If you ask Adrian Locher about AI, he first issues a warning. “To be completely honest: Most of what we as ‘AI startups’ are currently seeing will not work from my point of view,” says the Swiss. That’s what the hype about the topic is all about. If founders say they would do something with AI, they would first get the attention of investors. That’s why everyone was doing it. But: “These startups will all be gone in two years.”
AI is the new steam engine
Nevertheless, Locher naturally believes in AI, very much so. He even thinks that artificial intelligence will affect humanity at least as much as the invention of the steam engine. And he has put a significant part of his own fortune on the subject: he has been a serial founder and angel investor for 15 years.
With DeinDeal he once built up a leading e-commerce company in Switzerland and sold it in 2015 with a turnover of 100 million euros. Then he went to San Diego for a while, in 2016 he started with Rasmus Rothe Merantix, what they call a “venture studio”. A kind of incubator and hub for AI startups, all coming together at Lochers AI Campus in Berlin.
Source: https://www.businessinsider.de/gruenderszene/technologie/rising-stars-ki/
