Danish founder in Silicon Valley builds billion-kroner AI firm Encord and sees where technology is heading

Ulrik Stig Hansen, a Dane who grew up in a small town outside Roskilde, is co-founder and CEO of Encord, a company that supplies AI training data. He started it in London before the AI boom and has since raised more than 730 million kroner in venture capital, watching the industry's rapid growth from the inside.

Because Encord works closely with leading AI and robotics companies, Hansen has a view of where the technology is going. His main point is that AI is moving out of its largely digital origins and into the physical world.

He pictures a future in which robots help out in the home. But he expects them to arrive sooner in industry, manufacturing and resource extraction, because safety requirements and regulation will slow their introduction into private households.

The piece, a perspective article from the Danish business paper Børsen dated 10 November 2026, opens in a warehouse in Hayward, California, on the east side of San Francisco Bay, where visitors can get a glimpse of that future. The text available here breaks off at that point, so it does not describe what is in the warehouse or give further detail on Encord's work there.

For the Danish and Nordic AI scene, the story is an example of a Danish founder building a company of billion-kroner scale in the international AI market, and it offers an insider's view that physical AI and robotics will reach workplaces before homes.