Our history

Before starting his first company Mario Behling as the founder of OPNTEC worked with his friends on setting up wireless mesh networks in Berlin and other European cities. His passion to connect people with each other led him to far away places and even to Afghanistan. In Kabul and Jallalabad he helped to setup networks and distribute the XO laptop of the One Laptop per Child project.

After successful projects with the EU FOSS-Bridge project Mario founds MBM as the predecessor company of OPNTEC in Vietnam. Together with a team of 25 engineers he delivers open source IoT solutions and customized Linux systems for data centers and offices of telecom providers in Vietnam and Europe. At the same time he co-starts the FOSSASIA community and annual summit.

The company has a turning point in 2015 when the political situation in Vietnam tightens and Internet based businesses become increasingly difficult. After opening an initial office Mario moves his operations entirely to Singapore and focuses on developing big data services that culminate into early prototypes of AI voice assistants. The FOSSASIA Summit is also organized from here-on in Singapore.

With an increasing number of clients in Europe, operations are merged under the newly incorporated German OPNTEC GmbH. The goal of OPNTEC is to combine IoT product services and AI solutions development in one company in order to expand the activities. Customers include Daimler, KI Group, and UNESCO.

In 2019 OPNTEC is invited to participate in the Horizon 2020 program by the Technische Universität Berlin to develop Open Hardware consumer devices. A focus in the program is to develop the Pocket Science Lab into a consumer product with a large market potential.