Chief AI Officer 2026: Real Role or Just Another C-Level Title?
Tobias Massow
⏳ 9 min read The Chief AI Officer is the most frequently announced-and least understood-C-level ...
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Artificial intelligence (AI) offers solutions to numerous challenges. However, the necessary resources are required to go from an initial idea to a finished product. To foster this process, VINCI Energies, the umbrella brand of Axians Germany, has launched the AI Challenge. Hendrik Kahmann, Head of Innovation at Axians Germany, explains what lies behind this initiative and which projects were awarded in his contribution.
How often have you faced a challenge, a complicated manual process, or a cumbersome application in your daily work and thought: This should be easier to solve – especially in today’s world, with the possibilities and immense potential of AI! Perhaps you even had an initial idea for a solution. But then you had to return to your tasks, and there was no time to address your problem using AI or even turn your idea into a usable product.
Such situations are not uncommon at Axians either. As Head of Innovation, I want to identify exactly these challenges and the ideas of our employees to then develop them into solutions that provide real added value to our teams and our customers. That’s why we at Axians Germany enthusiastically participated in the AI Challenge of our umbrella brand VINCI Energies. The goal of the challenge was to collect all challenges that can be solved with AI, as well as initial ideas and solution approaches from the VINCI Energies universe.
The best and most promising submissions were then to be specifically promoted and thus implemented in concrete products and applications. With this, we also want to contribute to supporting AI development in Europe, a necessity that Daniel Abbou, Managing Director of the German AI Association (KI Bundesverbands), points out in his contribution on Digital Chiefs.
The Winners of the AI Challenge 2024
The success of this initiative underscores the significant demand for AI-driven solutions to address everyday challenges within the VINCI Energies Group: Over 50 different problem statements and ideas were submitted by the companies and business units. The quality of the submitted projects was also impressive. Ultimately, the ten originally planned final spots were insufficient, and 13 projects advanced to the final round.
After the final pitch in August, three approaches were awarded:
- A project for 3D modeling of mobile base stations, aimed at reducing on-site deployments of technicians, creating transparency, and improving collaboration with customers.
- Process Contract Management, one of several initiatives in the field of document management that aims to evaluate and process data from documents using AI.
- Automatic Component Recognition, a solution where components on construction sites are automatically recognized and described using cameras. The system identifies the component and associated information such as order numbers, thereby supporting logistics and ordering processes.
Four German Initiatives from Axians Reach the Final Round
Four projects from Axians in Germany have also made it to the final round. One promising approach involved the automated reading of fill levels in waste containers and the corresponding planning of transports and routes. The system is capable of making predictions based on data about when certain fill levels will be reached. This allows for more efficient planning of trips, saving costs and emissions.
Another project focuses on predictive maintenance for carrier networks. By analyzing data, AI-supported predictions of failures in fiber optic components should be possible. This allows for better planning of maintenance operations, reduced costs, and minimized downtime for customers. Optimizing technical support using large language models is the goal of another exciting initiative. Currently, employees must determine the customer’s problem based on incoming tickets. The new system aims to enable users to ask questions in plain language, identify past requests, and provide better and faster support based on historical data. Employees will no longer need detailed knowledge.
Axians Infoma also participated in the AI Challenge with an approach called Smart Document Recognition for the automatic detection and processing of data from invoices, offers, and contracts. The solution aims to automatically transfer order numbers, addresses, and items into systems. Hundreds of features can be stored for identification. This saves time, reduces workload, and relieves employees.
The Next Steps and Ideas
Following the completion of the AI Challenge, the winning projects are now moving into implementation and receiving the support they need to turn them into concrete products. But even the initiatives that did not win will continue to be driven forward and developed. We want to harness this innovation potential from our colleagues! Currently, the topic of AI is being actively promoted at the corporate level by VINCI Energies through a new division with a dedicated team led by Data & AI expert Julia Himmelsbach.
At the same time, we are already developing further ideas to build on the success of our AI Challenge. Before the end of this year, there should be a public AI Challenge in Germany. The goal is to gather ideas and approaches from the community on how we at Axians can optimize the customer journey on our website using AI. The next step is to engage personally with these individuals in the form of a small “hackathon.” We also want to involve other actors such as universities. The journey is far from over. The topic of AI, and especially the concrete implementation of AI in practice that creates real added value for us and our customers, will continue to occupy us in the near future.
Source header image: Adobe Stock / clipart and bundle