I’m Thilo Horstmann, an independent AI consultant and engineer in Hamburg with more than 30 years in artificial intelligence, software engineering, and technology leadership. I help organizations use AI in two ways:
AI for your organization
From strategy to agents in production: I help you find the use cases worth it and build AI that works with your knowledge, tools, and processes.
- AI strategy: use cases that pay off, and the ones that don’t
- Agentic AI: agents and workflows grounded in your own knowledge
- Sovereign AI: open or commercial models, with your data under your control
- Compliance by design: GDPR, EU AI Act, and works council
Software built with AI agents
I develop software for you, using AI agents as my tools: faster and at lower cost than a traditional team.
- Speed: working prototypes in days, production-ready in weeks
- Quality: tests, reviews, and documentation built in
- Control: your code and data stay where we agree they go
- No lock-in: ordinary code that any team can maintain
Principles
- Security: agents with least privilege, sandboxing, and human approval where it counts
- Data sovereignty: you decide where your data is processed, who can access it, and under which law
- Open source: my preference where it fits; a hyperscaler or commercial software where that serves you better
Projects
Two examples that illustrate my approach:
AI-assisted document creation
For a European transformation consultancy: AI agents draft complex documents from approved text and earlier projects, with open models hosted in Germany. In production after three weeks.
Call center analytics
For a BPO provider with large call centers across Germany: AI analysis of emails, chats, and calls with open-weight models on a German GPU server, with personal data removed before the analysis.
Let’s talk
Write to . I’m happy to start with an informal conversation about where you stand. More about me is on the about page.