13. December 2024

Merry Christmas

The holiday season is a perfect opportunity to pause and say thank you. We look back on 2024 with great appreciation for your support, ideas, and collaboration, which have been instrumental in our success.

As we enter the new year, we wish you and your loved ones all the best: good health, exciting projects, and moments of rest to recharge. We look forward to continuing our journey together in 2025, exploring new paths and celebrating shared achievements.

With this in mind, we wish you happy holidays and a fantastic start to the new year!

Warm regards from Basel,
The Karakun Team

4. September 2024

Diwodo 2024

Why seek far and wide when the good is just around the corner – like digitalization and innovation? Everyone needs something different, but ultimately, everyone needs the same: creative minds on the same level, competence, and efficiency.

The solution for all companies looking for inspiration and contacts in the digital economy can be found right on their doorstep: The Digitale Wocke Dortmund (short: #diwodo) will take place from September 23-28, 2024. Our experts have prepared the following presentations (all in German):

man and woman talking into megaphone in front of yellow background. Karakun logo is on the lower right.

Was dein Browser über dich verrät

Unsere Browser, die wir täglich verwenden, geben beim Besuchen von Webseiten viel mehr Informationen preis, als wir denken. Damit wird es Webseiten leicht gemacht, uns als Besucher eindeutig zu identifizieren und das auch ohne Login. Versuchen wir uns zu schützen, könnte das dazu führen, dass wir es dadurch den Webseiten sogar noch leichter machen.

In diesem Vortrag geht es darum aufzuzeigen, was die verschiedenen Browser den Webseiten, die wir besuchen verraten und was wir dagegen tun können (oder auch nicht).

Kann Generative AI die Aufgaben der Softwareentwicklung wirklich verstehen?

KI-basierte Dienste wie ChatGPT und Copilot versprechen, die Qualität und Effizienz der Programmierung zu steigern. Solche Tools können einen großen Einfluss darauf haben, welche Informationen Entwickler konsumieren und wiederverwenden – und damit unser Wissen, unsere Überzeugungen, Entscheidungen und Handlungen beeinflussen.

In diesem Vortrag werden wir zunächst einen Überblick über die Grundlagen der Generativen KI geben. Anschließend werden wir die Toolchain und die Auswirkungen von KI auf die Praxis der Softwareentwicklung und die Arbeits- und Denkweise von Softwareentwicklern diskutieren.

Suchen und chatten – das Beste aus beiden Welten

Generative KI-Chatbots wie ChatGPT und die ihnen zugrunde liegenden Large Language Models (LLMs) liefern beeindruckende Ergebnisse beim Verstehen und Generieren von Texten in menschlicher Sprache. Wir haben solche Chatbots nahtlos mit den Suchfunktionalitäten unserer HIBU-Plattform kombiniert, um das Beste aus beiden Welten zu erhalten.

Durch die Anwendung von Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) leitet die Chatmaschine ihre Antworten aus dem in den relevanten Dokumenten eingebetteten Wissen ab – anstatt sie zu erfinden.

Hackergarten Dortmund: September Edition

Der dritte Dortmunder Hackergarten findet im Rahmen der DiWoDo statt. Lasst uns zusammenkommen, um in einer unterstützenden und kollaborativen Umgebung etwas zu schaffen, zu lernen und zu wachsen. Es ist egal, ob Du Anfänger oder Experte bist. Diese Gruppe richtet sich an alle, die Spaß am Ausprobieren von Technologien und Diskussion über diese haben.

As always, all events are free. To register, you need to sign up on the platform https://diwodo.de. Of course, we are also happy to provide individual consulting. Send us an email or give us a call!

visit diwodo platform
send us a message
give us a call
29. August 2024

AI Chat Meets Document Search

Generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT and their underlying Large Language Models (LLMs) have taken the world by storm, with their powerful capabilities to understand and generate human language text. Despite this hype, the field is still exploring the best ways to leverage LLMs productively while avoiding their problematic tendency to produce hallucinatory outputs.

We primarily investigate the benefit of AI chatbots in conjunction with a widespread problem: searching for documents or relevant information hidden within them. We have implemented numerous customer projects in this area, leading to the development of our HIBU platform. This platform already includes countless features and enables the rapid and cost-effective development of custom search solutions.

A seamless integration of chatbot and search engine combines and extends the individual strengths of both systems, as demonstrated by the following use cases we have implemented:

  • Users search for documents (or content elements), open one of the search results in an integrated document viewer, and use the chatbot to ask questions about that document. All of this happens within the same UI without any context switching.

