Corti Opens Its Clinical-AI Stack to Startups as Europe’s Regulatory Bill Rises
May 13, 2026 – 10:43 am
Corti, the Copenhagen-based clinical AI company, has launched a no-equity accelerator for healthcare and life sciences startups, opening its Symphony model stack to founders worldwide at a time when regulatory costs of building medical AI in Europe are high.
The company stated that its flagship clinical-grade model, Symphony, outperforms OpenAI on HealthBench Professional, a benchmark for realistic clinician conversations released by OpenAI last month alongside ChatGPT for Clinicians.
Through the new Startup Acceleration Program, Corti offers up to $5,000 in credits across the full Symphony stack, which includes agents, medical coding, speech-to-text, and text generation. Trained on over 1.5 million hours of clinical audio, this stack is designed for building AI applications that assist healthcare professionals.
Participants in the program gain access to direct support from Corti’s clinical and regulatory team regarding the EU AI Act, MDR (Medical Device Regulation), and data residency questions. They also benefit from founder-led roadmap webinars and invitations to Corti events in New York, Copenhagen, London, and Berlin.
Applications are accepted on a rolling basis with a one-week turnaround. The program is open to pre-seed through Series B companies working in healthcare, clinical workflows, or adjacent life sciences fields without any pitch process or equity component involved.
This move by Corti comes against the backdrop of increasing regulatory scrutiny in Europe. In April, OpenAI provided free access to its clinical AI tools to verified US healthcare professionals. A week later, OpenEvidence, a clinical AI search platform valued at $12 billion and used daily by roughly 40% of US physicians, withdrew from the UK and EU due to regulatory uncertainty under the EU AI Act.
The high-risk system obligations mentioned in this decision will apply as early as August 2nd, 2026; however, AI embedded in CE-marked medical devices regulated under MDR or IVDR has a later timeline set for August 2nd, 2027.
Corti highlights the structural cost layer in Europe as another challenge for startups, with EU MDR certification costing between €200,000 and €600,000 per device and taking 12 to 18 months to complete. Galen Growth’s Q1 2026 analysis shows European digital health funding consolidating in larger, later-stage rounds, with investors increasingly favoring companies that demonstrate clinical evidence and workflow integration over just impressive performance.
"The future of healthcare AI won’t be built by one company," said Andreas Cleve, Corti’s co-founder and CEO. "It will be built by thousands of teams, each with deep knowledge of a specific care setting, workflow, or patient population."