Because of their extremely deep and broad reach­ing appli­ca­tions and impli­ca­tions, two com­pa­nies stood out in our mind as clearly rev­o­lu­tion­ary and with rel­e­vance for the Thürin­gen inno­va­tion ecosys­tem: Jabil Sys­tems and Nvidia.

Nor­mally it would be unusual to say that a con­tract man­u­fac­turer like Jabil Sys­tems would be rev­o­lu­tion­ary. How­ever, after see­ing how Jabil is assim­i­lat­ing the newest man­u­fac­tur­ing tech­nolo­gies (3D Print­ing, New Mate­ri­als, Smart Com­po­nents, etc.) into all of its cus­tomers’ prod­ucts and thus cre­at­ing rad­i­cally new prod­uct capa­bil­i­ties and eco­nom­ics, we are con­vinced that Jabil is chang­ing the rules of the game. With com­pa­nies like Jabil pos­sess­ing such deep tech capa­bil­i­ties, the days of out­sourc­ing a prod­uct so some­one else can han­dle the bor­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing part are long gone. Jabil is also a prod­uct designer and accel­er­ates time-to-mar­ket for its cus­tomers dra­mat­i­cally; how­ever, Jabil’s power extends way beyond those ben­e­fits. Because Jabil has incred­i­bly deep knowl­edge of how to seam­lessly inte­grate a vast array of cut­ting-edge tech­nolo­gies into prod­ucts, com­pa­nies that part­ner with Jabil receive a fun­da­men­tally enhanced prod­uct, which can open up sig­nif­i­cant new busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties. Jabil has an inno­va­tion office here in Jena for its Jabil Optics divi­sion and offers inno­v­a­tive opti­cal com­pa­nies here in Thürin­gen, of which we have many, an excel­lent oppor­tu­nity to accel­er­ate prod­uct devel­op­ment and enhance their offering.

Nvidia is more of a dis­rupter in the clas­sic sense that its own prod­ucts and soft­ware stack are rev­o­lu­tion­iz­ing the world, although Nvidia’s GPUs are, of course, a key build­ing block for many world-chang­ing devel­op­ments being led by other com­pa­nies, such as many AI mod­els and appli­ca­tions. Nvidia orig­i­nated as a graph­ics card com­pany for the gam­ing indus­try, but has adeptly built on its exper­tise in par­al­lel pro­cess­ing to expand into many new fields. Being a Ger­man del­e­ga­tion, we were treated to a stun­ning exam­ple of how Nvidia’s Omni­verse plat­form is being used to develop an extremely life-like dig­i­tal twin of the entire Deutsche Bahn train net­work (down to the last screw on every train!). This Newslet­ter does not have enough space to expound fur­ther on Nvidia’s impres­sive tech and appli­ca­tions, but we encour­age all tech investors to research its Omni­verse and intel­li­gent video capa­bil­i­ties, as their impact will be revolutionary.

For our invest­ment activ­i­ties in Thürin­gen, we returned from this trip with exhil­a­ra­tion and also with increased clar­ity of how our Investee-Part­ners can also cap­i­tal­ize on the major new tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ments rapidly reshap­ing the world. In many cases our exper­tise and high-tech prod­ucts can be enhanced by inte­grat­ing these new tech­nolo­gies and/or build­ing high-value and end-mar­ket spe­cific solu­tions on top of or in col­lab­o­ra­tion with these plat­forms. Key to suc­cess­fully achiev­ing this posi­tion­ing is keep­ing an open and alert mind to be acutely aware of just how these tech­nolo­gies are devel­op­ing and which impli­ca­tions (espe­cially the mas­sive oppor­tu­ni­ties!) they hold for our endeavors.

To con­tinue the Cal­i­for­nia theme, to cre­ate great value from the excel­lent tech we are blessed with in Thürin­gen, we must catch the fast-mov­ing tech waves and be posi­tioned cor­rectly on the waves to surf them well.

Let’s go surf­ing now, everybody’s learn­ing how! – The Beach Boys

Your bm|t Team