From EPFL to NASDAQ: How AI Is Changing Cancer Diagnosis (A Conversation with Jurgi Camblong)

In this episode of Getting Serious, Woody visits Rolle to meet Jurgi Camblong, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of SOPHiA GENETICS, to explore how a start-up born at EPFL became a global leader in data-driven medicine, and why Switzerland gave it an edge over rivals founded at Harvard and Stanford.

A molecular biologist by training, with a PhD from the University of Geneva and a postdoc at Oxford, Jurgi Camblong co-founded SOPHiA GENETICS in 2011 with a clear conviction: as DNA sequencing became faster and cheaper, hospitals would need a way to make sense of the data. Fifteen years later, a thousand hospitals in 70 countries use the company’s AI platform, more than two million genomic profiles have been analyzed, and in 2021 SOPHiA became one of the rare Swiss-grown technology companies to list on the NASDAQ.

The conversation traces that journey from its first steps, when Camblong started an executive MBA on the same day he became CEO, and spent years knocking on hospital doors to understand what doctors actually needed. He explains why selling is the real engine of innovation, why startups should get their product into the market early rather than wait for perfection, and why Switzerland offered his company a genuine competitive advantage: access to rare talent at a third of the cost of Silicon Valley, a quality of life that keeps that talent, and local authorities willing to get a work permit issued in a week.

He also shares his advice for anyone thinking of starting a company here, from how simple incorporation is to why founders should set up close to EPFL, where, in his words, you come to change the world. And he closes with concrete ideas for how Switzerland could become even more attractive for the startups that will define its future.

This episode is available on YouTube and Spotify.