Optocycle

From Vision to Reality: The Origin Story of Optocycle

The construction industry is responsible for the largest flow of materials worldwide and, at the same time, is one of the sectors with the greatest untapped potential for a true circular economy. This is exactly where Optocycle comes in. Founded in Tübingen in 2022, the startup pursues a clear vision: A world where every piece of construction waste is a new building material.

The idea for Optocycle originated from an initially completely different use case. The two founders, Max-Frederick Gerken and Lars Wolff, originally worked on intelligent image recognition in retail. The decisive turning point came through close contact with the recycling industry: a friendly entrepreneur drew the founders' attention to a central problem, the lack of transparency in mineral construction waste. Up until then, material compositions had been predominantly estimated via visual inspection: slow, subjective, and prone to error.

For Gerken and Wolff, it quickly became clear: their technology could exert significantly greater leverage here than in the original field of application. Optocycle was born.

The Founders: Entrepreneurial Drive Meets Technological Depth

Max-Frederick Gerken

CEO & Co-Founder

Max-Frederick Gerken is the strategic mind behind Optocycle. With a background in business administration (University of Tübingen), he is responsible for business development, market strategy, and vision. His motivation: to make the construction industry structurally more sustainable and data-driven. For his work on intelligent, sustainable business models, he was included in the 2024 Forbes "30 under 30" DACH list.

Lars Wolff

CTO & Co-Founder

As Technical Director, Lars Wolff is the mastermind behind the Optocycle technology. He is responsible for the entire product development process, from optical sensor technology and machine learning models to the software platform. Wolff brings experience from a US tech startup as well as from electrical engineering and met Gerken during his computer science studies in Tübingen.

The Breakthrough: Pilot Plants and First Industrial Applications

A key milestone was the collaboration with Heinrich Feess GmbH & Co. KG, one of Germany's most innovative construction waste recyclers. This is where Optocycle installed its first pilot plant and tested the technology under real industrial conditions for the first time. From trucks to tipping points and conveyor belts, material flows were recorded and analysed seamlessly for the first time. The success of this pilot plant laid the foundation for scaling: within a short space of time, a double-digit number of pilot projects followed across Germany, with customers such as Heinrich CEMEX, Otto Dörner, Blasius Schuster, and the Weimer Group. Today, Optocycle serves numerous clients in Germany, Spain, and France.

Technological Core: Machine Learning, Multispectral Sensors, and Edge Computing

Optocycle combines multispectral cameras, computer vision technology, and edge computing to analyse mineral construction waste in real time. The internally developed machine learning model recognises material types such as concrete, brick, or gypsum, identifies contaminants, determines grain sizes, and delivers objective quantity and quality data directly at the process point.

The result is a "Single Source of Truth" for the material flow: subjective estimates are replaced by reliable data. This creates transparency, lowers costs, reduces conflicts, and enables high-quality recycling instead of downcycling.

Conclusion: Optocycle as a Pioneer of the Circular Construction Industry

Optocycle shows how deep tech, entrepreneurial spirit, and sustainability can work together. Within just a few years, a concrete industry challenge has evolved into a scalable key technology that has the potential to fundamentally transform the construction and recycling industry.

With a clear focus on data, transparency, and the circular economy, Optocycle is working to turn waste back into valuable material and to make the vision a reality that every piece of construction waste is a new building material.