Blackwood Seven's AI media agency is provoking fear across the big networks

When the three founders of Blackwood Seven set up their artificial intelligence media agency in Denmark in 2013, they didn't pick the name just because it sounded enigmatic with military overtones. They wanted a short name that would work online and wasn't already taken. But Blackwood Seven, which has just opened a UK office, has provoked fear across the big media agency networks because its algorithm-based predictive technology threatens to challenge their business model. The Copenhagen shop already claims to manage 400m ( 360m) of billings a year for brands such as Volkswagen, Amazon, Groupon and Dollar Shave Club, and it has 200 staff in offices including Germany and the US. "So far, it's been a sprint – we've been running fast," Carl Erik Kjærsgaard, Blackwood Seven's chief executive, says on a visit to London with another founder, Henrik Busch, who is moving to the capital to be its UK chief executive.