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.

A new type of media agency that uses predictive analytics and artificial intelligence to help clients decide where they should be spending their ad dollars launched in the US last week, with the aim of challenging the traditional agency business model in order to pick up big clients. Blackwood Seven was founded in Copenhagen in 2013 but has now entered the US market, thanks to the acquisition of performance marketing agency Two Nil, which has a roster of clients including Dollar Shave Club, Groupon, Wix, Zillow, Blue Apron, and The Honest Company. Speaking to Business Insider, Blackwood Seven's chief analytics officer Dr Michael Green explained that the company doesn't rely on "gut feeling" to make media decisions on behalf of its clients. Instead, Blackwood Seven is a software platform, which charges clients a software fee, rather than taking an agreed commission on total media spend like normal agencies. Nor does the company make bulk ad spend commitments to media owners or buy media slots in advance and sell them back to its clients.