22 September 2026 was a long day – and one that was worth it. In the morning I attended the Datatronic Digital Future Forum in Worms, the in-house event of our partner Datatronic. In the afternoon I continued to Cologne, to the Conference and Exhibition Center “Confex”, for the KI.Forum.NRW 2026, the annual conference of the AI competence platform KI.NRW. Two events, two perspectives – and one common denominator: AI agents are arriving in companies.
What is the KI.Forum.NRW?
The KI.Forum.NRW is the annual conference of KI.NRW, the artificial intelligence competence platform of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, based at Fraunhofer IAIS. It brings research, business and politics together. This year the event was fully booked – a clear sign of how great the interest in the topic has become. Avantgarde is a member of KI.NRW and listed on the state’s AI map.
What was this year’s focus?
The main theme was “Entrepreneurship in the universe of AI agents”. The questions behind it: what is behind the agent hype? What value is actually created? And how can companies and employees respond to the disruption that comes with it?
Speakers included NRW Economics Minister Mona Neubaur, astronaut and aerospace engineer Michaela Benthaus, and representatives of BMW Group, DEUTZ AG, REWE digital, Deutsche Telekom, Carglass, ControlExpert, n8n and RWTH Aachen University. The range extended from physical AI in component manufacturing to agent workflows in retail and insurance.
In the exhibition area, visitors could experience AI hands-on, including the KI.Guide by KI.NRW, the Lamarr Institute and WestAI. The day closed with networking in the south foyer overlooking the Rhine and Cologne Cathedral – for me, as always, the most valuable part of the day.
Have AI agents already arrived in mid-sized companies?
Yes – but differently than the hype suggests. The examples from industry and retail showed that agents deliver value where they are connected to real processes and real data and have clear boundaries. An agent that does not know which orders are open or which suppliers deliver which items remains a toy.
That is exactly the approach of the Avantgarde Co-Pilot: the AI works inside the ERP system, with the permissions the company defines, and the leading system stays in charge. The agent prepares, the person decides.
What did Worms have to do with it?
More than you might think. At the Datatronic Digital Future Forum in the morning, the same questions came up – just from the perspective of an IT service provider and its customers. How do companies get AI into their existing software landscape without rebuilding everything? Who handles the introduction, who provides ongoing support? Datatronic is a partner in our AI Club, and events like this show how important cooperation with IT service providers is: they know their customers’ processes, we bring the AI platform.
Our key takeaways
- Agents need context: without a connection to ERP data, AI remains an experiment. Value is created where agent and business process come together.
- Boundaries build trust: clear permissions, logging and the human as the final authority are not a brake but the prerequisite for productive use.
- Regulation is a framework, not a brake: companies that build in transparency from the start are ready for the EU AI Act.
- The demand is there: a fully booked forum and a state funding programme whose application portal closed after just a few weeks due to high demand speak for themselves.
Part of the AI ecosystem in NRW
In addition to KI.NRW, Avantgarde has also been a member of the German AI Association since 2025. Events like the KI.Forum.NRW are where we bring the practical perspective of mid-sized companies into the discussion – and take new ideas back into our projects. A big thank you to the KI.NRW team for the organisation and to Datatronic for a successful morning in Worms.
My conclusion: the agent hype is real, but the value lies in the details – in a clean connection to the systems companies work with every day.
Would you like to know what AI agents could look like in your company? Contact us at office@avantgar.de.
