PwC
Standort Zukunft AI Content Hub

PwC's Standort Zukunft initiative looks at what Germany needs to stay competitive, from industry and infrastructure to energy, defense and skills, across a series of in-depth studies. The findings are strong, but long studies are hard to take in on a news site. Together with Handelsblatt, borabora studios built an AI agent that lets readers question the studies directly. A reader asks what matters to them and gets a short answer drawn only from PwC's reviewed study content. Every answer points back to the study and the page it comes from.

The tool is built to be spoken to. Readers tap the microphone and ask out loud, or type if they prefer, and the agent can read its answers back. Suggested starter questions help anyone who doesn't know where to begin, and follow-up questions carry the conversation from one chapter to the next. It lives inside Handelsblatt's site as part of the reading experience, on mobile and desktop, under the line "AI experience by PwC".

At the center sits a particle orb that listens and responds. When an answer carries a key figure, the orb breaks apart and its particles rebuild as a 3D motif that holds the number: a clock for seven years of average approval time, a sprouting plant for 2,800 new companies, a butterfly for 1,500 industrial firms in structural change, a microchip for 20 billion euros of new chip-fab investment. Charts form the same way, with bars and pie segments made of particles.

Around 40 motifs were modeled, animated and tuned in WebGL, and each one was reviewed with PwC so it reads clearly on a phone screen.

Every conversation can be kept. With one tap the reader downloads a PDF dossier in PwC's design, with a personal cover, each question as its own chapter, the charts and key figures from the conversation, AI-written summaries and the full list of sources. A closing note explains that the dossier was created with AI from expert-reviewed study content. A quick question turns into a document the reader can save, forward or bring into the next meeting.

Launched on Handelsblatt on 29 September 2026. In its first 30 days the campaign reached 1.9 million ad impressions, and readers spent an average of 3:04 minutes with the content, 18.8% longer than the Handelsblatt benchmark.