Law Firm CMS Advises Berlin Tech Company in their Development of the Xayn Search Engine

Press Release

Feb 3

European privacy tech with GDPR-compatible AI

Xayn combines privacy, control over algorithms, and convenience ‍

CMS evaluates decentralized Xayn technology from a legal perspective ‍
The international law firm has already been advising the tech company on data protection issues since 2018

MUNICH/BERLIN, 3 February 2021 – Berlin-based tech company Xayn has worked with international law firm CMS for the development of its privacy-protecting search engine, which was released in December. Xayn is a European search alternative that protects users' digital privacy, provides them with personalized search results, and gives them control over search algorithms.

A CMS team consisting of Dr Markus Häuser and Dr Markus Kaulartz provided comprehensive legal advice to the Berlin-based company on their search engine’s development. The mandate’s focus was on assessing AI and its data protection compliance from a legal perspective. Their comments were directly incorporated into the search engine’s development. The two CMS lawyers have been supporting the company, which emerged from a research project, with their legal expertise in developing decentralized technology since 2018.

"As an IT lawyer and former software developer, working with Xayn was particularly appealing to me. The team is highly qualified, very motivated, and shows that there are viable technical solutions to the conflict between AI and privacy," emphasizes Dr Markus Kaulartz, Counsel at CMS.

Xayn is based on so-called federated learning, which is a new territory both technically and legally. Instead of bringing the data to the algorithms, as in conventional methods, the algorithms are brought to the data. The algorithms train directly on users’ devices and are then aggregated in encrypted form.

"We want to make sure that our decentralized technology complies with European data protection standards at all levels. That's why we are already working closely with CMS in the development phase. Our contacts at CMS can not only support us from a legal perspective but also have technological expertise, which helps enormously in the collaboration," explains Leif-Nissen Lundbæk, Ph.D., co-founder and CEO of Xayn.

Xayn was founded in 2017 from a research project at the University of Oxford and Imperial College London by Dr Leif-Nissen Lundbæk, Professor Michael Huth, and Felix Hahmann. The AI company developed the open-source platform XayNet for federated learning and analytics, on which the search engine is also based. Xayn aims to become a competitive alternative to established search engines by combining privacy, transparency, and convenience with decentralized AI.‍‍

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About Xayn

Xayn is pioneering next genAI for large organizations. The European startup builds secure, sovereign, and sustainable AI systems that leverage the power of language models at scale. Xayn develops its Retrieval Augmented Generative AI as energy efficient and privacy-protecting AI solution “Made In Germany”.

Born out of research at Oxford University and Imperial College London, the Berlin-based company is committed to European values of transparency, privacy, and sustainability and develops its AI system as open-source technology. Founded in 2017 by Dr Leif-Nissen Lundbæk, Professor Michael Huth and Felix Hahmann, Xayn’s academic vision remains, with a workforce comprised of more than 35% PhDs. The start-up has received investment funding of 19.5 million EURO from Global Brain Corporation, KDDI Open Innovation Fund, Earlybird, and Dominik Schiener.

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