Deeptech startup Natif.ai, which educates machines to read, secures seven-digit seed funding

The Saarbrücken-based deepzech startup Natif.ai successfully closed of a seven-digit financing round with the lead investor High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF).

Founded in 2019, Natif.ai enables a fast and efficient way to productively bring artificial intelligence into the economy. Thanks to revolutionary AI models and a self-developed Deep-OCR, various documents can be analyzed extremely quickly, accurately and relevant data can be extracted. With this financing, the Natif.ai team is going to invest in personnel and infrastructure to meet the strong market demand.

The Saarbrücken-based startup is a spin-off of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI). With their focus on AI and the automation of business processes, Natif.ai is developing AI models that help companies and business software providers to significantly optimize document-based processes and reduce costs.

Christian Arndt, Investment Manager at High-Tech Gründerfonds, stated: “The experienced team of founders in combination with a superior technology that delivers significantly better capturing rates than all competing products convinced us. We are pleased to be able to accompany and support natif.ai in its further expansion.”

Natif.ai co-founder Johannes Korves commented: “It has never been more important to map processes in a lean, cost-efficient and digital way. No company can afford to give away resources. By analyzing invoices with unprecedented speed and accuracy and extracting relevant data, our customers can reduce the associated costs by up to 90% – even compared to previous solutions on the market. This is particularly interesting for banks and retailers, as well as for insurance companies and opens up new ways of using data.”

The experienced team of founders had already proven before that they can successfully build startups and lead them to an exit. The serial entrepreneur Christophe Hocquet and Johannes Korves were significantly responsible for the sale of Brille24 as managing directors and most recently led the digital online business in Germany at the listed company Essilor-Luxottica. Their co-founder, Manuel Zapp, was in charge of the research and development department and consistently focused on the use of AI, having previously worked at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI). There he accompanied machine learning projects for DAX companies. The founding team is completed by Berenger Laurent, the former CTO for the international business of Brille24 and in a leading position at the technology department of BNP Paribas.