-on topics focus on your own use cases and business processes. More sessions to follow.
Explore business practicePut security to the test
Wednesday: “Ransomware live” with Alexander Haunhorst and “Roast My Agent” with Stephan Skrobisch. Times and requirements will follow.
Explore hands-on sessionsWork on your own project
On Thursday, build your own application in Vibe Coding for Business or work on visibility in AI search in the parallel GEO workshop. Two tracks, one day pass.
Explore the workshopFind all hands-on sessions and requirements on the individual day pages.
Beyond the afternoon
Perspectives
worth sharing.
Four evenings open up new perspectives: AI startup pitches on Monday, computing power for AI in NRW on Tuesday, live AI demos on Wednesday, and the transformation of society and companies on Thursday.
You can also join just for the evening. Afternoon and evening are separate events. Evening tickets for Monday, Tuesday and Thursday cost €10 each including VAT and are available in the ticket shop; AI Tinkerers is free and requires its own registration, even with a day or week pass.
Monday to Thursday: evening arrival and networking from 18:00; official programme ends at 21:00, including AI Tinkerers on Wednesday.
Convening AI expertise in Düsseldorf
Your hosts.
Organiser and meeting place for the week.
Since 2012, STARTPLATZ has been the meeting place and first point of contact for innovative startups and companies in the Rhineland, founded in Cologne and also in Düsseldorf since 2015. With locations in Cologne’s Mediapark and Düsseldorf’s Medienhafen, STARTPLATZ is the largest startup incubator and accelerator in North Rhine-Westphalia and has supported more than 1,500 startups, including DeepL, Cognigy, deepset and epilot. With accelerator programmes, an AZAV-certified AI Academy and more than 250 events a year, including Rheinland-Pitch, Germany’s largest pitch series, STARTPLATZ is today the AI Hub of North Rhine-Westphalia. It brings together builders, researchers and companies who want not only to understand AI but to apply it.
Co-organiser with the AI experts of ECODYNAMICS GmbH.
Since 2017, the experts at ECODYNAMICS have been helping companies use data-driven business models and generative AI to respond actively to changes in their markets and to shape them proactively. Since 2021, ECODYNAMICS has been one of OpenAI’s early adopters, integrating its AI models into client projects together with software companies. Its focus is on introducing generative AI and on specialised AI agents. Together with the F.A.Z., ECODYNAMICS runs the KI Business Akademie as a joint venture, offering AI masterclasses for specialists and executives. More than 1,650 companies and 430 top executives have been trained so far, in over 580 in-house masterclasses.
Discover the people and organisations behind the programme.
Creative AI Mastermind
Helping shape the Creative AI day.
Meet the hosts and partners ↗Magnific
Technology partner for Creative AI Day.
Magnific ↗BEST CCC
Support for communications and media relations
In person, in the Medienhafen
Meet us
in Düsseldorf.
STARTPLATZ Düsseldorf
Speditionstraße 15a
40221 Düsseldorf
23–27 November 2026
Monday to Friday
Travel and parking
Plan your journey to Speditionstraße 15a in the Medienhafen. Use the route planner for public transport or driving directions.
Please check parking options, charges and availability before travelling. Your ticket does not include a reserved parking space.
Find nearby parking ↗Good to know.
Do I need my own AI project?
No. The themed afternoons offer professional guidance and technical depth. A specific need of your own is particularly useful for Vibe Coding for Business.
Are evening events included in the ticket?
The associated evening event is included in the day pass, where one takes place. AI Tinkerers is free and requires separate registration. Evening tickets for Monday, Tuesday and Thursday cost €10 each including VAT.
Can I share a week pass with my team?
A personal week pass is for the same person on all five days. Companies can select several personal tickets. The company pass allows different attendees on different days.
What languages are the events held in?
Sessions are in German or English. AI Tinkerers on Wednesday evening is in English. The language of each session will be added to the full programme.
23–27 November 2026
For those
shaping AI.
For people who work with AI in business and the public sector: decision-makers, technical and specialist teams, developers and consultants, as well as HR, legal, staff units and media. On Friday, creatives and agencies too.
An AI project of your own is not required; for Thursday’s Vibe Coding for Business, a concrete business need is helpful. Ticket sales are scheduled to start on 19 October 2026.
Participation and registration
A day pass covers the specialist afternoon and its evening programme, where offered. The personal week pass covers all five days and cannot be shared between different people. Prices below exclude VAT.
Ticket prices
Current day and week pass prices are shown in the ticket section and ticket shop.
Separate evening tickets for Monday, Tuesday and Thursday: €10 each including VAT. AI Tinkerers on Wednesday is free.
Tickets and registration
Day passes, personal week passes, company passes and evening tickets are available in the ticket shop. AI Tinkerers has its own registration link in the evening programme. For ticket questions, contact ai-week@startplatz.de.
Session requirements
Each application session will specify the tools, access and preparation required.
Session languages
Talks are held in German or English. The language of each session will be indicated in the detailed programme.
Gallery
The place.
The possibilities.
A look at STARTPLATZ Düsseldorf. Select an image to see it in full.
