Celosphere 2025: Where enterprise AI moved from experiment to execution
Presented by Celonis
After a year of boardroom declarations on “AI transformation,” this was the week when corporate leaders came together to talk about what really works. Speaking from the podium Celosphere in MunichCelonis co-founder and co-CEO Alexander Rinke set the tone early in his keynote:
“Only 11% of companies currently see measurable benefits from AI projects,” he said. “That’s not an adoption problem. That’s a context problem.”
It’s a feeling familiar to anyone who has tried to deploy AI in a large enterprise. You can’t automate what you don’t understand – and most organizations still don’t have a single view of how work is actually done in their business.
Celonis’ answer, presented over three days at the company’s annual event, was less about new tech acronyms and more about connective tissue: how to make AI fit into the messy, living processes that power business. The company described it as achieving a true “Return on AI (ROAI)” – measurable impact that only occurs when intelligence is rooted in the process context.
A living model of how the company works
The core of the keynote was what Rinke called a “living digital twin of your operations.” Celonis has been building towards this moment for years, but this was the first time the company made clear how far that concept has evolved.
“We start by freeing up the process,” Rinke said. “Freeing yourself from the limitations of your current legacy systems.” Data coreCelonis’ data infrastructure, extracts raw data from source systems. It is capable of querying billions of records in near real-time with a refresh time of less than a minute, providing visibility beyond traditional systems of record.
It was built on this foundation Process intelligence graph is located in the center of the Celonis platform. It’s a system-independent, graph-based model that unifies data across systems, apps, and even devices, including task analytics data that captures clicks, spreadsheets, and browsing activity. It combines this data with the business context: business rules, KPIs, benchmarks and exceptions. Every transaction, rule, and process interaction becomes part of a continuously updated replica that reflects how the organization actually operates.
On top of the Graph, the company’s new Build Experience enables organizations to analyze, design, and operate AI-driven, composable processes – integrating AI where it delivers business impact, not just technical demos:
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Analyze where processes get stuck or repeat themselves
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Design the future state, establish outcomes, guardrails, and AI touchpoints
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Collaborate with people, systems, and AI agents working in sync – now orchestrated through a publicly available solution Orchestration engine which can activate and monitor every step in one flow
It’s a purposeful shift from discovery-driven AI pilots to results-driven AI operations – and a blueprint for orchestrating agentic AI, where human teams, systems, and autonomous agents work together through a shared process context rather than in silos.
Real-world evidence: Mercedes-Benz, Vinmar and Uniper
The Celosphere stage provided real-world evidence of the Celonis platform in action, through live stories from customers already building on it.
Mercedes Benz shared how process intelligence became their “connective tissue” during the semiconductor crisis. “We had data everywhere: factories, suppliers, logistics,” recalls Dr. Jörg Burzer, Member of the Board of Management of Mercedes-Benz Group AG, “What we didn’t have was a way to see it together. Celonis helped us connect those dots quickly enough to take action.”
The partnership has since expanded to eight of the company’s ten most critical processes, from supply chain to quality to after-sales. But what impressed audiences was not just the scale, but the cultural shift.
“If you show data in context and let teams visualize processes, you also change the culture,” says Burzer. “It’s not just process transformation – it’s people transformation.”
Bee VinmarCEO Vishal Baid described Celonis as “the foundation of our automation and AI strategy.” Its global plastics distribution business has already automated the entire order-to-cash process for a $3 billion unit, achieving a 40% increase in productivity. But Baid wasn’t just there to celebrate the completed work; he looked ahead.
“Now we’re tackling the non-algorithmic stuff,” he said. “Matching purchase and sales orders sounds simple until you have thousands of edge cases. We’re building an AI agent that can do that assignment intelligently. That’s the next frontier.”
And in the energy sector UniperTogether with partner Microsoft, we have demonstrated how process-aware AI copilots are already transforming business operations. Using Celonis and Microsoft’s AI stack, Uniper can predict when hydropower plants need maintenance – and cluster these jobs to reduce downtime and emissions.
“Every technician, every part, every system plays a role in a living process,” says Hans Berg, CIO of Uniper. “Humans can’t see everything. But process intelligence can – and it can push the system toward the best outcome.”
Agnes Heftberger, CVP & CEO, Microsoft Germany and Austria, who joined Berg on stage, summed it up succinctly:
“The hardest part is not building AI functions, but scaling them responsibly,” she explains. “You have to combine intelligence with the beating heart of the company: the processes.”
All over the world, Celonis reports more than $8 billion in realized business valueand more than 120 certified value champions – proof that process intelligence has a measurable impact far beyond pilots. Rinke called it “the first evidence of a real return on AI.”
From closed systems to composable intelligence
Celosphere 2025 marked a shift from architecture to interoperability – from defining business AI to making it work across borders.
Rinke’s vision of the future is unapologetically open: “Good things grow from open ecosystems,” he said. That philosophy takes shape through deeper platform integrations – inclusive Microsoft fabric, DatabricksAnd Bloom filter – with zero-copy, bi-directional access to the Lakehouse that allows customers to query process data on-site with minimal latency. The company also announced MCP Server support for embedding the Process Intelligence Graph directly into agentic AI platforms such as Amazon Bedrock and Microsoft Copilot Studio.
These updates make composable enterprise AI tangible: organizations can now compose and manage AI solutions across ecosystems rather than being tied to a single vendor.
Rather than competing based on who has the “best agent,” the message was that business AI will thrive when agents work together through shared context and models that reflect how businesses actually function.
“Each seller brings their own agent forward,” Rinke said. “But they’re all limited to that vendor’s world. If they can’t work together, they can’t work for you. That’s what process intelligence solves.”
The idea drew prolonged applause. For companies juggling multiple cloud platforms, ERPs and data tools, composability isn’t just elegant; it is survival.
Beyond operations: data, democracy and control
The closing moments of the keynote took an unexpected turn: from enterprise architecture to human courage. Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado joined live via satellite to talk about how her movement used data, encrypted apps and social coordination to expose election fraud and mobilize millions.
It was a powerful contrast: the same principles – transparency, accountability, context – at work in both business and democracy.
“Technology can be a weapon or a liberator,” Machado said. “It depends who has the context.”
Her words landed powerfully in a room full of people used to talking about data, systems and governance – a reminder that context is not just technical, it’s also human.
Why this year mattered
Celosphere 2025 marked a shift in the way companies approach AI – from experimentation to results based on process intelligence. The shift was evident in both tone and technology, with a more powerful Data Core, improved Process Intelligence Graph, and new Build Experience. But the deeper conclusion was philosophical: AI only scales if it is based on the way people and systems actually work together.
Celonis President Carsten Thoma candidly acknowledged that early process mining projects often “rushed in with discoveries” before understanding the value to the organization – a lesson that now defines the measured, pragmatic approach to enterprise AI.
Rinke said it best at the end of his keynote:
“We’re not just automating steps,” he said. “We build companies that can adapt on the fly, innovate freely and continuously improve.”
Did you miss it? View all the highlights of Celosphere 2025 here.
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