Participation in the Energie AG Startup Innovation Challenge 2025 was an absolute highlight.
The second round of this international competition was held under the motto “Empowering customers to shape a sustainable future” a guiding idea that perfectly matches our mission to promote decarbonization in everyday life.
From concept to reality – our path through the innovation process
The competition started in September 2024 with a creative kick-off. Within a few weeks, two central challenge topics and one special prize emerged: the “Decarbonization Challenge.”
From more than 300 applications from 57 countries, ten start-ups were invited to the Pitch Day on February 26, 2025 at the PowerCenter Linz and we were proud to be one of them.
This was followed by an intensive nine-week proof-of-concept phase, which reached its peak at the Demo Day on May 6, 2025. There we presented aenergi in the interactive Experience Areas, received valuable feedback, and were able to demonstrate directly how our technology reduces emissions.
The challenges & the winning start-ups
Challenge 1: Informed Decisions for a Greener Tomorrow
Winner: Watt-IS (Portugal) with an AI-based platform for analyzing smart meter data. This aims to make energy consumption more efficient.
Challenge 2: Efficient data integration for sustainable decisions Winner:
Thirdmind (Austria) – AI methods for standardizing sustainable product data for the Zusa platform.
Special prize: Decarbonization Challenge
Our moment! Together with ALGBIO (Istanbul, Turkey) and Zentur.io GmbH (Landshut, Germany) we were honored for our particularly visionary climate protection innovations and each received 5,000 euros in prize money. For us, above all, this was a strong signal that our work is relevant.
Additionally, there was also an audience award: Zählerfreunde (Munich, Germany) for transparent access to smart meter data.
Why this challenge was so valuable for us
• Innovation meets practice: We were able to test aenergi in real application scenarios together with experts from Energie AG.
• International exchange: The diversity of the start-ups – from Portugal to Turkey – broadened our horizons.
• Sustainable focus: The challenge actively supported the path to climate neutrality by 2035 which is exactly our goal.