Technology entrepreneur Rudi Kesic launches new AI venture from Birmingham, building an AI-native operating system for legal and professional services with ambitions to create a major international technology company from the West Midlands.
British technology entrepreneur Rudi Kesic has launched ClearPath AI following a £1 million pre-seed raise, choosing Birmingham as the commercial home for a new artificial intelligence company being built to compete in the rapidly expanding market for AI-powered professional services technology.
At the centre of the company is ClearPathOS™, an AI-native operating system built from the ground up around artificial intelligence rather than adding AI capabilities to conventional business software.
ClearPath is targeting professional industries where complex work remains heavily dependent on people interpreting documents and data, communicating between organisations and manually progressing processes. Its technology is designed to allow AI to understand the context of that work, undertake research and reasoning, perform defined tasks and determine what needs to happen next.
Kesic believes this represents a more fundamental shift than the current wave of AI assistants and productivity tools.
“Most business software was designed in a world where systems stored information and people performed the work,” Kesic said.
“AI fundamentally changes that model. Software can increasingly understand what is happening, reason over the information available and participate in getting the work done.
“We didn’t start by asking how we could add AI to an existing product. We started with a blank sheet of paper and asked what the operating system for professional services should look like if artificial intelligence was part of the architecture from day one.
“That’s what we’ve built with ClearPathOS.” ClearPath has also been designed to operate alongside existing business technology rather than requiring organisations to replace their core systems before adopting AI.
Kesic expects that approach to be important as businesses attempt to reconcile rapid advances in artificial intelligence with years of investment in existing software, data and processes.
“Great technology doesn’t change an industry. Adoption does,” he said.
“There are established technology companies with enormous customer bases, mature products and decades of knowledge. Those are significant advantages.
“Our advantage is different. We get to start again.
“We can work alongside the systems businesses already use today while building for a future in which I believe professional software will increasingly become AI-native.”
Building from Birmingham ClearPath plans to create more than 20 new UK roles as it enters its next phase of growth, with Birmingham chosen as the company’s principal UK commercial base. The positions will span sales, marketing, customer success, product, design and business operations, while ClearPath’s technology operation is based in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
For Kesic, the decision to build in the West Midlands is personal as well as commercial. He grew up in Coventry and has spent much of his professional life working in Birmingham and across the region.
“I’ve spent more than 25 years building businesses, and after selling my last technology company I genuinely didn’t think I would start again,” Kesic said.
“I thought that chapter of my life might be finished.
“But once I stepped away, I realised I still wanted to build. What has changed is what success means to me.
“I’ve been fortunate enough to create wealth through the businesses I’ve built. This time I want to create that opportunity for many more people — careers, responsibility, ownership and the chance to participate in the value they help create. “I grew up in Coventry and I’ve worked in Birmingham for much of my life. This region gave me opportunities, and I want ClearPath to create opportunities here for the next generation.”
Kesic began his career as a lawyer before becoming a law firm managing partner and technology entrepreneur. Over more than 25 years, he has built and exited businesses across legal services and technology, most recently through the acquisition of his legal technology business by Munich-based private equity investor AURELIUS.
That experience has shaped both the technology behind ClearPath and Kesic’s decision to build another company.
“I’ve been through a number of technology cycles, but I don’t think I’ve seen an opportunity like this,” he said.
“AI isn’t simply another feature or another generation of software. I think it changes what software is capable of being.
“The incumbents have scale, customers, mature products and years of industry knowledge. We have a different advantage: we’re building now, with AI as the starting point rather than something that has to be added later.”
ClearPath’s £1 million pre-seed round is backed by entrepreneurs and senior industry figures and will support commercial expansion, recruitment and continued investment in its technology.
Organisations are already testing the platform, with customer, integration and strategic partnership announcements expected following launch.
Over the next six months, ClearPath plans to expand commercial deployment, deepen integrations with established industry technology and release further capabilities across ClearPathOS.
Kesic said the ambition is to build beyond another successful UK software business. “AI is going to create some of the defining technology companies of the next decade.
I believe we have an opportunity to build one of them. “I want ClearPath to become a significant international technology company built from here
in the UK. “But I also want the people who build it with us to participate in that success, and I want the West Midlands to benefit from the jobs, investment and opportunities we create along the way.
“If we can do both, that would mean far more to me than simply building and selling another company.”
