Mercedes-Benz Tech Innovation

What a way to wrap up the year! ❄️🌟 We're excited for our new #techinnovators joining us this December. Together we will finish 2025 strong and kick off 2026 with full power. A warm welcome to our newest colleagues!

From idea to test drive – students bring navigation to live! 🎓 Impressions from the 1. day. From November 26 to 28, 2025, we held a dedicated three-day hackathon where talented students gathered to transform the future of mobility. Under the topic "Navigation - The Nexus," participants had the opportunity to innovate and experiment with real-world tech. All solutions created during the event are Open Source and will be tested in the new CLA, G-Class, and EQS test vehicles. We were happy to welcome students from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). Special thanks to Gustavo Sánchez for volunteering his time and expertise to help shape the challenges and topics. Their individual mentorship helped elevate the quality of the event for everyone involved. We kicked-off with a day full of connection and welcomed colleagues who gave inspiring talks: ✅ Deniz Cevher - AI with a human touch: Innovating for impact. ✅ Valentin Zacharias - AI at Mercedes-Benz: An overview. ✅ Saquib Sarfraz - Mapping the invisible: Visualizing high-dimensional embeddings for RAG & navigation. ✅ Benedikt Heidrich - Optimizing small language models for in-vehicle function-calling. ✅ Franziska Pöpperl - Routing & navigation - driven by quality and innovation. ✅ Benjamin Schaaf, Ainara Miller-Askar from MongoDB: Building Modern AI-Applications   The students coded across 7 different topics, here is a glimpse into three of them: 🗣️ Voxtral - speech-to-function: Build and train a multi-modal LLM that processes audio input, understands complex multi-step commands and translates them into vehicle actions. 🗺️ The quantum itinerary planner: Solve the challenge of planning optimal multi-stop EV road trips using quantum-inspired computing. 🌐 Data extraction from satellite images: Select an initial study to extract information about trails from free & public available satellite imagery to create a new dataset not found in routing systems like Google Maps. The best part? It’s not over yet! Tomorrow will be the grand finale, where the teams will present their solutions. Events like this are an exciting chance to connect with students and get inspired by their ideas. Thanks to everyone who participated and brought their ideas to the challenge. We can’t wait to see the final solutions! Stay tuned! An after-movie will soon capture more insights from this special event. #techinnovators

Why we are calling for an EU Sovereign Tech Fund🚨 Free and Open Source Software is the backbone of Europe's digital infrastructure. We rely on the digital sovereignty, cybersecurity, and integrity of Open Source software. For example energy systems, healthcare, finance, mobility and other critical sectors depend on Open Source. Maintaining this foundation and ensuring its functionality is essential. 🚘The automotive industry, including Mercedes-Benz AG, depends on a secure Open Source infrastructure. At Mercedes-Benz Tech Innovation we are aware of the important role of Open Source, since software like MB.OS includes Open Source components. However, chronic underinvestment raises risks of this infrastructure, threatening its maintenance and security! ✅The solution: Building on Germany’s successful Sovereign Tech Agency. An EU Sovereign Tech Fund would provide mission-driven investment to maintain and secure critical Open Source components as digital infrastructure. As a leading software partner for Mercedes-Benz, we are proud to support the EU Sovereign Tech Fund. Together with dozens of industry leaders, researchers and civil society organizations, we urge policymakers and partners in Europe's shared digital future, to advocate for an EU Sovereign Tech Fund. To achieve digital independence for Europe, this pan-European initiative calls for an investment of €350 million over seven years. Big thanks to OpenForum Europe for their work on this initiative. Special recognition also goes to our colleagues Markus Rettstatt, Dr. Wolfgang Gehring and Mercedes-Benz CSO Magnus Östberg for their support. 📢 For more information, read the full letter https://lnkd.in/ezAk_9n3 What are your thoughts on the Sovereign Tech Fund? #techinnovators

What does a Software Quality Engineer expert do? 🤔 To shed light on this, we are excited to introduce Henda Stili, a Software Quality Engineer with 6 years of experience at Mercedes-Benz Tech Innovation”. Henda works in several distinct Scrum teams and is going to provide us insights into the multifaceted world of Software Quality Engineers. “As a #softwarequalityengineer, my job is to ensure that the software we develop meets the highest standards of quality and reliability. This involves designing and executing various tests to verify that the software behaves as expected in different scenarios. This includes conducting tests on a test bench to simulate the behavior of the car or device, followed by testing on the Hyper Screen in the actual vehicle.” But what exactly needs to be tested? Well, pretty much everything. From the basic functionality of the software to its performance, security, and compatibility with other systems. The goal is to catch any bugs or issues before they can cause problems for the end user. Now, you might be wondering why it's not enough to just test the software on the car or on the test bench. The answer is simple: because each environment has its own unique characteristics and limitations. By testing the software in both environments, a Software Quality Engineer can ensure that it works correctly in all situations and under all conditions. If you're interested in learning more, feel free to reach out! #techinnovators

