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REPORTTHE

With so much going on in this nation of inventors, Switzerland is leading

the way in the business world

Startup Superstars

Visium, the startup ‘democratising’ AI, is already making its mark. Founded less than a year ago by Alen Arslanagic, a Forbes 30 Under 30 alumnus and Imperial College Business School graduate, and Timon Zimmermann, a serial Hackathon winner and AI expert from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), the startup has already carried out projects for pharmaceutical, security, marketing consulting, food & beverages, manufacturing, sports, financial, real estate and watchmaking companies. From the detection of fraudulent commercial transactions to the monitoring of road accidents in real time through sound analysis, Visium has been able to convince small and large customers of the value of artificial intelligence through effective and customised solutions.

One example is an urban safety

monitoring product they developed for a client, SecuraXis. The software is capable of recognising security-related events (such as gunshots, explosions, or car accidents), before geolocating and communicating them to the relevant authorities in real time. Visium took over the whole development of the devices, from the hardware research and soldering, to the modelling of embeddable Machine Learning models and long-range communication protocols. The project has since been awarded first prize at the European Center of Nuclear Research (CERN) competition, taking home a prize of CHF 50,000 and a business incubation program to reach mass scale production.

With its base at EPFL and a second branch opening soon at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ) – with the help of

Matteo Togninalli, PhD Candidate at ETHZ – Visium is totally immersed in and connected to Switzerland’s research hubs. Visium’s sights are now set on expanding into other countries and helping more businesses discover the powerful impact AI can have on their day-to-day operation.

The founders of Visium are effusive about AI and the role that their startup can have in shaping its use for good. “We have entered an era characterised by automation and rapid technological progress,” says Arslanagic. “The changes will irrevocably alter our future and the way we interact with technology and each other. We decided to launch ourselves in the front row in order to have direct control over the type of solutions to prioritise, and the ones to avoid.”visium.ch

Democratising Machine LearningVisium helps its clients identify and seize their highest-value opportunities in Machine Learning

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