By Tanja Zimmermann
Photo: vegefox.com from adobe stock
As commercial artificial intelligence technology company, 21strategies is deemed eligible to governmental tax incentives for their proprietary research and development (R&D) activities. After a thorough review, the German government grants 21strategies an incentive for their 2020 R&D activities to expand its artificial intelligence technology (AI). The German government rates AI as a key future technology and provides cash incentives for research and development. 21strategies was evaluated and categorized as eligible for funding after a detailed review. The German government's research funds are specifically aimed at further developing and expanding AI technology that has already been developed. 21strategies' AI technology is already being used by major German corporations.
Research allowance for important AI technology
As a technology company, 21strategies particularly meets the requirements for the research and development allowance. The Munich-based startup is a deep tech company that is in the B2B fintech space. The huge advantage is that 21strategies has not only developed a promising technology but is already actively deployed and used by several leading large German corporations.
The startup has developed an AI technology to optimally hedge financial market risks such as currency, interest rate and commodity price risks. This not only protects companies' EBIT, but also improves their financial resilience. The flagship product hedge21 innovates hedging by using algorithmic AI decision support. CFOs and their treasurers are the main beneficiaries. Because hedge21 is SaaS, rapid customization can be implemented to meet the specific conditions and KPIs of individual companies.
AI research and development as a central task of the German federal government
The German government incentivizes digitization and AI to make the economy and society considerably more resilient. To this end, the German government has set up an AI strategy that includes substantial funding each year and would like to expand governance structures in a correspondingly advantageous way. R&D by small and medium-sized enterprises, and notably startus, is to be supported.
According to a decision by the governing coalition of the German government in June 2020, spending to promote AI will be increased. AI funding is to be expanded to five billion euros by 2025. Accordingly, the German government's "Artificial Intelligence Strategy" (Strategie Künstliche Intelligenz der Bundesregierung) as of November 2018 will be continued. The German government's goal is to strengthen AI research and development and transfer it to real applications. The German government sees this as a central task to strengthen and continue to ensure the digital sovereignty and competitiveness of Germany and Europe. In particular, it sees the transfer of AI-based technologies from research and development to companies as an essential task. The framework conditions are to be continuously improved to establish and further develop an attractive and strong ecosystem.
The demand for AI technologies and thus for AI-based applications should increase rapidly in the next few years, especially in combination with a continuous improvement of the framework conditions.
