Vietnamese engineer, 25, raises $1M for AI startup in Germany

The company was founded last August in Munich by Trung, Dila Ekrem and Leon Stawowiak. It completed its pre-seed funding round late last month, led by German venture capital firm PT1, alongside other European funds and individual investors from the construction and technology sectors.

Trung, based in Germany, is also its chief technology officer. He says infrastructure projects typically take years to build and involve hundreds of interlinked contracts among developers, general contractors, subcontractors, and suppliers, and their contract management has long relied on manual workflows such as emails, spreadsheets and PDF documents.

"Just one small change that isn't updated in time can create a domino effect, causing major losses."

He says Arctis AI’s system can read, analyze and track multiple contracts within the same project, automatically detecting updates, warning of risks and supporting legal and management teams in processing tasks more efficiently. Tasks that previously took weeks to review can now "be processed in 10-20 minutes."

He explains that Arctis AI differs from similar projects in its implementation approach, and "focuses deeply" on the European construction context and can "deploy new features in a few days based on the actual needs of customers," which allows it to respond faster than larger enterprises with more complex internal processes.

Arctis AI currently has five full-time employees, who focus on product development and customer testing. Three months after starting operations it already has customers in several countries including Germany, Portugal and Turkey, a factor that helped attract investors, including Alexander Schwörer, owner of Peri Group, a major player in Europe’s construction sector.

The startup also received backing from EWOR, a startup acceleration program with an acceptance rate of less than 0.1%. Trung says the program supported the team in refining their product and with market access strategies and establishing connections with international investors.

The latest funding will be used to further develop the product and expand the engineering team, he says. Arctis AI plans to focus first on the German market before expanding to other European countries and the Middle East.

Nguyen Duc Trung, co-founder of Arctis AI. Photo courtesy of Trung

Trung, born in Hanoi, studied at the High School for Gifted Students -VNU University of Science before moving to Germany to major in computer science. During his early years in Munich he worked a range of jobs, including delivery, to cover living expenses, before securing roles at several tech firms.

Reflecting on his entrepreneurial journey, he says language and cultural barriers were his biggest challenges, but also a source of motivation.

"As a Vietnamese living abroad, I always want to prove that we are not limited to working as employees, but can create technology products and sell them to the global market." He adds that building a technology startup in Europe requires young people to have the spirit of "daring to think big and accepting risks" when opportunities arise.