Scaling Europe
Lukas Saari, Co-Founder & CEO of Tandem Health: BREAKING: Tandem Health raised $100M Series B
14 Sept · 22 min
Key points
- Tandem Health raises a $100m Series B led by the Scale-up Europe Fund, managed by EQT, to accelerate go-to-market in existing countries and expand its team.
- Lukas Saari says clinicians are pushing for AI tools that remove documentation work, making adoption bottom up rather than top-down.
- Saari argues Europe is more lucrative than the US because Epic and Cerner hold about 70% of the US market while European fragmentation makes vendors more likely to partner.
Tandem Health raises $100M betting Europe beats the US
Tandem Health is betting that European healthcare AI is a better market than the US, and that Europe's fragmentation protects it. Local record vendors are too small to build in-house, so they partner, and clinicians buried in administration pull the product in. The $100M round funds scaling that approach.
Takeaways
- Tandem raised $100M to scale across Europe. The Series B is led by the Scale-up Europe Fund, managed by EQT. The money funds go-to-market in existing countries, more team and marketing, and extra product teams. Tandem serves over 10,000 care organisations in 14 countries with about 230 staff.
- Europe is more lucrative than the US. The US is more mature and competitive. Epic and Cerner hold about 70% of US records, while Europe's top 15 vendors hold under 70%, so subscale European vendors partner rather than build. No US rival has entered, and OpenEvidence closed its European operations.
- Fragmentation works as a moat. Saari treats Europe's complexity as a strength, and Johnson cites Revolut and ElevenLabs as precedents. AI makes cross-border integration easier. Health tech has almost no multi-country European scalers, and Saari hopes Tandem shows founders need not go straight to the US.
- Tandem is expanding from scribe to assistant. The product summarises patient history before a visit and gives real-time decision support during it, then handles referrals and coding. A planned 24/7 AI receptionist will triage and schedule calls. Tandem splits clinic work into 20 task categories to automate.
- Clinicians pull the tools in from below. Clinicians spend 40% of their time on administration, so they push for tools that remove documentation work. Adoption is bottom up rather than top-down. The UK is mature and competitive, while other European markets still need awareness built. Saari stays in key sales.
- Stockholm's size forces global ambition early. Saari says founders in a large home market like France stay there longer, leaving the US as the only sensible next step. Tandem hired three country directors in parallel when expanding. Peers like Legora, a similar company for legal work, act as sparring partners.
Four levels of clinic task automation
- Level zero. Tandem does not handle the task.
- Level one. Tandem drafts the work and the clinician acts on it manually.
- Level two. The clinician approves a draft, and the rest is handled automatically.
- Level three. The task runs without the clinician in the loop.