Munich Startup: What does your startup do? What problem do you solve?
Helmit: Helmit is the digital helmet for children on social media. We developed an AI-powered app that protects children from dangers like cyberbullying, grooming, and inappropriate content. Our app runs locally on parents’ devices, connects to platforms like WhatsApp, Instagram, or Discord, and uses AI to detect signs of dangerous interactions in real-time. When a risk is detected, parents receive an alert.
The numbers make it very clear why this is important: one in five children are affected by cyberbullying, one in four experience cybergrooming. Until now, parents have usually had only two options: ban or ignore. That’s exactly why we developed Helmit.
Munich Startup: But that already exists!
Helmit: Not really. Most of what is offered today as child protection mainly regulates screen time, blocks apps, or filters websites. While this helps reduce unhealthy media use, it doesn’t go far enough. The critical dangers usually arise within chats on social media platforms. That’s exactly the gap we’re closing.
There are some providers, especially in the US, who also analyze chats. But they process sensitive data entirely in the cloud and only support a few platforms. In contrast, Helmit offers a simple, effective, and privacy-friendly solution that comes with several technical breakthroughs. We’re the first to enable local AI processing. No cloud, no third parties. We can detect dangers in text, audio, images, and videos, and setup takes only two minutes.
From frustration to a solution for digital child protection
Munich Startup: What’s your founding story?
Helmit: Helmit emerged from frustration with the fact that digital violence against children on social media has been a known problem for years, yet platform operators take little responsibility. At the same time, we’re convinced that a blanket ban on social media isn’t effective, as it only combats symptoms and shifts the real problem elsewhere.
That’s why we wanted to create a different approach: give parents the tools they need to protect their children digitally. The fact that we’re building Helmit together is no accident. We’ve known each other since childhood and both share the drive to solve socially relevant problems through innovation. Helmit emerged from exactly this motivation.
Munich Startup: What have been your biggest challenges so far?
Helmit: Our biggest challenge was bringing together two things that are often treated as a contradiction: effective protection and real privacy. To protect children online, you must analyze very sensitive content – the exact chats and communications where cyberbullying and grooming happen. Many sacrifice either data protection or effective protection at this point. Our goal was to solve both simultaneously. To achieve this, we had to develop very small AI models that can run efficiently locally on parents’ devices.
Integrating social media platforms is also complex. It involves a lot of work from developing technical interfaces to compliance and certification questions to work reliably with the platforms.
Goal: Global standard for child safety
Munich Startup: Where do you want to be in one year, where in five years?
Helmit: In one year, we want to establish Helmit as a strong child protection solution for families in German-speaking countries. Above all, we want to make a real difference in the everyday lives of many families and noticeably reduce digital violence against children. When children are better protected through Helmit, that’s our most important measure of success.
In five years, Helmit should be the global safety standard for every child’s first smartphone. We will continue to expand Helmit: from a protection solution to a comprehensive all-in-one platform for digital parenting.
Munich Startup: How have you experienced Munich as a startup location so far?
Helmit: For us, Munich is the ideal location for building a tech startup. Strong universities, excellent research, and ambitious talent come together directly here. Particularly with our focus on AI development, TUM serves as an important breeding ground for building a strong engineering team. Add to that funding programs and support services that really help startups in very early stages. This combination of technical excellence and a well-developed ecosystem makes the location so valuable.
Munich Startup: Outsource or do it yourself?
Helmit: Everything that strategically differentiates us, we do ourselves. We have a very strong team of machine learning engineers, software developers, and marketing talent. So most of it is created completely in-house. What doesn’t belong to the strategic core, you can outsource smartly to scale faster and move at greater pace.
