Zeiss breaks ground on its new innovation hub

As the company announced back in October 2017, this will be a shared innovation building for KIT and its carve-out Nanoscribe – the ZEISS Innovation Hub @ KIT. Alongside the company and the KIT, both partners plan to let current and future start-ups and carve-outs use the space. “We aim to use the Zeiss Innovation Hub @ KIT to expand our more than ten-year partnership with KIT and benefit from the potential of one of Germany’s most innovative sites, here on the north campus. We want to offer creative, bright technologically minded graduates room to develop their ideas and projects and take advantage of career prospects at Zeiss,” says Professor Kaschke, CEO of the ZEISS Group, in a press release. At the Zeiss Innovation Hub @ KIT, the research university in the Helmholtz Association, whose third task – after research and teaching – is innovation, has the chance to rent new spaces for its own carve-outs and innovation activities and offer them long-term prospects at the site. “The strategic partnership between Zeiss and KIT is the expansion of a longstanding collaboration. The Zeiss Innovation Hub @ KIT enables us to achieve a milestone from which both partners and the Baden-Württemberg site will benefit over the long term,” says KIT President Professor Hanselka. One of the enterprises that will move into the building is Nanoscribe, a company that focuses on 3D printing and microfabrication. Nanoscribe is a KIT carve-out that was established in 2007. Zeiss was one of its stakeholders virtually since the very beginning. The building will cover a total of 12’000 square metres that can be used in many ways – as office space, meeting areas, labs and production facilities. Zeiss is investing approximately USD 30 million and shall assume the construction and operating costs.