
Head of Challenges @SPRIND - Federal Agency for Breakthrough Innovation. Leading Challenges in AI, drug development, biotech, energy, computing & more.
Joined May 2019
- Tweets1K
- Following633
- Followers479
- Likes1.6K
Jano Costard retweeted
Replying to @PGelsinger
Such an interesting space, has always been. Thanks for sharing @PGelsinger! We @SPRIND have the call open for the AI native chip design challenge: sprind.org/en/actions/challe…
One of the first projects initiated at Germany's Federal Agency for Breakthrough Innovation @SPRIND. It's quite a sight! More importantly, it brings cheap & clean power!
Jano Costard retweeted
Everyone loves shitting on European tech. Fine.
Last week in Berlin, I watched 13 teams pitch.
13 teams ACTUALLY TRYING instead of whining.
📌 Save this post if you want to know who is trying to build the next generation of European AI & Robotics.
(Live Pitch Videos) 🧵 👇
Müssen im KI-Rennen aufholen & eigene Stärken entwickeln. Dazu haben @MonikaSchnitzer et al Stellung bezogen. Fast erstaunlich: Deutschland ist Vorbild mit @SPRIND Challenges die Talente mit Geld, Entscheidungen in 14 Tagen & wenig Bürokratie überzeugen. faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/k… – at Sandersdorf-Brehna, Deutschland
Today in @nytimes: How Germany's @SPRIND "offers a breath of optimism" and how we work with Sweden and with currently created Dutch and French ARPAs to make sure 🇪🇺 builds breakthrough tech. nytimes.com/2026/08/19/busin…? – at Berlin, Germany
Jano Costard retweeted
SPRIN-D robotics challenge
Deadline: Oct 22, 2026
Who? EU/EFTA/UK
Funding 1st stage: €1M platforms / HW €2.4M; up to €7.2M total per team in stage 4 both tracks
sprind.org/en/actions/challe…
Jano Costard retweeted
Bis zu 12 Teams können an dieser SPRIND Challenge teilnehmen - und erhalten in den nächsten 24 Monaten bis zu 1,5 Mio. Euro. Die Bewerbungsfrist läuft bis zum 16.10. Um diese SPRIND Challenge vorzustellen, bieten wir am 20.08. ein Webinar an buff.ly/0QisO2b
Jano Costard retweeted
The last 6 months I’ve been working on robotics experiments solo.
I’m going all in on it now.
I am forming a team to build a Semi-Humanoid 🦾🧠: 7-DoF arms, dexterous hands, mobile base, pan/tilt stereo head and of course the teleop data pipeline and policies to run it. Target for working prototype EOY. World class German engineering both HW & SW/AI.
I’m now for the first phase looking for 2–3 AI & data driven robo pilled guru-level 🐐 people to build it with me from day zero:
- grippers & UMI counterparts
- arms, head, base
- recording / (post-)training / inference
- mapping & navigation
- data collection, retargeting, annotations (students welcome)
If you are an EE/MechE with strong robotics background located near Münster or AIE anywhere within 🇩🇪 who wants to build general purpose robots for every home and factory - team up with me on this -> DM 🤗
Jano Costard retweeted
Continuous Intelligence has been awarded up to €3 million through SPRIND’s Next Frontier AI Challenge.
We are one of ten teams selected from 500+ applications to enter Stage 1.
Read more
continuousintelligence.co.uk…
We’re hiring in London
continuousintelligence.co.uk…
We just started our @SPRIND Continuous Hormone Monitoring Challenge with 8 incredible teams. @Forbes with more insights forbes.com/sites/geristengel…
If we want to change the world, we need to build. Most funding agencies unfortunately are not set up to catalyze building breakthrough innovation. We work on changing that at @SPRIND – at Berlin, Germany
Replying to @foresightinst
From vision to real impact. @jncstrd and @joemeyerowitz on turning ambitious research into results: youtu.be/Je4v-WZVzUo?si=ID2G…
Jano Costard retweeted
We're selected among 2% of startups for SPRIND's Next Frontier AI Challenge
This competitive program brings €125M to support teams building new AI paradigms.
Jano Costard retweeted
We are launching Aionic Labs (@aionic_labs). 🔥🚀
With support from SPRIN-D’s Next Frontier AI initiative, we are building a frontier AI company at the heart of Europe’s leading AI ecosystem.
Clinicians decide when a patient needs intervention. Factory teams catch machine problems before production stops. Operators determine which alarms demand action.
These are some of the most consequential decisions in the physical economy, and they all depend on time-series data.
We are developing Time-Series Language Models (TSLMs) that can understand these signals, reason over them, predict what comes next, and suggest actions in natural language.
TSLMs connect sensor data with language experts use to make critical decisions.
Europe is the right place to build this technology. We have world-class research, top technical talent, and decades of industrial expertise and data.
Our team brings together former founders, frontier tech experience, and world-class researchers from Stanford, Harvard, ETH Agentic Systems Lab (@ETH_agent_lab), ETH AI Center (@ETH_AI_Center) and CDTM (@cdtm_munich). We have built companies, developed technology at scale, and advanced research at the frontier of AI.
Over the coming months, we will:
→ Launch selected TSLM pilots across manufacturing, healthcare, energy, logistics, telecom, insurance, and banking.
→ Build an open research community around OpenTSLM (@OpenTSLM) and TimeNet.
→ Enable trusted data partnerships across industries.
→ Accelerate the Time-Series AI community in Zurich and Europe.
From Zurich. For Europe. 🇨🇭🇪🇺
Join our mission and help build a Frontier AI Lab from day one. Career and pilot program links are in the comments.
Managing Directors: Robert Jakob (@robertjakob), Thomas Kaar (@thomaskaar)
Supported by: SPRIN-D (@SPRIND)
Photo: Felix Adler für SPRIND
True sovereignty isn't copied. It's built. Here are the 10 teams we fund with €125M to create the next AI paradigm in Europe! Learn more about the teams and the @SPRIND Next Frontier AI Challenge 👇
1/
Teams are working on physical AI & world models for robotics, AI for live streams of real-world signals, systems that learn continuously, the automation of scientific discovery, foundation models trained on other model's weights and more.
4/
Among them: spinouts from Oxford, ETH Zurich, the University of St. Gallen and the University of Tübingen, with founders who previously built AI at Google DeepMind, OpenAI and Hugging Face. They begin work this month.
Learn more at: sprind.org/en/actions/challe…
If European talent has to wait months to get funding, it is going to look for the money elsewhere.
Talked to @jgro_the about how @SPRIND enabled 14 days time to money in a federal agency.
timeshighereducation.com/new…





















