From Cloud Builder to AI Orchestrator
When Thomas Nowicki transitioned from the consulting firm Accenture to Handelsblatt, he faced a unique challenge: to lead a highly regulated, historically grown media house technologically into the future.
"I wanted to see what happens when you move a complete system to the public cloud while simultaneously building new AI functionalities," says Nowicki. The entry was traditionally through infrastructure and migration – but his role quickly transformed with the AI boom.
Together with Microsoft, he developed the first prototype of what is now productively used Smart Search within a few days – a Retriever-Augmented-Generation system (RAG) that semantically evaluates editorial content and intelligently answers user questions. "That’s when I realized how much infrastructure actually is AI," he says. This insight ultimately led to the creation of a dedicated AI team.
The AI Strategy of Handelsblatt: Enhancing Products, Not Replacing Them
Many companies start their AI journey for efficiency reasons. However, at Handelsblatt, the readers are the focus:
How can AI make a journalistic product more valuable?
How does it improve the user experience?
How can the subscription become more attractive – especially for professional decision-makers?
Nowicki sums it up:
"AI does not define our products. But it changes how we build products."
There is a central principle: No AI-generated articles.
AI supports research, analysis, and production – but the content remains journalistically created and reviewed.
Smart Search: From Full-Text to True Meaning
The first major milestone was the introduction of the new, fully semantic search. Previously, the search relied on classic full-text annotations. Today, the system recognizes meanings in context – through vector databases, embeddings, and semantic similarity scores.
The result:
significantly more relevant search results
increasing usage numbers
positive feedback from editorial staff and readership
A particular learning: Users previously found content more often through Google than through internal search. This has completely reversed.
Text-to-Speech: Every Article as High-Quality Audio
Another project that is gaining significant reach is the automatic narration of all articles.
Instead of relying on generic browser reading functions, Handelsblatt built its own system – together with the startup AudioStack.
Today, articles are:
automatically narrated after publication
audio-optimized
delivered in compressed format
made available on the web and in apps
The usage is high. "Many readers prefer to listen rather than read," says Nowicki – a trend that the media industry is increasingly feeling.
Build or Buy? How Handelsblatt Decides
Not every AI system is built by the editorial team. The criteria:
Competence – can the team realistically handle it?
Speed – can it be built in a market-compliant time frame?
Economic feasibility – is it worthwhile to do training in-house compared to SaaS?
Quality – are there providers who have already solved the problem better?
Training speech synthesis in-house, for example, is unrealistic. "If OpenAI rents a nuclear power plant for six weeks to train a model – we can't do something like that."
Therefore, the rule is: SaaS first. If the product can later be sensibly internalized, the option remains open.
No Hallucinations: AI with Quality Gates
Since journalistic integrity is central, Handelsblatt has built extensive safety measures.
For example:
Semantic thresholds: Only content that is close enough to the user context is considered.
Internal relevance vectors: Articles from the editorial team are prioritized – agency material is only included in a structured way.
Multimodal validation: A second LLM checks whether the answer is substantively justifiable.
"No answer" as a valid answer: When no suitable source exists.
The commitment: Zero hallucinations.
Internal Challenges: Expectations, Misunderstandings, Architecture
Nowicki identifies three recurring themes:
1. Expectation Management
AI can do a lot – but not everything.
"You must not oversell it," he says.
2. Involve Editorial Staff Early
Data Stewards test new systems professionally.
What is not plausible is immediately filtered out.
3. Technical Architecture
A well-thought-out Pub/Sub structure enables reusability, scalability, and rapid implementation of new AI features.
How Success is Measured
Handelsblatt measures AI features strictly based on data:
Click behavior
Usage of Smart Search
Time spent
Scroll depth
Usage of audio
In-product feedback
A key learning: A large part of users click on content directly from Smart Search – a strong engagement signal.
The Future: Handelsblatt as an AI-Powered Media House
For the coming years, Nowicki sees great opportunities:
AI-powered analysis of financial data
automatic indicators for corporate risks
data-driven journalism
intelligent linking in articles
sentiment analyses
context-based story scouting
Long-term, as his vision:
"Every company will become an API. And we must keep an overview."
The Desired Headline for 2030
To conclude, Hahnenkamp asks:
What headline would you like to read in five years about AI at Handelsblatt?
Nowicki laughs – and replies:
"That we continue to be the leading medium for finance and economics.
And maybe someday also the leading medium for AI."