Double victory for Exaere at the third Future Founder Demo Day
Nine startup projects, implemented by 25 students from seven universities in the Hamburg metropolitan region – that is the result of the third edition of the Future Founder support programme, presented by Impossible Founders. The four most promising teams introduced themselves at the Demo Day in the Factory Hammerbrooklyn.
Early detection of bridge damage and Alzheimer's predisposition
Five other university projects that are not part of Future Founder were also briefly presented during the event. These included Fiber Guard, which is developing a technology for permanent inspection for the early detection of damage in structures such as bridges. Fiber Guard won the Impossible Founders Sprint hackathon in December 2025. Dr. Sanaz Bahari Javan gave a keynote speech. The biochemist comes from a research background, has worked in the pharmaceutical industry for years, and now wants to launch a test with her startup VitaSeq that detects a genetic predisposition to Alzheimer's before the onset of the disease.
AI assists with car sales and data analysis
Among the startups currently emerging from the three-month Future Founder programme is UMI, which presented an AI assistant for the automotive industry. It is designed to relieve salespeople of much of their bureaucratic work so that they have more time for their actual job. Accelerating processes is also the goal of espectroAI. Spectroscopy, which is used extensively in research, generates large amounts of data that are costly to evaluate. Here, too, artificial intelligence can help, completing tasks that would otherwise take days or even weeks in a matter of minutes.
An electric walking aid and recycling of rare earths
The SafeWalker project is already relatively advanced. The team brought along a functional prototype of its electrically powered walking aid, which is designed to make mobility safer and easier, especially for older people. The double winner of the evening was Exaere. Both the audience and a panel of experts voted for a process that enables the recycling of rare earths. These metals play an important role in modern high technology, for example in smartphones or electric cars, but until now have been difficult to isolate from waste electronic equipment. If Exaere proves successful, it would reduce costs and dependence on market-dominating countries such as China.
