Skip links

Who We Are

semafora Systems is Europe’s pioneer in Hybrid AI. Founded on decades of Semantic AI research, our mission is to make enterprise AI. Explainable, compliant, and future-proof. Our solutions are engineered in Germany, trusted by organizations that cannot afford black-box decisions.

With over 25 years of experience, a team of AI researchers and engineers, and deployments in industries from manufacturing to finance,
we combine scientific depth with practical impact.

Our Story

semafora is the technology leader in Semantic AI.

With its products OntoBroker and OntoStudio X, semafora offers a versatile range of Semantic technologies for ontology management and reasoning, as well as applications for data migration, NLP knowledge extraction, contract management, process control, IoT monitoring and many more customer-specific applications related to BigData, compliance and control.

The technology of OntoBroker was invented based on a publication of Michael Kifer and Georg Lausen in 1995 at the KIT (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) and developed there until the spin-off of Ontoprise GmbH in 1999.

In 2012, semafora took over the industrial business from Ontoprise.

OntoBroker has been deployed since the early 2000s in high-profile projects with clients such as Alstom, Atos, Audi, GE and optimized especially for industrial operation. In terms of deployment flexibility, performance, ease of use and reliability, OntoBroker is the premier technology in Semantic AI.

Message from our CEO

CEO / CTO

Dr. Bernd Geiger

AI should open a new age of human capability — not replace it. At the same time, generative AI must be trusted to do the right things, every time. Trust isn’t a slogan; it means aligning systems with higher-level values: following your policies, and obeying hard, verifiable facts.

At semafora, we give AI that compass. Our “active ontologies” unite logic rules and data into one living knowledge base, to ensure decisions are transparent, reproducible, and auditable — never a black box. This is the backbone of OntoBroker and our product suite, and it’s why regulators and decision-makers can inspect not just outcomes, but the reasoning behind them.

What’s changed recently is speed: we can now train these ontologies — automatically extracting domain knowledge from natural-language documents into higher-order logic — without tedious manual modeling. That lets organizations keep their “source of truth” fresh while maintaining rigorous semantics.

We call this Hybrid AI: statistical, generative models for breadth and creativity, combined with a guiding framework of values and facts for governance and truth. The result is clarity you can explain, outcomes you can verify, and systems you can genuinely trust. That’s the future of AI we’re building — human-centered, policy-aware, and enterprise-ready.

Thank you for being part of this journey with us.
Together, we’re shaping a future where intelligence and responsibility go hand in hand.

Sincerely,

Dr. Bernd Geiger
Chief Executive Officer

Let’s build together

Ready to unlock transparent AI for your enterprise?
Take the first steps in your transformation

Explore
Drag