With Auterion, Kevin Sartori co-founded a company out of the ETH Zurich ecosystem that today ranks among the world's leading firms for autonomous systems. But to grow, the company had to move its  headquarters to the US – to where capital, customers, and regulation aligned.

At the EEF, Sartori won't be talking about Auterion's business today, but about the lessons from that journey: what goes wrong when European ideas are born here but scaled elsewhere? Drawing on defence tech, a field where Europe is currently learning the hard way what sovereignty costs, he draws concrete lessons for capital, procurement, regulation, and the appetite to take the big step towards growth – not as a lament for what was lost, but as a call to put the right conditions in place now.

Sartori studied robotics at ETH Zurich, where he was involved in the open-source drone project Pixhawk and PX4, before moving to Silicon Valley, completing an MBA at Berkeley, and gaining industry experience at the drone company 3D Robotics. In 2017, he returned to Zurich to co-found Auterion and help turn the open-source drone ecosystem into a global autonomous-systems company. Still a shareholder but no longer involved in day-to-day operations, he brings the perspective of a founder who helped shape the journey and now has the distance to reflect on what it reveals. Today, through initiatives such as Project Switzerland and his work with founders and scale-ups, he is focused on helping Europe turn technical excellence into globally relevant companies.

One could read this path as a loss. At the European Economic Forum, Sartori reads it as the most honest thing a forum built around "Proof of Concept" can offer: a seam that reveals exactly where Europe's strength ends and its weakness begins – and what it will take for the next Auterion to stay.