Interview with Martin Hubschneider, Founder & Visionary of
CAS Software AG

Growth and success despite challenging times, AI as a driver, digital sovereignty as a principle and a vision for a better society: In this interview, Martin Hubschneider, founder and CEO of CAS Software AG, provides insights into the current development and strategic direction of the company, explains the concept of Customer Centricity as a Service, and shows why he is thinking far beyond software solutions with WeSociety.

Here's what you can expect in this article

How is the CAS Software AG Group doing?

What are CAS's key investment priorities?

Where does CAS stand on the use of artificial intelligence (AI)?

What exactly is CCaaS?

Why is digital sovereignty important?

What does “WeSociety” mean?

How are you Martin?

This year saw a world premiere for the Hubschenider family. Pippa, my first grandchild, has seen the light of day. A second granddaughter has already announced her arrival in July. The development of children’s potential makes us aware of the miracle of life and allows us to experience the joy of living.

My life motto "Thinking positively truly does enchant life" this is not naïve optimism, but expresses the conviction to actively and creatively work with liberating confidence in finding solutions, attractive visions of the future and alternative spaces of possibility.

And how is the CAS Software AG Group doing?

Despite the social and economic upheavals, CAS had an exceptionally successful year in terms of sales development, overall performance and profit. We have invested over 29 percent of our turnover (!) from current business into innovation and thus in our common future.

In this context, we are delighted that our team has been recognized several times as an outstandingly innovative company in Germany. The SZ Institute of the Süddeutsche Zeitung (!) and Creditreform honor the most innovative companies every year: After first place in 2024, we were delighted to take fourth place in 2025. We have been able to report a profit without interruption since our foundation 40 years ago and have carried this forward to new account.

With equity of around 30 million Euros (equity ratio 78.2%), CAS is not only completely independent of external bank capital, but is also in a position to invest counter-cyclically in our common future.

Especially in these turbulent times, I really enjoy being surrounded by an excellent team of co-creators at CAS, but also by a community of partners and customers with shared values. Our innovation festival with great presentations by our co-creators and reference customers impressively demonstrated our claim to shaping the future and our diverse innovation successes. I am grateful that we as the CAS team can play a formative role and make an important contribution to a digitally sovereign WeSociety.

What investment priorities does CAS focus on?

We are investing in many areas at the same time. Particularly high investments are made in our software platforms CAS genesisWorld, SmartWe, We.Network, CAS Merlin and SmartMaps. The combination of SmartWe/CAS genesisWorld and We.Network is currently creating a completely new software solution with Community CRM. In my view, every company and every organization will connect their customers and partners directly to their CRM system via We.Network in the future, thereby enabling direct dialogue.

Our aim is always to provide our customers with exceptional future security:

All solutions are hosted by us in certified data centers in Germany. Our solutions enable a high degree of adaptability to new customer requirements. The adaptations for this very rarely require programming - they can usually be implemented with the AppDesigner or through modeling in a release-safe manner. Our SmartDesign user interface is recognized worldwide as exceptionally user-friendly and fascinatingly simple: This year, we are introducing SmartDesign 3.0, a new generation with lots of integrated AI. We are already looking forward to the reaction of customers and users.
However, we are also investing in many industry solutions, such as our solution for car dealerships or solutions for connecting to other fair.digital software solutions.

Where does CAS stand when it comes to the use of artificial intelligence (AI)?

We were already one of the pioneers worldwide in 2016 with our intelligent Picasso search with "I don't search - I find". in 2021, we then had the word brand AIA (Augmented Intelligence Assistants) protected and subsequently launched a large number of AI assistants on the market under this brand.

At the Customer Centricity Forum, we will be presenting the concept of PIA - our unique digital assistant - for the first time. The first applications are already being shown live.

PIA has access to the personal wallet including the user's preferences and will orchestrate "its" digital service assistants and agents.

Our innovative AI coding, with which the logic of the SmartDesign interface can be programmed using natural language processing, is a completely new feature. Our aim is always to ensure that AI is transparent and that the final decision always remains with the human being.

AI can take a huge amount of work off our hands in certain areas. Nevertheless, we should use the new technologies prudently and with full awareness. CAS has an AI guideline that clearly points out to software developers, for example, that even if the code was developed by the AI, they are still responsible for every line of code and that it will continue to be incorporated into our software platform using the dual control principle.

