AIDAQ Speaker Insights: In Conversation with Mladen Milicevic
As part of our AIDAQ Speaker Insights series, we spoke with Mladen Milicevic, Co-Founder and CEO of Unchained Robotics, about where AI is creating real value today and what could give Europe an edge in the global AI race.
Co-founded in 2019, Unchained Robotics has grown into a platform for industrial robotics serving more than 300 customers. With experience across robotics, automation and international industrial markets, Milicevic brings a hands-on perspective on how AI is being applied in manufacturing and where Europe can build a competitive advantage.
In this conversation, he shares his perspective on the technologies and resources that could shape the next phase of AI – from real-world applications in robotics to Europe’s industrial data advantage.
If companies had to make one AI decision today that would define their position in the following years, what would it be?
Model choice and compute power are highly relevant success factors, and the US and China have largely already settled those for themselves. That's exactly why the hunger for clean, well-prepared industrial data there is now enormous. For Europe, that's a huge opportunity. We sit on precisely the data that's missing elsewhere: decades of industrial manufacturing, high-mix low-volume processes, and a large base of production systems running today. We shouldn't underestimate this lever, and we certainly shouldn't be hesitant about using it. The data hunger in the US and China is already driving new activity there to close exactly this gap through partnerships, investments, and targeted data acquisition. If Europe doesn't act decisively now, this lever will slip away again. We're holding an ace today. The question is whether we play it in time.
Where is AI creating real value today, and where is it still mostly hype?
I'm more optimistic than the word "hype" suggests. Every hype cycle is followed by a trough of disillusionment, and after that comes real productivity. Autonomous driving is the best example. After years of overpromising, Waymo alone now runs over 500,000 paid rides per week in the US, with demonstrably better safety records than human drivers. In China, comparable fleets operate at a scale of millions. I've experienced this firsthand, and the difference from the hype of five years ago is enormous. I expect robotics to follow the same path. We already see real value today wherever AI meets structured, real operational data. For example, when we learn from hundreds of robotic systems running in production how to optimize processes, and feed those insights back into the systems to make them more flexible. Europe is also a high-mix, low-volume market with many small batch sizes and high product variety. Automation and AI need to be built for exactly that, not for mass production modeled on Asian or US approaches.
Mladen Milicevic
Mladen Milicevic is the CEO of Unchained Robotics, a company he co-founded with Kevin Freise in 2019 while studying in Paderborn, Germany. Today, Unchained Robotics is one of the leading platforms for industrial robotics serving the global SME sector. Backed by around €16 million in funding, the company has grown revenue to the double-digit millions within just a few years, achieved profitability, and now serves more than 300 industrial customers. In addition to its platform business, Unchained Robotics develops proprietary solutions such as MalocherBot, a rapidly deployable automation system for production and logistics processes, and LUNA, a software solution for planning and integrating robotic systems. Through his experience in international industry environments, including China, and as a supervisory board member of a mid-sized company, Milicevic understands the challenges of automation firsthand. His mission is to make robotics more accessible for businesses and establish automation as the standard for SMEs.
