We are proud to share some big news: DATFID has won the Münchner Innovationspreis 2026 (Munich Innovation Award), the City of Munich's innovation competition, for our work on a transparent AI environmental advisor built on ÖKOPROFIT data.
The winners were announced on July 23, 2026 at an award ceremony hosted by Munich's Mayor Mona Fuchs, alongside three other winning teams: kibaudi GmbH, NewSense Engineering GmbH, and the TreeQuest team from the Munich University of Applied Sciences. DATFID was represented by Dr. Valerii Dashuk and Igor Schapiro.
Official announcement: the City of Munich published the full press release covering all four winning teams — read it here: Münchner Innovationspreise 2026 (in German).
The challenge: modernizing ÖKOPROFIT
ÖKOPROFIT has supported businesses since 1998 in improving their environmental performance and reducing their ecological footprint. The program offers thematic workshops and on-site consulting, backed by Excel-based working materials that cover environmental metrics and sustainability indicators. These materials are already used by roughly 4,500 companies across Germany.
Munich's Department of Labor and Economic Development (Referat für Arbeit und Wirtschaft) launched a challenge to find an innovative, AI-based way to extend these ÖKOPROFIT materials — one that could run efficient analyses on the collected data and give participating companies benchmark comparisons and tailored recommendations for improving their environmental performance.
Our approach
DATFID's winning solution is a transparent AI environmental advisor for ÖKOPROFIT data that produces traceable, cause-and-effect analyses instead of black-box scores. It is built directly for the structured Excel and tabular data ÖKOPROFIT already collects, and uses company and environmental KPIs to:
- •Compare similar companies against each other
- •Surface the key drivers behind energy consumption, CO₂ emissions, waste, and cost
- •Prioritize measures based on their expected impact
This is the same core idea behind DATFID's platform: don't just predict an outcome — show why it happens and which lever moves it, so decision-makers can act with confidence instead of guessing.
Why the jury chose DATFID
According to the jury, DATFID won on the strength of a compelling pitch, backed by the team's track record in time-series analysis and data forecasting. The jury specifically highlighted:
- •The strong fit between our solution and ÖKOPROFIT, as well as other municipal tools such as the city's AI assistant, MUCGPT
- •DATFID's ability to deliver meaningful results even with very small datasets — an important advantage for the upcoming co-creation phase with companies from Munich's ÖKOPROFIT network
"We were looking for an innovative and efficient solution that processes the collected ÖKOPROFIT environmental data and better supports participating companies. We want to modernize our working materials and increase ÖKOPROFIT's appeal in the long run. I am convinced that the submitted solution will improve the ÖKOPROFIT program overall and make a significant contribution to the city's climate neutrality goals."
— Dr. Christian Scharpf, Head of the Department of Labor and Economic Development
"With the new transparent AI environmental advisor, ÖKOPROFIT is fit for the future: it derives fast, effective, tailor-made recommendations for participating companies from the ÖKOPROFIT environmental data. These AI-supported analyses will help Munich's businesses improve their environmental performance and contribute to our climate neutrality goal."
— Christine Kugler, Head of the Department for Climate and Environmental Protection
What happens next
As a winning team, DATFID receives €10,000 in prize money plus an additional €15,000 to fund a co-creation phase, in which we'll work directly with the City of Munich to further develop and test our solution in real municipal practice — together with businesses from Munich's ÖKOPROFIT club. We'll also have access to support from the competition's partner network, including UnternehmerTUM, the Strascheg Center for Entrepreneurship, the LMU Innovation & Entrepreneurship Center, founders@unibw, and Start2Group GmbH.
The Münchner Innovationswettbewerb is now in its ninth round and will celebrate its ten-year anniversary in 2027. It's run by the Department of Labor and Economic Development, with participation open to all municipal departments, public enterprises, and affiliated companies.
We're grateful to the City of Munich for this recognition, and excited to bring transparent, decision-ready AI to ÖKOPROFIT and the businesses working to reduce their environmental footprint.
Written by
DATFID Team
AI & Forecasting
At DATFID, we build forecasting that goes beyond black-box prediction - toward transparent, decision-ready results.
Follow our journey as we rethink what trustworthy forecasting should look like in real business environments.