My personal assessment: After the current hype and the seemingly cut-throat competition to build data centers, we will find that all that glitters is not gold. Even though I personally find the progress in AI breathtaking and fascinating, I also observe an increasing, enormous complexity, new very dangerous dependencies, an excessive trust in manipulable black boxes and in supposed AI experts as well as the frequent lack of "compliance", that is, ensuring adherence to laws and rules.

What actually is CCaaS?

Yes, that sounds like a new buzzword - but for us it is the start of a new world. CCaaS stands for Customer Centricity as a Service, CCaaS offers comprehensive support for the successful introduction and optimization of CC processes for our customers.

On June 25, 2026, we will present our expanded corporate positioning for the first time at the Customer Centricity Forum. We are firmly convinced that companies that live the Customer Centricity mission statement are significantly more successful and that people, partners and customers also experience significantly more joie de vivre. In fact, our software platforms such as CAS genesisWorld, SmartWe, CAS Merlin CPQ and We.Network support customer centricity "by design". But the customer centricity mission statement only works when it becomes tangible in the mindset and actions of every company employee, when every process is optimized, when every product and every service focuses on customer success and win-win. To achieve this, people need new skills and processes, products and services need to be rethought. We will make customer centricity measurable and optimizable. To this end, we will build up and certify an ecosystem of partners around us, including in a brand new, highly innovative academy. You can look forward to our new customer centricity offers.

For years you have been calling for digital sovereignty for Europe - suddenly everyone wants it

Yes, I can be grateful to the American president for this. It has raised awareness of the fact that we are heavily dependent on non-European providers such as those from the USA, both in the area of IT and, in particular, software platforms and AI.

Digital sovereignty means that companies can make independent decisions, know their dependencies and can switch quickly in an emergency.

We are also active in various organizations. As Vice President of the Federal Association of IT SMEs (BITMi), I initiated the "Software made in Germany", "Software made in Europe" and "Software hosted in Germany" seals. In March, the Digital Minister Dr. Karsten Wildberger took over the patronage of the event. This shows: Politicians support our initiative. With the non-profit association fair.digital, we want to go even further: The fair.digital seal and value proposition is intended as a purchase recommendation and guide for digitally sovereign IT solutions. The goal: A community of values based on the model of Bioland, Demeter or Naturland, which helps companies and organizations to be digitally healthy.

You often talk about WeSociety. What does this mean?

I am convinced that our societal system, which is geared towards maximizing profits, must be replaced by something new.

We call this the new WeSociety: The new goals are the pursuit of the common good, the well-being of every individual, the sustainability of our society and a healthy environment. This is not about abolishing market-based mechanisms, but about applying basic rules geared towards the common good and the transparent influence of lobbyists.

We believe that WeSociety needs a new form of company that is oriented towards the common good and digital sovereignty, especially for software platforms. We call them WeCompany. This type of company within the framework of a European Company (SE) cannot be taken over, or bought out, by groups of companies: The voting shares are permanently held exclusively by active co-creators, partners and customers. Nor do they exploit a strong market position: A WeCompany limits its profits to a maximum of 10 percent of turnover - anything above this is invested in innovation or leads to price reductions, both of which benefit all customers. With SmartWe World SE and We.Network Community SE, we have now founded the first two WeCompanies.

We are still at the very beginning of defining and implementing WeSociety and see it as a joint process involving many world co-creators.

What happens next?

Für die Welt kann ich es noch nicht sicher vorhersehen. Es bleibt auf jeden Fall spannend. Wir wollen allerdings mit unserer Unternehmens-Gruppe einen wichtigen Beitrag zur WeSociety leisten – in Zukunft auch mit Beteiligungsmöglichkeiten für unsere Kunden, Partner und Mitgestalter.

I can't predict it for the world yet. In any case, it remains exciting. However, we want to make an important contribution to WeSociety with our group of companies - including in future, opportunities for our customers, partners and co-creators to actively participate.

We are introducing new generations of our software platforms this summer: Our WeCompanies SmartWe and We.Network in particular offer our customers a wide range of innovations. But new WeCompanies are also being founded: WeSynergy SE, WeInvestment SE and an SE for the new academy. Even more important to us, however, is the implementation of our vision, which is also our motto:

“Connecting people”.

Together, we want to create fair.digital software platforms that connect co-creators, partners and customers so that they can help shape the WeSociety of the future. You are all warmly invited to join us in: Working together to shape a world worth living in for future generations.