  • Users search for documents and then use the chat function to ask questions across all search results. Again, the user remains within the search UI and does not have to deal with context switches.
    With search terms and domain-specific search filters, the user can narrow down the set of search results with ease and accuracy such that the chat engine looks for answers only within the relevant documents.

  • Users chat with the entire document repository. In this use case, the chat functionality effectively also serves as the search engine, giving the user great flexibility in meeting their information needs.

All these use cases rely on Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). This method ensures that the chat engine does not invent answers. With this approach, the LLM can fully leverage its strengths in understanding and generating language, but it is not expected to also provide the relevant expert knowledge. Instead, this knowledge is found within the relevant documents.

In each of these cases, our chat functionality is enriched with a range of convenience features that boost user experience and productivity. For example, chat responses are linked to the most relevant document sections supporting these answers. This is a substantial step towards “explainable AI” (XAI).

The HIBU Chat in Practice

  • Get the best of both worlds: Search and Chat
  • Run HIBU either in the cloud or on-premise.
  • Choose wether to use an LLM by an external service (e.g., OpenAI) or a self-hosted LLM (data privacy!).
  • Either way, HIBU integrates chat in a cost-effective way (minimizing data traffic with the LLM).

Karakun – Your AI Partner

For running AI systems productively and generating value with them, AI knowledge alone is not enough. Suitable knowhow in engineering, DevOps, language technology and others are also critical. Karakuns offers all these competences in combination.

And, despite the hype, chat is not the best AI option for all use cases.

Let us consult you as to how AI can help to automate some of your business processes and support your knowledge workers in their daily tasks.

Contact us by email
Give us a call
2. July 2024

Markus Schlichting appointed as CEO

At the end of 2022, the management of Karakun AG initiated a transformation process to reconstitute the leadership team. The goal of this process is to realign with future challenges and to engage in proactive succession planning. In this context, Christoph Erb joined the management team in January 2024 (review news item). As of July 1, 2024, Markus Schlichting has been appointed the new CEO.

Markus Schlichting is a founding member of Karakun AG and, therefore, is highly familiar with the company and its employees. After completing his computer science studies in Stuttgart (Germany), he worked successfully with several other founders at the predecessor company of Karakun AG. At Karakun, he initially worked as a Senior Software Engineer and Software Architect. Over time, Mr. Schlichting increasingly took on additional responsibilities in Key Accounting and Business Development. Being a technically oriented expert with extensive industry knowledge in financial services, insurance, pharma, and automotive sectors, Markus Schlichting now takes on a central role in the leadership team of Karakun AG. He succeeds Dr. Elisabeth Maier in this position.

Dr. Elisabeth Maier and Markus Schlichting in front of the entrance of Karakun office in Basel.

“I am honoured to take on the role of CEO at Karakun and look forward to shaping the company’s future together with the entire team,” says Markus Schlichting. “In an era where digital transformation and artificial intelligence (AI) are redefining entire industries, Karakun will continue to provide its customers with sustainable and scalable solutions that offer genuine added value. In doing so, we will harness the power of open collaboration and forward-looking technologies in line with our passion for open source.”

“In the past six years since we founded Karakun, we have specialized in our core business, the development and maintenance of custom software, for various industries such as finance, insurance, and the public sector. At the same time, we have successfully positioned ourselves with products in the automotive and Swiss electrical industries. And, our self-developed AI platform HIBU solves many different use cases for our customers,” summarizes Elisabeth Maier. “With this portfolio, our four locations in Switzerland, Germany, and India, and the personnel changes, we are ready for the next growth step.”

Elisabeth Maier will continue to work predominantly in her area of expertise, artificial intelligence, where she focuses on the positioning and further development of the portfolio. Additionally, she will remain closely connected to Karakun as a member of the Board of Directors.

Download Press Release (German)
LinkedIn Profil M. Schlichting
29. May 2024

New partnership: Leverage Experts

Karakun announces a new strategic partnership with Leverage Experts AG, a consulting company based in Zurich, Frankfurt, and Dubai. Together, we aim to offer our clients exceptional value through the combination of cutting-edge technology and top-tier consulting services in business transformations.

Key Benefits of the Partnership

  • Custom-Tailored Solutions
    By closely collaborating, our teams create solutions precisely tailored to your needs, ensuring fast time-to-market and optimal results.
  • Integration of Business and IT
    Our holistic approach to digital transformation enables organizations to effectively manage change and create a competitive edge. Our partnership enables us to provide integrated consulting in management, business, and IT, iteratively moving into implementation and rapidly generating value for our customers.
  • Comprehensive Expertise
    Our customers always benefit from a single point of contact who understands their concerns and operates on the same level. This ensures efficient and targeted communication. The seamless integration of our teams enables direct and clear communication without the need for lengthy translation processes between subject matter experts.
  • Strong Support and Noticeable Relief for Your Resources
    Our joint offering provides comprehensive support that relieves your internal resources. You can concentrate on your core business.

