18 February 2026 | Tübingen

Cyber Valley Start-up Meshcapade draws Epic Games to Tübingen

The US-based game developer is acquiring the Max Planck spin-off and will establish a presence in Cyber Valley

Meshcapade has been acquired by Epic Games. As part of the acquisition, Epic Games is establishing a presence in Cyber Valley. The Meshcapade team will join Epic’s AI research team, contributing to technologies for Unreal Engine and MetaHuman.

Meshcapade, is a spin-off of the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS) in Tübingen and one of the earliest members of the Cyber Valley Start-up Network. The start-up develops advanced technologies for the creation and animation of digital humans. Founded in 2018, the start-up received the inaugural Max Planck Startup Award from the Stifterverband in 2022. Epic Games is a U.S. game developer and creator of Unreal Engine, a game development technology.

Meshcapade’s technology builds on the Institute’s SMPL (Skinned Multi-Person Linear) body model, a highly realistic 3D representation of the human body trained on thousands of 3D scans. Licensed through Max Planck Innovation, the technology transfer arm of the Max Planck Society, SMPL has become the de facto standard for 3D human representation in both academia and industry. The technology was developed by co-founders Naureen Mahmood and Talha Zaman together with Michael J. Black, Director of Perceiving Systems at MPI-IS.

The Meshcapade team will now join Epic Games, which is opening a new office in Tübingen. This move strengthens Epic’s presence in Cyber Valley, one of Europe’s leading AI innovation ecosystems, and underscores the region’s role as a hub for cutting-edge research and industry collaboration in artificial intelligence, computer vision, and digital human technologies.

Read the full news story from the Max Planck Society here:

https://www.mpg.de/26082348/max-planck-spin-off-meshcapade-draws-epic-games-to-tuebingen