AI Austria monthly: January'25 Update

Year in review, event recaps, new Austrian AI landscape, call to actions & much more

Matthias Grabner

Ting Wasner-Lian

Clemens Wasner

, and 2 others

Jan 07, 2025

Hello 2025! We are back and wish you a happy new year. To get you started we briefly look back on a very successful 2024 and recent highlights in the Austrian AI Ecosystem.

🚀 Latest Developments

📈 AI Austria - Year in review

Community Growth: Our LinkedIn page is nearing 9,000 followers, marking the highest growth rate since we launched. Additionally, our newsletter subscriber base grew by an impressive 50% year-over-year!

New genAI Community: We launched a dedicated genAI community, led by Ruben Hetfleisch, Sebastian Archila, and Philipp Besinger, fostering knowledge-sharing on generative AI topics.

Regional Roundtables: We organized AI roundtables in Carinthia, Styria , and Tyrol in collaboration with Austria Wirtschaftsservice.

Events & Streaming: Our YouTube channel featured live streams of major events, including the State of AI Event in partnership with IECT – Hermann Hauser and our flagship AAIC 2024 – Applied AI Conference, co-hosted with ADVANTAGE AUSTRIA (stream, recap)

New Board Member: We welcomed Patrick Ratheiser as a new member of our board, adding valuable expertise to our leadership team.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to making 2024 a remarkable year for AI Austria!

🇦🇹 Austria AI Landscape 2024 released

New year, new landscape. Clemens Wasner released the annual update of the AI Landscape Austria. As in previous years the ecosystem saw tremendous growth across all dimensions, now totaling more than 400 players. » checkout the landscape and further analysis

🌟 ReCap: AI Stammtisch Styria Edition

Together with aws Austria Wirtschaftsservice AI Adoption, we hosted the first AI Stammtisch Styria in Graz. Local ecosystem players such as Capito, Innophore, Scantech, Fraunhofer and Leftshift One, shared exciting AI use cases, followed by a dynamic exchange of ideas, best practices, and new connections. A big thank you to all speakers and co-organizers for an inspiring evening! Furthermore, the first pre-release version of the AI Landscape Styria was presented at the Stammtisch. » full recap

🇪🇺 Article: The AI year 2024 - Europe, the failing continent

In his annual recap on Brutkasten, our chairperson discusses the key developments in AI for 2024 and raises a critical problem: Europe’s lost decade in tech policy and why it no longer makes sense to include Europe in any serious discussion around AI (that ship has sailed for good) but on how to enable the next wave of companies to grow. » read the full article here

📅 Deadline Extended: Expedition Zukunft START
The Austrian Research Promotion Agency has extended the deadline for Expedition Zukunft START - Business Edition to February 18, 2025. This program offers up to €80,000 in funding for early-stage projects aiming to create groundbreaking innovations in technology, science, and social impact. Eligible participants include startups, SMEs, individuals, and research institutions. Projects can focus on areas like testing new applications for existing technologies, solving complex problems, or developing technical concepts and prototypes. » Learn more and apply here

🦾 Study on the Impact of AI on the Labor Market in Carinthia

KI4Life at Fraunhofer Austria is conducting a study on behalf of the Carinthian Public Employment Service to explore how AI affects the labor market. They are seeking input from experts like you. » Take part in the survey here

✨ Generative AI News ✨

👉 Snap Inc. has unveiled an advanced yet compact AI model capable of generating high-resolution images directly on mobile devices. Despite its modest size of fewer than 400 million parameters, the model outperforms significantly larger alternatives like SDXL (with seven times more parameters) in certain benchmarks. Remarkably, it can generate a full image in just 1.4 seconds.
👉 Google has announced advancements in its Veo and Imagen models (video and image generation). These next-generation models excel in understanding real-world physics and human expressions, marking a significant leap in their development. Additionally, Google introduced "Whisk," a natural language-based tool for seamless image editing, making creative adjustments more accessible than ever.
👉 Elon Musk’s xAI has secured a substantial $6 billion in funding, positioning it as a formidable rival to OpenAI. Musk revealed that much of the funding is allocated to infrastructure to meet the high computational demands of generative AI. This also highlights his mission to counter OpenAI’s transition away from its non-profit roots (Funfact: Musk sued OpenAI for that).
👉 The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has published its inaugural "Patent Landscape Report – Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI)" offering a comprehensive analysis of patent activity in the field. Of the 54,000 GenAI patents tracked, over 25% were filed in 2023 alone. Notably, China leads the way with over 38,000 patents, dwarfing the United States’ second-place total of just over 6,000.

🌏 Asia spotlight

China’s DeepSeek has launched DeepSeek-V3, an open-source model trained on a modest $5.6M budget. Despite this, it outperforms many competitors, excelling in coding and math. Its efficient Mixture-of-Experts design and open-source release position it as a standout in AI innovation. Try it here: https://www.deepseek.com/

Tencent’s open-source HunyuanVideo model is making waves with its low hardware requirements (12GB VRAM) and vibrant community innovations. Highlights include faster video generation, video-to-video transformations, and creative tools like custom "loras" for tailored outputs. Its open-source release is driving both accessibility and cutting-edge experimentation in AI video. Check it out on Github

South Korea will launch AI-powered digital textbooks in March 2025, tailored to students’ needs. Backed by $70M for infrastructure and $760M for teacher training, the initiative aims to enhance AI literacy and bridge learning gaps. Amid privacy and preparedness concerns, the rollout has been adjusted, with textbooks classified as supplementary materials. Read more here

Nvidia has expanded its hiring in China, adding over 1,000 employees in 2024, including 200 new Beijing-based researchers focused on autonomous driving tech.

https://www.investopedia.com/nvidia-boosts-china-hiring-for-ai-driven-cars-says-report-8760267#:~:text=KEY TAKEWAYS,the start of the year

China’s developers turning US sanctions, regulatory restrictions and resource constraints into less-noticed AI innovations.

China has established a technical committee for Artificial Intelligence (AI) standardization, which is among its efforts to advance the development of the AI industry and empower new industrialization.

Apple in talks with Tencent, ByteDance to roll out AI features in China.

Baidu's Apollo autonomous vehicles granted license to test in Hong Kong.