Unconventional paths – from Human Relations to Offensive Security! 🔒 Meet Suela Ljustaku in our new episode of #WomenInTech. Her story highlights how taking unconventional paths and embracing new challenges can lead to unexpected career opportunities. Suela shares her experiences as a woman in the tech field and aims to inspire other women to have the courage to take the unconventional path. Dive into the slides for the whole behind-the-scenes look. ⬇️ #techinnovators

🚀 Exclusive insights: the largest intranet community at Mercedes-Benz as a driver of innovation. Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) has become a cornerstone of Mercedes-Benz Tech Innovation, revolutionizing internal processes and the future of mobility. Let's explore what fuels the largest intranet community in #GenAI at Mercedes-Benz. 💡The vision: Building a diverse network to foster exchange and collaboration around GenAI and advance its use at Mercedes-Benz. The platform offers colleagues worldwide the opportunity to share knowledge, develop ideas, and turn GenAI into innovative solutions. The community is more than just a communication channel – it enables and empowers all colleagues to effectively use GenAI. 🌐 Creating and empowering the community: The community was established to actively shape the rapid technological change. It brings together experts and beginners to fully harness the potential of Generative AI. The goal is to foster creative approaches and develop pioneering solutions for future challenges. In a time of rapid technological change, the community enables quick knowledge transfer, encourages interdisciplinary dialogue, supports openness, and ensures visibility around the latest technological developments. 🤝 Community collaboration and contributions: With the involvement of community manager Deniz Cevher and his colleagues, the community plays a key role in driving the adoption and use of the Mercedes-Benz Direct Chat. They also promote engaging interactions and facilitate hands-on learning through regular virtual meetups and events. One example is the Mercedes-Benz AI Week, a company-wide event for colleagues to connect and share their knowledge on AI topics. These interactive formats provide space for continuous learning and spark curiosity around GenAI, keeping our colleagues inspired and aligned with current AI trends. #techinnovators

What does a Data Scientist in the LLM field do? 🤔 Let’s take a look at Emad Olfatbakhsh’s role — where data meets innovation and GenAI becomes reality. "I joined Mercedes-Benz Tech Innovation nearly three years ago as a data science intern. Back then, I focused on classic machine-learning techniques — mainly time-series forecasting and anomaly detection. Since 2023, I’ve moved from classical data science projects towards a broader AI-engineering focus. As GenAI gained momentum, departments across the company started bringing us fresh ideas and use cases. My job is to turn those ideas into scalable solutions: I design, build, and validate proof-of-concepts with our business partners, then harden successful prototypes for production so they meet expectations and deliver real value. Going from PoC to production also demands solid software-engineering chops — writing clean, test-covered code, setting up CI/CD pipelines, deploying services to cloud infrastructure, and monitoring them in operation — so the work extends well beyond machine learning alone. 📚 #RAG – Unlocking knowledge with generative AI A major focus right now is Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). Large language models are powerful, but they don’t automatically know a company’s internal information. RAG bridges that gap by surfacing trusted, context-relevant knowledge at the moment of generation—keeping answers accurate, compliant, and up to date. I’m building unified RAG solutions that make it possible to add new data sources with minimal effort, and respect existing permission models, so employees get reference-backed answers in seconds while the business gains clear, measurable value. 🔮 What’s next? Model quality is rising fast, yet an LLM reaches enterprise-grade impact only when techniques like RAG connect it to internal data and governance controls. We’re still at the beginning of this journey — and I’m excited to help shape what comes next." Want to learn more about GenAI and RAG? Ask me your questions in the comments below! 👇 #techinnovators #whatdoesa

#RAG – Get ready for AI superpowers! 🚀 Regular large language models (LLMs) are only as good as the data they were trained on. But what if you could give them access to real-time information or your company's internal knowledge?   Dive into our slides to learn more! 💡 #techinnovators 

How well do you speak Agentic AI? Test your Agentic AI skills below. 🤔 ⤵️ We’ll reveal the answer in the comments – stay tuned for more Agentic AI insights coming soon! #techinnovators

Hello November, hello new colleagues! 🍂 🌟 A warm welcome to our new #techinnovators - let's drive innovation together! This image is AI generated.