Karakun-CEO Elisabeth Maier comments: “We are very excited about the partnership with Leverage Experts. By combining our technological innovations with Leverage Experts’ profound consulting expertise, we can offer our customers holistic solutions that optimize their business processes and promote sustainable growth.”

Claude Egli, Principal Digital Transformation at Leverage Experts, adds: “The collaboration with Karakun enables us to underpin our consulting services with state-of-the-art software technology. This allows our customers to quickly move from strategy to implementation and significantly enhance their efficiency and profitability with modern solutions.”

Visit Leverage Experts Website
22. May 2024

ATZ Article about EXOKNOX

ATZ (Automobiltechnische Zeitschrift) is the specialist magazine for technology-orientated management in the automotive industry. It reports on advances in automotive technology in a technically and scientifically profound and exclusive manner and serves as an indispensable source of information for all engineers in automotive engineering worldwide.

In issue 04/2024, the magazine published an exclusive article on Function Data Management for Virtual Vehicle Development.

Coverpage of the reprint of the article

In the article, the authors discuss the particular importance of data for describing the function of components in vehicle development. Function data defines requirements for new components and is a prerequisite for model-based systems engineering (MBSE). The article describes the efficiency gains based on an application example of integrated functional data management using the FDX standard (Functional Data eXchange) and its reference implementation EXOKNOX.

Further areas of application

Functional data is not only relevant in vehicle development. Every company that develops mechatronic systems benefits from the possibilities offered by EXOKNOX. These include the aircraft industry, rail vehicle manufacturers and wind turbine manufacturers – to name only a few.

Get in touch with us. We will be happy to advise you on how you too can take the decisive step towards virtual development.

Download Article
contact us
EXOKNOX Website
10. May 2024

SwissText 2024

On June 10-11, 2024, text analysis experts from industry and academia are meeting at the SwissText conference at the University of Applied Sciences Graubünden in Chur. Karakun is the main sponsor of the two-day event, emphasising its commitment to this industry.

In addition to our sponsorship, we support SwissText in terms of content. As chair of the workshop committee, Karakun CEO Elisabeth Maier played a vital role in defining the exciting workshop schedule. Our experts Holger Keibel and Hannes Prozent are also actively contributing to this with their workshop Grounding generative AI models.

Workshop: Grounding Generative AI models

One fundamental shortcoming of generative AI systems such as ChatGPT is that they tend to produce hallucinatory outputs which the human user might easily take to be facts, with potentially disastrous consequences. In principle, it is the responsibility of the user to fact-check any generative AI output before relying on it, but this is not common practice and often impossible for users when the respective topic lies outside their field of expertise.

This calls for (semi-)automated approaches to grounding generative AI models in relevant facts – or at least to quantify the confidence that a given generative AI output is correct. Existing approaches range from integrating domain-specific knowledge directly into the models (typically by means of retrieval-augmented generation, RAG) to applying post-generation filtering techniques (automated fact-checking) to making the generation of the AI output transparent to the user (explainable AI).

This workshop aims at bringing together professionals that can share some experience applying such approaches in real-life projects (in academia or industry). Submissions are welcome whether your project has completed or is just in the initial planning stage.

We also look forward to a close dialogue with visitors to the exhibition at our stand. We will present the latest enhancements to our AI-based HIBU-Plattform and current customer projects. 

Would you like to find out more about our services? We would be happy to advise you on the realisation of your application.

Download Flyer
Visit HIBU Website
contact us by mail

18. March 2024

Automotive CAE Grand Challenge

Over the last 30 years, computer simulation has become an indispensable tool in automotive development. However, despite significant progress in simulation technology and impressive results in industrial applications, there are still a number of unresolved challenges. The automotive CAE Grand Challenge stimulates the exchange between users, scientists and software developers to solve these challenges.

On April 16 and 17, 2024, we are part of this 2-day event for the first time. At our booth no. 11, our experts Christoph Erb and Michael Baumann will present our data management solution for function data EXOKNOX. By function data we mean the properties of components and systems. With EXOKONOX, engineers can not only develop components more efficiently and in a revision-proof manner. They can also exchange this data more easily with suppliers and technical specialists.

