Augsburg-based engineering firm Roschiwal + Partner Ingenieur GmbH has been using KoAssist, the AI platform developed by Viennese start-up Soneo AI, in everyday operation since October 2026. KoAssist helps Roschiwal's engineers find knowledge from previous projects more quickly. Soneo AI is a co-worker in the Coworking Hub of AI Factory Austria AI:AT in Vienna-St. Marx. Over the coming weeks, AI Factory Austria AI:AT will present AI start-ups and co-workers that are growing with AI:AT and giving their experience back to the community.
Answers with sources instead of searching through folders
In design departments and engineering firms, valuable knowledge sits in drawings, project documents, standards and emails, spread across many years. This is exactly where Soneo AI comes in: design engineers should spend their time designing, not searching for this knowledge.
At Roschiwal, engineers type their question into a chat instead of clicking through folder structures. In response, they receive the relevant passages from project documents, drawings and standards, each with its source. The team decides what is technically relevant. In day-to-day work, Roschiwal mainly uses KoAssist to research previous projects and when starting new project planning.
"Our strength is the experience our engineers have gained over many years of project work. KoAssist helps us find this knowledge faster, and every answer can be traced back to its source. For us, this is only the beginning. Together with Soneo, we want to find out where else KoAssist can support our team."
René Hedrich, Managing Director, Roschiwal + Partner Ingenieur GmbH
From pilot customer to development partner
From the start, the pilot was never a one-way street: what Roschiwal's engineers needed in their daily work fed into the further development of KoAssist through regular discussions. Today, the engineering firm sees itself as a development partner of Soneo AI, and the collaboration continues: the ongoing project folders will be added next, and the team is trialling the new drawing check. At the end of September, Soneo CEO Andreas Schaubmaier visited Roschiwal in Augsburg.
"Our visit to Augsburg showed how much experience there is in an engineering firm like Roschiwal. Our job is to make this experience easier to access in everyday work. The fact that Roschiwal is moving into everyday operation after a six-month pilot phase and is testing new modules with us shows that we are succeeding."
Andreas Schaubmaier, CEO, Soneo AI
From knowledge search to a platform for design engineering
According to Soneo AI, KoAssist's knowledge search is already in productive use with customers and is the first building block of the platform for design departments in mechanical engineering. Since September 2026, the drawing check has been trialled in practice. Before release, it helps check technical drawings for completeness, consistency and compliance with each customer's design guidelines. The release itself remains with the team. A common-part search is in development: before a new design is started, it is meant to help find similar components among existing parts and avoid duplicates. Soneo AI is currently developing both modules further with pilot customers.
According to Soneo AI, the platform runs on servers in Germany, and the AI models are operated via European infrastructure. Larger customers can also run KoAssist in-house (on-premise). Soneo AI's paying customers include mechanical engineering and design companies in Austria and Germany.
Exchange in the AI:AT Coworking Hub
Soneo AI was among the first teams to move into the Coworking Hub of AI Factory Austria AI:AT. It has since been part of a community that has grown to more than 200 co-workers. Founded in Vienna in July 2025, the team started out as an AI agency. Shortly afterwards, it took the step towards its own product: together with GISCON, a special-purpose machinery manufacturer from Upper Austria, the team began developing KoAssist.
In the hub, Soneo AI now works alongside teams from very different fields, many of them at a similar stage between their first product and their first customers. The teams also pass on their experience, for example in community formats, training sessions and events. In March 2026, Soneo AI presented KoAssist in the AI Factory Austria AI:AT Executive Track "KI in der Praxis" (AI in Practice). In May 2026, it led a workshop on building a first AI agent at the Open House during ViennaUP. Product, development, customer roll-out and customer relationships remain with the teams themselves.
"Soneo AI has been part of our Coworking Hub from the very beginning, and it is a pleasure to see how a young AI agency has gone on to build a product that an engineering firm in Germany now uses in its daily work. What I particularly appreciate is that KoAssist puts the experience of engineers at the centre. That is exactly how we understand trustworthy AI: as support for people who bear responsibility."
Karl Kugler, Co-Lead, AI Factory Austria AI:AT
"The fact that a Viennese start-up with AI from Austria has won over an engineering firm in Germany shows what is emerging in our ecosystem. What matters to us is that responsibility stays with people and knowledge stays where it was created."
Markus Stöhr, Co-Lead, AI Factory Austria AI:AT
Outlook
In the coming months, Roschiwal and Soneo AI plan to explore further areas of application in everyday work together. In the long term, Soneo AI aims to develop KoAssist into an AI platform for European mechanical engineering. Soneo AI's vision: no component should be designed twice, no solution searched for twice, and a company's experience should be available to the people who do the designing.
About Soneo AI
Soneo AI GmbH was founded in Vienna in July 2025 by Andreas Schaubmaier (CEO), Lukas Ebermann (CTO) and Yanik Yeganehfar (COO). The company develops KoAssist, an AI platform for design departments in mechanical engineering. Design engineers ask questions via chat and receive answers from drawings, documentation, standards and emails, with source references. A drawing check module is being trialled and a common-part search module is in development. Soneo AI is a co-worker in the Coworking Hub of AI Factory Austria AI:AT.
More information: www.soneo.ai
About Roschiwal + Partner
Roschiwal + Partner Ingenieur GmbH is an engineering firm for development and design in mechanical and plant engineering, with offices in Augsburg and Berlin. Since 1984, the company has supported its customers from the concept phase through design, calculation and simulation to technical documentation and commissioning. Its focus areas include special-purpose machinery, machine tools and packaging machines, automation and medical technology.
More information: www.roschiwal.de
About the AI Factory Austria AI:AT
AI Factory Austria AI:AT is Austria’s national AI Factory within the framework of the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking. It is jointly managed by the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology and Advanced Computing Austria (ACA) and implemented by a consortium spanning the whole of Austria.
The partners in the consortium are: Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien), University of Vienna, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU), University of Innsbruck, Graz University of Technology, Johannes Kepler University Linz (JKU), Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW), INiTS – Vienna’s High-Tech Incubator and EODC – Earth Observation Data Centre for Water Resources Monitoring GmbH.
AI:AT combines AI-optimised high-performance infrastructure with a physical hub and supports organisations from the private sector, public administration and applied research as a market-neutral, independent access point throughout the AI journey – from the first use case to practical implementation.
More information: https://ai-at.eu/
Funding Acknowledgement
AI Factory Austria AI:AT is co-funded by the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (JU) under grant agreement No. 101253078. The Joint Undertaking is supported by the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme and by Austria (BMIMI/FFG).