News, Success Stories | 27. May, 2026

AI Factory Austria AI:AT at ViennaUP 2026

On May 22, the AI Factory Austria AI:AT opened its coworking hub in Vienna for an all-day open house as part of the city-wide ViennaUP – an event that celebrates entrepreneurship and innovation, brings the city to life and brings together the Viennese startup ecosystem with founders, investors, talents and enablers from all over the world. 

We welcomed around 250 visitors who took part in workshops, explored the hub on guided tours and engaged directly with teams from the fields of artificial intelligence and high-performance computing.

Startup pitches

Der Tag begann mit den Startup-Pitch-Sessions – einem der Highlights des Tages. Mehrere Teams aus dem AI:AT Hub präsentierten dabei ihre Projekte, gefolgt von direkten Q&A-Runden mit dem Publikum.
 
It was a clear win-win: coworking members had the opportunity to showcase their work, test their messaging, receive immediate feedback, and connect with potential collaborators and peers. At the same time, visitors gained a rare, direct look into concrete AI applications in the making – from early-stage ideas to products already in or approaching beta testing.
 
The variety of approaches, use cases, and levels of maturity made the session especially engaging and showed how much innovation is currently emerging within the hub.
 
Pitching startups:
 
 

Across the day, the Open House format highlighted the value of proximity: bringing founders, researchers, students, and practitioners into one shared space enabled conversations that would otherwise require multiple separate meetings. A lot of exchanges were informal, insightful, and highly productive. Many of them will outpour into new collaborations, projects, and just friendships.

Hands-on Workshops

A central element of the program were three workshops, each designed to translate complex AI topics into applicable insights:

AI Opportunity Sprint

In 90 minutes, participants identified practical AI use cases for their startup or idea and conducted a quick assessment of potential impact and implementation effort.
 
Delivered by Ann-Sophie Brenk (AI Factory Austria AI:AT) and Emanuel Stadler (Optima-Solutions)

Build Your First AI Agent

Participants learned how to create a simple AI agent or automation workflow that can be immediately tested and used.
 
Delivered by Emanuel Stadler (Optima-Solutions) and Andreas Schaubmaier & Lukas Ebermann (Soneo.ai)

How to Trustworthy AI

A practical overview of legal, ethical, and data protection requirements for using AI, including EU AI Act and GDPR, with a strong focus on immediate application.
 
Delivered by Michael Löffler and Cornelia Reiter (AI Factory Austria AI:AT)

ViennaUP once again showed how strongly Vienna’s innovation ecosystem benefits from open, accessible formats that connect people across disciplines and roles. For AI Factory Austria AI:AT, the Open House underlined its role as a connector within Austria’s AI landscape—linking ideas, expertise, and impactful AI applications.

 
AI Factory Austria AI:AT thanks all speakers, coworking teams, workshop hosts, and visitors for an engaging and collaborative day.
 

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