In his talk “Function Data Management for Virtual Vehicle Development”, Michael Baumann delivers valuable insights into the solution and specifically addresses practical challenges.

Your experts on site

Christoph Erb

Christoph Erb

Member of the Board

Michael Baumann

Michael Baumann

Head of Digital Engineering Solutions

7. March 2024

VIS Contact Party 2024

The VIS Contact Party is the largest academic IT recruiting fair in Switzerland. It is primarily aimed at students and graduates of the Department of Computer Science at ETH Zurich. It takes place in a relaxed atmosphere and enables students and graduates to get to know a wide range of IT companies in a relaxed atmosphere.

As in the previous years, we will also be on site with our own stand.

Date: March 16, 2024
Time: 11 am – 5 pm
Location: ETH Zurich
Karakun booth: C03

Our team is looking forward to introducing graduates to the daily life at Karakun, the tech stack and the numerous benefits for employees.

4. March 2024

LT-Innovate Board of Directors

Language technology makes the world intelligent, multilingual and interactive. It enables machines to read, analyze, process and generate human speech. Common examples of this technology are speech recognition, intelligent assistants, machine translation, chatbots, text summarization and automatic subtitling.

LT-Innovate is the association of the language technology industry. Among other things, it supports its members by promoting language technology as a driver of economic success and by actively sharing knowledge.

Karakun CEO Elisabeth Maier has been a new member of the LT-Innovate Board of Directors since December 2023.

“For years, I have followed LT-Innovate around virtually. I have always liked its mission to support the Language Technology community in Europe and to forge a network of LT organizations who together drive that idea”, says Elisabeth Maier.

“As part of the LTI Board, I would like to move the focus increasingly more on the demonstration of beneficial business cases of LT and AI. As a consequence, I would like to see more active user organizations as part of LTI activities.”

Are you interested in learning more about language technology and its areas of application? Get in touch with us! We would be happy to discuss your individual use case with you.

Get in touch with us

20. February 2024

prostep ivip Symposium 2024

The prostep ivip Symposium is one of the world’s largest neutral specialist conferences about digital transformation. With the motto “Digital Engineering – Ready for seamless collaboration”, specialists and managers will meet at the MOC Munich on April 10 and 11, 2024. In addition to exciting presentations, networking is a crucial part of the event.

At booth no 27, our experts Hans-Dirk Walter and Michael Baumann will present our data management solution for functional data, EXOKNOX, to the public. The exhibition takes place alongside the conference program.

EXOKNOX is the first fully comprehensive and future-proof data management solution for function data. These describe the properties of components such as stiffness, damping or torque behaviour. EXOKNOX is the reference implementation of the prostep FDX standard.

You may also gain insights into the value of EXOKNOX during the joint presentation by Michael Baumann and Dr Ronaldo Nunes. Dr Nunes is using EXOKNOX at Mercedes-Benz AG as head of the chassis calculation team. Attendees of the presentation “Integrated Functional Data Management as Basis for Collaborative and Digitalized Vehicle Development” will gain practical insights into Model-based Systems Engineering (MBSE).

Get in touch with us!

Would you like to find out more about Karakun and EXOKNOX? Contact us and arrange your appointment today. We are also happy to present EXOKNOX without obligation in an individual online meeting.

Hans-Dirk Walter

Hans-Dirk Walter

Member of the Board

Michael Baumann

Michael Baumann

Head of Digital Engineering Solutions

10. January 2024

Karakun expands management team

Karakun AG is expanding its management team with Christoph Erb with immediate effect. Christoph has been successfully working for the company since January 2023. Thanks to his extensive experience in business development and customer care, he is an essential part of customer acquisition and customer care.

Christoph always served as an interface between IT and Business. Before joining Karakun, he was a management member of Finnova AG, a renowned company in the financial industry, for more than 15 years. Afterwards, he gained valuable experience in various international software companies, developing a comprehensive understanding of the challenges and opportunities of the industry.

The expansion of the management team underlines Karakun’s efforts to set the course for a successful future. Christoph Erb’s many years of experience and expertise will help to increase Karakun’s innovative strength and competitiveness.

“I am happy that Christoph is joining the management team,” says Dr Elisabeth Maier, CEO of Karakun. “With his many contacts in Switzerland and the DACH regions, his excellent track record in the development of software companies, and, last but not least, his mindset which is ideally suited to us Karakunies, we are perfectly aligned for our next development steps.”

Christoph Erb adds: “Joining the Karakun management team fills me with gratitude and pride. I am looking forward to the joint challenges in such an expert team and to being able to play a decisive role in shaping the future of Karakun through innovative approaches.”

download press release (German)