We use AI to support investors. As Technical AI Lead for quirion and Quirin Privatbank, Felix Behne is a driving force behind us getting better and better at it. How the 26-year-old came to us, and what he is working on right now.
A former employer once called him a “Swiss Army knife for end-to-end software development”. Unusually deep specialist knowledge, combined with an eye for the bigger picture and for whether a technical solution is actually usable: not everyone has that range. Felix Behne does.
Behne originally wanted to study medicine, but he changed direction soon after leaving school. “I wanted to support myself financially,” says the now 26-year-old. In 2019 he opted for a dual degree in data science, which took him from the Lüneburg Heath to southern Germany. He did the academic half at the Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University in Ravensburg, and the practical half at Airbus Defence & Space in Ottobrunn near Munich.
At Airbus, Behne was assigned straight away to an internal start-up building a cloud-based analytics platform for flight and surveillance data. “That was a stroke of luck for me,” he says. “I landed in a top team of highly qualified colleagues, and I learned a great deal about software development from them very quickly.”
From newcomer to team lead
After finishing his degree in 2022, Berlin drew him in. He started there as a data science consultant at a young consultancy. That was the moment artificial intelligence (AI) suddenly made huge waves: ChatGPT marked the beginning of the rise of large language models. It quickly became clear that advances in AI could make all kinds of processes far more efficient.
One of the consultancy’s clients was quick to appreciate what Behne could do. After only a few months he switched sides, joining focused ai in April 2023. The construction-sector start-up was tackling a problem many building firms face. “Day-to-day work there means managing a flood of thousands of emails across hundreds of different sites,” Behne says. “You lose the overview fast. But documenting everything cleanly matters enormously in commercial terms – because of possible legal disputes once construction is finished, for instance.” Behne played a major part in developing an AI assistant that makes this considerably easier. After just one year at focused ai, he took over as technical lead.
How he came to quirion
In the summer of 2025 he spotted a Quirin Privatbank job ad on LinkedIn. They were looking for someone to strengthen the AI team, and it caught his interest. “I’m still young, I wanted to keep learning, and the work described appealed to me,” Behne explains. So he applied, and both sides quickly agreed. Just five months after starting in August 2025, he took on responsibility here too, as Technical AI Lead.
AI has been on our agenda for a long time. We launched quirion.Ai back in September 2024 – the first financial AI of its kind in Germany. It was designed, trained and brought to market with an external partner. Today an in-house team looks after its further development, and explores new ways to put AI to work.
quirion.Ai as the first port of call
Whether for the app’s latest update or the redesign of the landing page, Behne has been instrumental in pushing our financial AI further into the foreground. In the app and on the website it is now the first port of call for questions about investing or about quirion, and that position is set to be strengthened further. “In one project we’re currently working on simplifying onboarding with the help of AI,” Behne says. “If that works through a chat with quirion.Ai instead of the current application process on the web, it would be far easier for investors.”
Top priority for Behne and his team right now, though, is the groundwork for the new retirement-savings account. There is a great deal to do behind the scenes so that setting up these accounts runs smoothly from the start of 2027 and every rule attached to the incentive is observed.
The same goes for quirion.Ai. Our financial AI already knows a fair amount about this, but it still has plenty to learn – because it is meant to support customer service through the flood of questions expected about the new retirement-savings account. “Explanations around investing often stay very abstract. It’s different in a chat with the bot: simulations, for example, make reaching your personal goals far more tangible,” Behne says.
Staying human
Our financial AI also helps with questions about quirion, around the clock, seven days a week. Beyond that, though, customer service remains the central point of contact. Because sometimes you simply want to speak to a person. Machines can help people work more efficiently, but they should not replace them. Behne is firmly convinced of that.
In any case, the software and AI specialist is nothing like the “tech nerd” cliché. Behne certainly has a passionate interest in technology and pursues his goals with real determination. But he values close, personal collaboration in small teams and generally enjoys being around people – in his free time too, when he is playing sport. He has just picked up a new one that leaves little room for the shy. “I recently joined an underwater rugby team,” Behne says. “It gets rough, but it lets me switch off completely.”
Questions about investing? Answers come from quirion.Ai.
