Transforming AI projects into tangible business results requires breaking down organizational silos and shifting from isolated pilot projects to company-wide adoption. That is the core message of this DLD Munich 2026 expert panel with Elke Reichart (Infineon), Niklas Harzheim (OpenAI), and Nicole Büttner (Merantix Momentum), moderated by Larissa Holzki (Handelsblatt).
At Infineon, AI has become very useful in knowledge management. The company sits on hundreds of thousands of terabytes of data, Elke Reichart says, and making sense of all this information became a big challenge. “We sometimes say, ‘If Infineon knew what Infineon knows.’”
Thanks to AI, engineers and shop-floor workers can now search through manuals and past cases to get instant recommendations. “This is a big game changer for us”, Reichart says.
Niklas Harzheim urges companies to move beyond pilot projects. “We see the successful companies are really now saying ‘Okay, we believe in AI’”, he notes. “‘We do a bet that AI is important for us. We’re going to invest in this resource, and we bring everybody along with us.’”
Nicole Büttner sees a clear advantage for young companies that “started their business after the ChatGPT moment” and are thinking “about their own business processes in an AI-first way.” Companies like Lovable, Libra and Harvey “perform well because they’re fast”, she says. “The infrastructure is built for this technology, and they really understand how these models work.”
Watch the video for further insights.
