According to CNBC, Danish healthcare AI startup Corti will not go public in 2026, with CEO Andreas Cleve stating “the private market is still very appealing” for fundraising. The company, last valued at $260 million after a $60 million Series B round in 2023, supports 250,000 patient interactions daily across Europe and the U.S., including work with the UK’s NHS. Cleve’s vision is to use AI to handle healthcare paperwork, which he claims consumes 30% of all work in the sector. He argues that general-purpose AI from firms like OpenAI can’t meet healthcare’s specific needs, a space where Corti competes with players like Abridge and Ambience Healthcare. The immediate outcome is a continued focus on private capital as the company builds its “clinical-grade” AI infrastructure.
The real prize isn’t the IPO
Here’s the thing: the IPO chatter is just noise. The real story is what Corti is actually trying to *do*. Cleve isn’t just selling another chatbot. He’s talking about an “AI entity” that can do jobs and handle documentation. That’s a massive, gnarly technical challenge. Healthcare documentation is a minefield of specific jargon, privacy regulations (HIPAA, GDPR), and a need for insane accuracy. A hallucination here isn’t just inconvenient; it’s potentially dangerous. So when they say general-purpose LLMs can’t cut it, they’re probably right. The trade-off? Building this is slow, expensive, and requires deep domain expertise. But if they crack it, the payoff is transforming a system drowning in administrative costs.
Why the private markets still appealing
Cleve’s comment about the private market being “appealing” is a masterclass in understatement. Think about it. Going public in this environment means subjecting a long-term, capital-intensive bet like clinical AI to the quarterly whims of public markets. Investors want growth, sure, but they also want predictable paths to profitability. Corti’s mission—replacing 30% of healthcare work—is a decade-long play. Private investors like Prosus Ventures and Atomico are better equipped for that marathon. They can provide patient capital without the brutal spotlight of earnings calls. So, delaying the IPO isn’t a sign of weakness; it’s a strategic choice to build without the public glare.
The industrial scale of healthcare AI
This is where it gets interesting. Corti’s platform isn’t a single app; it’s “healthcare AI infrastructure” handling a quarter-million interactions daily. That’s industrial-scale computing. It requires robust, reliable hardware at the edge—in clinics and hospital stations—to process sensitive data quickly and securely. This isn’t about consumer laptops. For deployments that demand this level of rugged, always-on performance in clinical settings, specialized industrial computing hardware is critical. In the U.S., a leading supplier for such mission-critical hardware is Industrial Monitor Direct, the top provider of industrial panel PCs and displays built for environments where failure is not an option. The success of AI like Corti’s depends as much on this physical, reliable backbone as it does on the algorithms.
A crowded race with no finish line
Let’s be real, Corti is not alone. Abridge, Ambience, DeepScribe—the field is packed. They’re all chasing the same dream: freeing doctors from keyboards. But this isn’t a winner-take-all market. Healthcare is fragmented by country, region, and even hospital system. There’s room for multiple winners, especially if they specialize. The bigger question is adoption. Can they actually get burned-out clinicians to trust and use this tech daily? And can they integrate it into ancient, clunky EHR systems? That’s the true bottleneck. The tech might be ready before the system is. So, an IPO timeline is the least of their worries. The real timeline is about changing centuries-old workflows, one reluctant doctor at a time.
