The German AI Prize (“Deutscher KI-Preis”) is launched since 2019 by WELT, one of Germany's most widely-read daily newspapers, with three awards of “Innovationspreis” (Innovation Award), the “Anwenderpreis” (User Award) and the “KI-Start-up-Preis” (AI Start-Up Prize).

CLAIRE and ELLIS shared the Innovation Award endowed with €100,000, acknowledging their ground-breaking achievements and contributions in the research and development of AI, as the prize is aimed at research institutes, foundations, and the like.

“We are delighted to see our vision and work for European excellence in AI recognised so prominently, and to share this important award with our colleagues in ELLIS, many of whom are also affiliated with CLAIRE”, says Prof. Holger Hoos from Leiden University (The Netherlands), one of the co-founders and chair of the board of directors of CLAIRE. 

Prof. Philipp Slusallek from DFKI (Germany), Director of Strategy and co-founder of CLAIRE added that more cooperation and joint projects between CLAIRE and ELLIS as organisations would be extremely beneficial for the German and European AI landscape. 

“Not only are we stronger together, but we are deeply convinced that Germany and Europe can only survive global competition in AI and its many applications through a joint, well-orchestrated effort by the large and diverse AI ecosystem,” Prof. Hoos said while accepting the award on behalf of CLAIRE.

Founded in 2018, CLAIRE (https://claire-ai.org) is an organisation created by the European AI community that seeks to strengthen European excellence in AI research and innovation, with a strong focus on human-centred AI. CLAIRE aims to ensure that societies and citizens across all of Europe, and beyond, benefit from AI as a major driver of innovation, future growth and competitiveness, and to achieve worldwide brand recognition for "AI made in Europe".

Sharing the prize’s honour and cash award, Dr Nuria Oliver, co-founder and vice-president of ELLIS said “our goal was to establish the best possible conditions for research and innovation in European AI. Our grassroots initiative aims to attract and retain the world’s best talent, intensify cross-border collaboration between Europe’s best research institutions, and build partnerships between academia and the private sector. We’ve made great progress in the last three years, and this prize is an important acknowledgement and recognition of our contributions.” 

ELLIS was co-initiated by scientists from the Tübingen AI Center and the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in April 2018 as the first European Network of Excellence in AI. The ELLIS mission is to create a diverse European network that promotes research excellence and advances breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI), and a pan-European PhD program to educate the next generation of AI researchers. 

The Prize’s non-endowed User Award honours companies and entrepreneurs for outstanding achievements in the practical application of AI. The Prize’s AI Start-Up Prize, worth €10,000, chooses from businesses with a place of business in the Berlin-Brandenburg capital region whose business model exemplifies and shows innovative use of AI, and which are not older than five years at the time of the award ceremony.