Ringier AG has acquired a minority interest in the Berlin start-up Bot Labs, which was founded in January 2018 by Hubert Burda Media together with Ingo Rübe.
Burda Media invests in blockchain technology and founded the start-up BOT Labs in Berlin in January together with Ingo Rübe, up to now CTO of the national publishing business. The business goal of the company is to develop practical innovations for companies based on the blockchain technology, and to identify ways of integrating them into the operational business.
„Blockchain has the potential to succeed the http protocol in the world wide web and to lead the internet, which is dominated by a few mega-corporations today, back to its highly democratic founding myth.“
Philipp Welte, Burda board member
Is a new technology that makes secure transactions of all kinds possible without intermediaries. It creates smart contracts that ensure they are adhered to themselves. The first well-known product is the cryptocurrency Bitcoins. In practice, Blockchain could be used, for instance, for cars that rent themselves out, trips that are processed without intermediaries, as well as the booking of advertisements on media platforms and the fee-based use of editorial content.
„What is exciting about Blockchain is that it is a deeply democratic, consumer-friendly, as well as secure technology. It is able to revolutionize the media business by making intermediaries of all kinds redundant and eliminate the misuse of data and data silos – and that is not all.“
Ingo Rübe, director of BOT Labs, becomes co-founder
The successor of Ingo Rübe and new CTO of Burda’s national publishing business will be Kai Riecke, who has been responsible for operationalizing technological innovations in various divisions at Burda since 2014. Riecke was product director at BILD digital from 2007 to 2012 and director of publishing at WEKA afterwards. For the past year, he has been advancing the implementation of a new technology platform as product director of AdTech Factory, Burda’s service provider for processing printed and digital advertisements. In his new role as CTO, he will continue to closely supervise the projects he is responsible for at AdTech Factory.
Open-source CMS Thunder, which Burda created in 2015, and which has since been expanded successfully together with many other publishers, will be managed by a governing board consisting of Ingo Rübe and Kai Riecke in the future.
Further information: ingo.ruebe@botlabs.org
