About - SEMORAI

HOW WE WORK

How we work

When a customer tells us what is missing in their day-to-day work, we listen – and act. Feedback from a customer conversation regularly makes it into the same sprint. Two weeks later it is live in the platform as a feature. No ticket that disappears in the system. No roadmap that only takes effect a year from now. This closeness is no coincidence – it is the reason our customers want to work with us, rather than just with another software provider.

OUR STORY

How it all began

2022

Founded at KIT

John Achim Holzhauer and Kanran Zhou (Joe) meet at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and recognise the same pattern: brilliant engineers lose their days to information work instead of development. They found SEMORAI to change that.

2023

Moving to Heilbronn

With the support of Campus Founders and D11Z (formerly Zukunftsfonds Heilbronn), SEMORAI moves from Karlsruhe to Heilbronn – right in the middle of one of the densest AI ecosystems in Europe. In the same year, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz visits Heilbronn – a sign of how much the region has developed into an AI hub of national importance, with SEMORAI right in the middle.

2024/25

From idea to platform

Individual functions grow into a fully integrated platform: specification assessment, standards management and enterprise chat are built in close exchange with automotive suppliers. SEMORAI is certified to ISO 9001.

2025/26

Trusted by industry leaders

SEMORAI presents together with the CTO level of a leading German car manufacturer at the IAA.

Today

SEMORAI is in productive use at automotive suppliers – with a growing roadmap into further industries such as defence and procurement.

OUR TEAM

Our team

We are a team of engineers, AI specialists and practitioners in Heilbronn and Munich – people who know what information work feels like because they have done it themselves before they built SEMORAI. We also share our knowledge beyond SEMORAI: our team regularly gives talks on AI in engineering and is actively connected in the German AI ecosystem – among others through the MIT REAP programme, with which we bring the start-up perspective to establishing Heilbronn as AI location number one in Europe.

THE FOUNDERS

The founders

John Achim Holzhauer

CO-FOUNDER & CEO

Before SEMORAI, John developed industrial AI at Daimler, Bosch and Bertelsmann and brings founder experience from previous companies. He sets SEMORAI's direction and keeps the team focused on real engineering problems.

Kanran Zhou (Joe)

CO-FOUNDER & CTO

Before SEMORAI, Joe worked at Vector Informatik and researched at several KIT institutes, publishing four papers on AI. He is responsible for SEMORAI's AI architecture, keeping it focused on real engineering problems.

PARTNERS & NETWORK