Immersive technology explorer, networker, innovator, investor, and facilitator
Therkel Sand Therkelsen
I founded CopenX in 2016. Since then, I have been fortunate to immerse myself in the exploration of emerging technologies alongside leading minds in science, business, technology, health care, and media/culture.
Today, I am focused on understanding what the next computing era means for people, and for the structures we build our societies on. Two developments stand at the center of this: artificial intelligence and spatial computing.
AI is no longer a distant promise. It is reshaping how we learn, work, create, and relate to one another and to society - what in Danish we call dannelse - and it raises urgent questions about agency, trust, and who holds power over the systems that increasingly mediate our lives. Alongside it, spatial computing points toward an ever-present spatial Internet that correlates the physical and virtual worlds, where everything and everyone can communicate and interact seamlessly.
These technologies enable a multitude of new interactions and structures. I want to keep exploring how their growing capabilities can have a positive impact on human relations and on the institutions and civil society that hold us together.
What we must discuss is how to regulate and invest to enable a decentralized, human-centric, and sovereign digital future. Crucially, this is not a brake on innovation but the foundation for it, lasting value is created when we build, invest, and grow new businesses with people at the center.
Current Projects
Realitet
At Realitet we identify future market opportunities and challenges in digital and virtual domains through research, exploration, creation and investments. Our work concerns the challenges and opportunities that will emerge when new technology transforms society. We explore the space where the physical and virtual environments converge and coexist. Through collaborations, we identify and contextualize future market opportunities and challenges that emerge from technological and societal change.
Research project funded by Novo Nordisk Foundation
Research project with Aarhus University: How to increase quality in teaching of STEM-subjects in vocational education through the use of Virtual Reality.
The Novo Nordisk Foundation is an independent Danish foundation with corporate interests. The Foundation has two objectives:
1) to provide a stable basis for the commercial and research activities of the companies in the Novo Group (Novo Nordisk A/S and Novozymes A/S)
2) to support scientific, humanitarian and social causes.
Speaker
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Book Therkel Sand Therkelsen as a keynote speaker for expert knowledge, original insight, and inspiring debate on artificial intelligence, spatial computing (AR/VR), and the path toward a decentralized, human-centric, and sovereign digital future - one that keeps people at the center without slowing innovation down.
Realitet - Founder
2022 -
CopenX - Founder
2016 - Oct. 2021
At Realitet we identify future market opportunities and challenges in digital and virtual domains through research, exploration, creation and investments.
CopenX was founded in 2016 by Therkel Sand Therkelsen and the first CopenX Realities was held in September 2016 at Papirøen, Copenhagen. CopenX Realities provides cutting-edge insights into the latest developments in the XR industry with keynotes, panel debates and inspiring talks with first-movers, executive leaders, and opinion-makers from the industry.
Since 2020 CopenX has also facilitated Network groups focusing on the implementation of various technology in verticals like digital learning, future of work, culture, and sports.
TechSavvy - Partner
2021 -2023
TechSavvy.media is a new editorial media organization dedicated to startups and innovation. Through our own media platform, we write news, features, and guides to navigate in the ecosystem, to build a regional community and promote incentives for more collaboration between startups and corporates - and thus a more innovative future.
Media
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