Tractable doesn't have time for aimless AI

Amongst a wave of buzzy deep-learning startups in the early 2010s, Tractable has managed to grow steadily by addressing a very specific problem with the technology: helping insurance companies to automatically assess vehicle damage. Founded by Alexandre Dalyac and Razvan Ranca in 2014 after graduating from the company builder programme at Entrepreneur First (EF), Adrien Cohen joined the company soon after as chief business officer, and set out to discover where to apply its computer vision expertise. "If you take a step back, at the time there was a wave of deep learning startups," Cohen told Techworld last week, speaking from a conference room at Tractable's London office, which is an entire floor of a WeWork near Old Street station in east London. "There was a big number of companies with great technology, but no problem to solve. Most of these companies, they ended up being acquired."