Aimondo AG: eCommerce AI expands as Swiss public limited company

Zurich, January 2023. With the end of 2022, the central management of the originally German development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for digitally controlled trade has arrived completely in Switzerland. The expansion into international markets is now taking place from Zurich. The original AI development core was relocated to Cyprus for this purpose. The German technical team is a Berlin-based GmbH, while management, marketing and global sales management take place in Switzerland. Basic programming is concentrated in Germany. German-speaking customers are initially served by the Berlin company. High-quality AI programming of isolated modules, network and computing power and outsourced marketing services have already been sourced worldwide for several years.

This kind of global diversification is now the logical parallel to the global marketing approach and feature of decentralised efficiency culture. Heinrich Müller, founder and CEO of the group compares: “AI companies, such as Open AI, are endowed with over 10 billion dollars of American investment capital. With US$80 million in revenue in 2022 and a value that is already seen between $20 and $40 billion today. In our niche, with Aimondo and the commercial proof of concept, we are much smaller but technically comparably far and – in contrast to the big role models – already had our sights set on breaking even on a monthly basis last year. And this with an international investment volume in the low double-digit millions – which is at the lowest entry threshold for AI development. According to American arithmetic, we as an AI company would probably already be worth well over a billion today.”

This is certainly true and is proven in almost all areas of the current information industry. It’s just that Germany offers a different start-up environment than the US market. It is significant, for example, that one of the Open AI founders stated at an investor conference in 2019 – four years after the company was founded – that he had “no idea” how the company could become profitable. The audience laughed when he added in all seriousness that only the targeted AI, on demand, could probably develop an idea of how Open AI investors would receive profit.

You don’t have to go that far with Aimondo, because the business model already exists and works. Many of the early bond subscribers who helped finance the German Aimondo GmbH (which was the cornerstone of the development) switched from their original fixed-interest loans to the promising preferred shares of the Swiss Aimondo AG. From savings book to company shareholding in record time.

“We have our sights firmly set on the US,” Müller notes with regard to the start-up friendliness paired with the technical/commercial culture of success in the digital sector in the United States. “On the one hand, according to our findings, we are technically and commercially fit. On the other hand, the capital market there is open to AI companies with concrete expansion plans. In our start-up country Germany, there have been judicial measures for over two years that cut off the German Aimondo GmbH – the nucleus of the Aimondo technology and formerly a 100% subsidiary of Aimondo AG – from outside capital. An absurdity for a young company with ambitious basic development in the field of artificial intelligence.

For this purpose, the authorities use an instrument that was very rarely used just a few years ago: the asset recovery law. In the past, it was only applied when questionable facts were clearly and legally incriminating. This has changed completely in Germany in recent times. The instrument of confiscation of assets, which used to be used with a sense of proportion, has given way to an excess in the opposite direction: it is now used in almost every economic procedure. Often of the kind that goes far beyond the goal in an unjustifiable manner and thus stands in serious conflict with the presumption of innocence required by the rule of law[1] . Investigation proceedings without “sufficient factual indications”[2] , which are often only based on an imagined initial suspicion, almost regularly begin with arrest orders. Considerable assets are “frozen” in the process. And this happens in an early phase of the proceedings, in which the presumption of innocence[3] must apply all the more clearly and with greater weight. On top of that, these serious encroachments on fundamental rights are accompanied by a length of proceedings that are unbearably delayed even in the case of less complex contexts. In this way, self-fulfilling prophecies and self-executing facts are created – of an existentially interfering nature in fundamentally protected, established and practised businesses.

The right of confiscation is increasingly becoming a self-executing advance of the legal effects of massively and irreversibly interfering property sanctions, while “charges” exist only at the stage of mere suspicions that are considered possible.  This irretrievably undermines the value of the presumption of innocence under convention law. The decisions to arrest the German Aimondo GmbH have the effect of a “minor judgement”. This is because the effect can no longer be reversed. This calls for compliance with constitutional requirements – especially those of proportionality.

Heinrich Müller adds that the endangerment of the company’s value by arbitrary judicial measures was recklessly accepted. The disproportionate blocking of outside capital is also combined with a disregard for the fundamental legal duties of the judicial body “public prosecutor’s office”. These duties include in Germany “… to investigate not only the circumstances serving to incriminate but also those serving to exonerate…”. In the case of the German Aimondo GmbH, it is written in response to a corresponding reproach that “of course exculpatory moments are taken into account“.  As the saying goes: “Seek and ye shall find“. The reverse conclusion is certainly permissible. He who does not investigate, i.e. does not seek, does not find. And he who does not find cannot take anything into account. An irrefutable causal chain.

The founders, developers and managers of the AI core competence for the eCommerce sector have more than once offered to demonstrate the lack of knowledge of the authorities on the Aimondo topic of online trade, artificial intelligence and the importance of Big Data-based business intelligence in combination with advanced algorithms in detail and with real customer data. The lawyers complemented this by offering explanatory legal talks as a remedy for the complete ignorance of competent investigators of even the simplest economic processes and usual procedures.

After the concerns and measures invented in Germany were sufficiently experienced, a modified globalisation tactic emerged for Aimondo AG. It leads directly to countries with faster technology acceptance.

Thomas Baierlein, the marketing specialist with corporate experience on the Aimondo AG Board of Directors, already has the concrete global know-how as a corporate manager of leading European companies. He has successfully begun to take responsibility for the British market first. This is because from there it is easier to enter into dialogue with the American blue chips and other multi-nationals via corporations like Walmart. He brought the subsidiaries in Austria, Italy and the UK into operational business in 2022.

In other countries defined as potential TTIP partners as well as some other target markets, suitable user companies have been approached internationally since January 2023 using state-of-the-art digital processes. Industry expertise is thereby vertically transferred from previous customer experiences to the target countries as well as their leading digital providers. Initial presentations will take place via specific social media platforms, supervised by native-speaking specialists from the new Aimondo development sub-centre in Cyprus. With this simple combination of methods, the first concrete results were achieved after only a few weeks. The way is now being paved for a listing on a stock exchange in 2023. Namely, to break through the delay caused by authorities, to catch up and to convince receptive markets all over the world with “AI made in Europe”.

 

[1] The presumption of innocence is also a principle of the rule of law in German law, according to which an accused person must be presumed innocent until legally proven guilty.

[2] Prerequisite for and obligation to initiate investigations by the public prosecutor’s office according to the principle of legality. An initial suspicion exists if there are sufficient factual indications of a criminal offence. Mere suspicions or speculations are not sufficient for this.

[3] See ¹

Back to News