European AI unicorn founded and run by a baker’s son, who learned business necessities by observing his father’s bakery operations.

(SeaPRwire) –   Running a bakery is no easy feat. Starting at 6 a.m. every morning, customers expect a delicious item to kick off their day. Profit margins are slim, and competition is fierce (since plenty of people can whip up an average bread roll). Demand fluctuates but follows a pattern—morning crowds, lunchtime surges, and commuters heading home. If you’re not ready for Christmas, you risk messing up the most lucrative period of your year.

Bastian Nominacher, co-founder of European AI unicorn Celonis, hails from a Munich-based baking family with five generations in the business. As a fan of computer games, he assisted his father in adopting new digital tools to operate the family business more smoothly.

“My main role was helping with the point of sale,” Nominacher shared. “Baking has many demand peaks—Christmas is the biggest one, since everyone stocks up, and you never want to run out.”

“We gathered data to get a clear picture. Since margins are tight, you can’t just decide to make 10,000 rolls—throwing away 2,000 isn’t just a waste of good food; it also destroys your profit. So we used data to accurately predict demand patterns, which kept our waste rate very low.”

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Celonis’ ranking on the Future 50 list

Back in the 1980s, Warren Buffett noted that the secret to a successful business isn’t grand, ambitious projects or launching groundbreaking new products. Instead, success comes from mastering the fundamentals and identifying small, straightforward ways to improve efficiency.

Many Fortune 500 companies have heeded the Sage of Omaha’s advice. Over 25% of these firms are Celonis clients, using agentic AI to optimize their operations—much like how a bakery might refine its processes.

Celonis specializes in process mining—analyzing every step of a company’s operations to uncover conflicting priorities, bottlenecks (both human and technological), and inefficiencies. After a $1 billion Series D funding round in 2022, it was valued at $13 billion. Founded in 2011, the company is frequently mentioned as Europe’s next big tech IPO candidate.

“Right now in Europe, most of the demand for our services is in supply chain management. Supply chains have faced enormous strain—first from COVID-19, then tariffs, and now issues with the Strait of Hormuz”

Bastian Nominacher, co-founder of European AI unicorn Celonis

To illustrate Celonis’ work, Nominacher uses the example of a brewery that struggled with basic operations.

“They had trouble delivering to supermarkets and bars, and their deliveries were often late. This is bad because it leads to lost revenue and damages customer trust,” he explains.

Celonis looked at the brewery’s 5,000 daily deliveries, found ways to make them more efficient, and cut the number of trips by 17%.

“This boosted their revenue and improved customer satisfaction. It also lowered their costs (since they used less fuel) and reduced emissions by over 10%.”

Celonis refers to these as the “top-line, bottom-line, green-line” benefits of process mining: higher revenue, lower costs, and a smaller environmental footprint. In 2025, the company was ranked #3 on the Future 50 list.

“Currently in Europe, supply chain management is where most of the demand lies. Supply chains have been under huge pressure—first from COVID-19, then tariffs, and now the closure of the Strait of Hormuz,” he notes.

“Clearly, many economies are struggling, so companies need to unlock savings. If done correctly, this can lead to savings of hundreds of millions. Macroeconomic pressures actually help businesses focus on what’s important.”

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The software-as-a-service (SaaS) industry is facing challenges, with some claiming that the agentic AI being sold today will eventually render the traditional SaaS business model obsolete. They argue that businesses using AI to develop their own code will erode the sector’s value.

“I’m not a software industry stock analyst,” Nominacher says with a grin when asked about the $1 trillion sell-off of SaaS stocks in February. “I believe some software companies will struggle if they aren’t unique or can be easily replaced. But for Celonis, this is a huge opportunity—we’re the infrastructure needed to power these AI-driven changes, and as agentic AI use grows, so does our market. Agentic AI makes us more effective and efficient, and our biggest challenge is keeping up with the high demand.”

Nominacher points out that the benefits are clear across both private and public sectors. For example, would you want a doctor to spend time talking to patients or hours “chasing 25 clipboards,” as he puts it? He aligns with those who say a job apocalypse isn’t around the corner.

“Should an engineer spend their days cross-referencing every detail?” he asks. “Or should they focus on understanding problems and figuring out the right strategy to solve them? This doesn’t mean less work—it means more meaningful work. Engineers can spend more time engaging with customers, leading workshops, and doing high-value tasks instead of getting stuck in tedious, low-impact work.”

Nominacher says that a public listing isn’t on the table right now.

“In the long run, we envision Celonis as a public company,” he says. “But it has to happen at the right moment. Right now, we’re completely focused on our customers and developing our technology. We’re not rushing it, but there will come a time when it makes sense—both internally and given market conditions. But that won’t be anytime soon. Many people say agentic AI will ‘change everything.’ And it will. But sometimes, you also need to focus on the small things—like how to make your bread rolls a bit more efficiently.”