SmartAIs completes pre-seed financing

SmartAIs collects capital to make everyday navigation easier for blind and visually impaired people. The app recognizes obstacles in real time, without any special devices.

Munich, February 25, 2025 - The Munich-based startup SmartAIs has completed a successful pre-seed financing round. Investors include venture capitalist Bayern Kapital and several business angels from the fields of artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented reality. The company intends to use the fresh capital to further develop its obstacle detection app for blind and visually impaired people.

AI-supported navigation via smartphone

SmartAIs was founded in 2024 by Sascha Preget, Yamen Mohisn, Said Derbel and Anika Watzka. Their aim is to make everyday mobility easier for blind people. The app uses computer vision and AI to detect obstacles. Users receive acoustic instructions to help them avoid barriers. The special feature: The solution works exclusively via smartphone and requires no additional hardware.

Our vision is a world in which blind people can move freely and independently. With our technology, we bring a digital assistant directly to the smartphone.

Sascha Preget, CEO SmartAIs

Support from Bayern Kapital and business angels

The financing is led by Bayern Kapital. Private investors from the AI and AR sector are also participating. In addition to capital, they contribute expertise and a network. Monika Steger, Managing Director of Bayern Kapital, emphasizes the social benefits of the technology: "SmartAIs sets new standards for digital accessibility."

The startup plans to use the new funds to expand user tests and optimize the AI models. The team wants to work closely with associations for the blind to tailor the app to the needs of the target group. The market launch is to be prepared in the coming months. SmartAIs was already awarded the German Mobility Prize in the "Digital Transformation and AI" category in October 2024.

It will be exciting to see how the start-up's assistance system fits into the current canon of assistance systems for visually impaired citizens. On the one hand, screen readers are still struggling with the correct interpretation of Unicode and on the other, there are applications that can describe images cleanly in almost real time. Perhaps this is precisely the gap that can now be closed by SmartAIs.