“We urgently need AI companies bold enough to take on America’s giants head-on,” says Andreas Cleve, co-founder and CEO of Corti. He is now heading home to Copenhagen after following the classic Danish tech-startup playbook in the US — the bigger market, deeper capital, and better connections.
Cleve and his co-founder, Lars Maaløe, are reversing course, bringing their AI company back to Denmark. While at TechBBQ, we caught up with Andreas for a quick chat.
You are very active in AI and healthcare, and you have made it clear how important it is to build here in Europe. But we keep seeing the same pattern: companies do their research here, build their technology here, and then relocate to the US to commercialise it and capture the value there. What does Europe need to do to keep the technology, commercialisation, and value here?
If we’re talking about entrepreneurship and small companies, we need to level the playing field of a single market. We need to align the regulatory framework across countries, and we need a simpler way to go to market, because the compliance burden in Europe is too heavy. If we’re talking about large companies and intra-ownership, it’s much more about risk awareness and culture.
Can Europe realistically become more resilient and build its own infrastructure in strategic industries? Is true independence possible — and do we have viable alternatives right now?
Absolutely — if we can find a way to do industrial politics at scale. We just have to mean it.
So, what are you building in healthcare?
An API platform with model orchestration and an agent framework that lets health tech companies, startups, pharma companies, and phlebotomy providers build AI into their workflows — with higher clinical accuracy, compliance, and safety, and lower costs than the other models on the market.
What do you think is going to be the next big thing in healthcare AI in Europe?
Agents — machines doing autonomous work. Tasks currently done by humans will increasingly be handled by multiple agents working together.
Do you think AI will eventually outperform humans, especially in healthcare?
Think about how much energy it takes to power the brain. As far as we know, humans are the most efficient computer there is. AI will always cost more than us to run. Always.
