Artificial Connect

Overview
Artificial Connect was a Hannover-based artificial intelligence start-up that built natural language generation tools for publishers and regional media houses. Registered in 2019 as artificial connect GmbH, it developed ac.events, which turned structured event data into personalised long-form event announcements, and ac.textsum, which produced summaries, teasers and headlines from journalistic texts. The company was co-founded by Felix Rolf, its chief executive, together with Alex Divivi, Dr. Marc Klages and Dr. Matthias Rettenmeier, according to the CONTENTshift accelerator. Register records indicate that the company was later renamed Ventr Solutions GmbH, with a different business purpose; Startuprad.io therefore treats Artificial Connect as a historical entity.

Why Artificial Connect matters
Artificial Connect matters as an early German example of a now mainstream idea: using machine learning to generate useful local content at scale. In 2020, well before generative AI tools became widely available, the team identified a concrete gap in regional journalism, the long tail of small local events that newsrooms cannot cover, and built a product for it. Its story also illustrates a familiar path for applied AI start-ups in the German media market: starting with consulting projects for publishers, turning a repeated customer problem into a product, staying bootstrapped and relying on industry accelerators and media innovation funding rather than venture capital.

Company
According to its founder, the idea for Artificial Connect grew out of data science work: Felix Rolf learned Python and statistics in a three-month boot camp and first built a wine recommendation engine with an online wine retailer before turning to media. Rolf had worked at the Madsack media group in Hannover from 2012, including in key account management and strategy, and most recently as head of sales control for its B2B advertising business, according to his re:publica profile and CONTENTshift. The company was registered as artificial connect GmbH at the district court of Hannover in autumn 2019. Its first projects were consulting assignments for media companies. When two newspaper clients independently described difficulties covering local events, the team surveyed media companies across Germany and decided to focus on structured text generation. ac.events generated personalised long-form texts from structured event information for publishers and event organisers, and ac.textsum generated summaries, teasers, bullet points and headlines. The Medieninnovationszentrum Babelsberg supported a company project on abstractive summaries delivered to editorial systems via an interface and on style transfer for specific audiences. Artificial Connect took part in the 2020 CONTENTshift accelerator for the publishing industry. Register records published by North Data show that the company under HRB 218833 was later renamed Ventr Solutions GmbH, with the new name first appearing in a June 2021 publication, a management consulting business purpose and different managing directors; Felix Rolf and Alex Divivi are listed as former managing directors. The company's former domain now carries unrelated content. Startuprad.io has not found evidence that the Artificial Connect products are still offered.

Role in the startup and technology landscape of Germany, Austria and Switzerland
Artificial Connect belonged to a small group of German start-ups that tried to bring natural language generation to newsrooms around 2019 and 2020, supported by publishing-industry programmes such as CONTENTshift and by media innovation funding. Its focus on regional publishers reflected the structure of the German newspaper market, where large regional media groups serve many local editions with limited editorial staff. In its interview with Startuprad.io, the founder said the technology could be adapted to other industries and that talks with companies outside media were under way, and that the company was bootstrapped. For founders and publishers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland today, the case is a useful reference point on product focus, customer discovery with media houses and the difficulty of building a lasting standalone business around a single content-automation use case.

Selected relationships
Co-founders: Felix Rolf (chief executive); Alex Divivi; Dr. Marc Klages; Dr. Matthias Rettenmeier (per CONTENTshift). Accelerator: CONTENTshift (2020 cohort). Funding support: Medieninnovationszentrum Babelsberg (project support). Prior employer of the chief executive: Madsack Mediengruppe. Successor legal name: Ventr Solutions GmbH (per register records). Startuprad.io: founder interview in a media partnership with CONTENTshift.

Startuprad.io relevance
Startuprad.io interviewed Felix Rolf in November 2020 as part of its media partnership with the CONTENTshift accelerator, which it has followed since the programme's start. The interview covers his path from a dual study programme at a media company into data science, the move from wine recommendations to local event content, the product and the company's bootstrapped financing. The story was first published on Startuprad.io's earlier Medium publication and moved to the current blog with the website relaunch in summer 2024; the migrated post states that the story was originally published on 12 November 2020.

Artificial Connect appears in the following Startuprad.io editorial piece.

Artificial Connect uses AI to generate automated local event announcements — Founder Interview
Published: 15 March 2026
Last updated: 20 September 2026
Coverage type: Interview
https://www.startuprad.io/post/artificial-connect-uses-ai-to-generate-automated-local-event-announcements-founder-interview

Public source context
This profile draws on the CONTENTshift participant page https://www.contentshift.de/accelerator/teilnehmer-2020/felix-rolf/ (co-founders, products and the chief executive's background), the re:publica speaker profile https://20.re-publica.com/de/user/24661 (company description, location and role), the Medieninnovationszentrum Babelsberg project page https://www.miz-babelsberg.de/foerderung/foerderprojekte-alumni/details/artificial-connect.html , register information published by North Data https://www.northdata.com/Ventr%20Solutions%20GmbH,%20Hannover/HRB%20218833 and an online register service https://www.online-handelsregister.de/handelsregisterauszug/ni/Hannover/HRB/218833/artificial-connect-GmbH (registration, later name and managing directors), the original interview on Startuprad.io's Medium publication https://medium.com/startuprad-io/podcast-artificial-connect-uses-ai-to-generate-automated-local-event-announcements-e6fe4bfd5852 , and Startuprad.io's coverage listed above.

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