UKTN | The Podcast

Jane Wakefield talks to Simon McIntosh-Smith about the role the Bristol Centre for Supercomputing is playing as the UK builds it own AI economy. The supercomputer is the UK’s fastest - and we discuss its size, why it is helping monitor a herd of dairy cows, and how the centre is dealing with the challenges of power-hungry AI. 

Dr Anne Lane, chief executive officer of UCL Ventures, discusses why commercialising research at British universities remains a challenge despite significant will and the enormous impact of spending money on cutting-edge research.   UCL Ventures, formerly UCL Business, is the commercialisation arm of one of the world’s most prestigious universities. 

Katie King, co-founder and chief executive of BioOrbit, discusses how her company is building pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities designed to operate in space and why that could fundamentally transform how the production of medicine works.  BioOrbit is a British space tech company that aims to use the irreplicable conditions of outer space to improve the development of drugs that could massive...

Basecamp Research’s co-founder Glen Gowers discusses the firm’s ambitious plans to sequence a trillion genes. Gowers talks about how he lived his business idea by taking a portable lab onto an icecap, how he defied investor’s advice and employed field scientists and diplomats ahead of computer scientists, and how he hoped the firm will one day help solve the antibiotic resistance crisis in healthc...

Chris Donnelly, co-founder of Searchable, discusses the wild ride of growing a business in a matter of months to a valuation of $85m. He shares his thoughts on the radical overhaul to search announced by Google and offers tips of what every brand, big or small, needs to know in the age of AI and we hear about the not often talked about dark side of starting a business and how it can be undermined...

Virgin StartUp’s managing director Andy Fishburn discusses how the non-profit is helping a new generation of entrepreneurs. He talks about its programme designed specifically for dyslexic entrepreneurs, what he thinks we need to do to make Britain a better place to scale, and why a simple walk in the park with 100 founders proved to be a powerful experience.

Michael Herron, the CEO of Atos UK and Ireland, discusses what keeps him awake at night, how Atos is moving towards a human/AI agent world and why he is an optimist about his sons’ futures in the job market. Plus, Herron discusses the rising costs of powering AI and Atos’s surprising role in the Premier League, something that has impressed his 14-year-old son far more than his lead job at Atos.

Greg Jackson reflects on his journey building one of the UK’s largest double unicorns Octopus Energy. He reflects on how he wishes he had started the firm earlier and explains some of his unique ways of running a company, from how a telling off in a previous job made him realise the power of people in an organisation to why he has no HR department. Plus, he discusses how the firm is using AI, incl...

Emily Turner, CEO of HSBC Innovation Banking UK discusses what makes it a go-to bank for start-ups and how her natural optimism means she sees plenty to celebrate in the UK tech scene, from more and more deals happening outside London, to the impact of AI and why she thinks we should celebrate an influx of foreign capital. 

The Right Honourable Ian Murray, MP and Minister of State at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology discusses the challenges that lie ahead in implementing AI both in government and wider society. He explains why some projects were abandoned and how government procurement is now being refocused on frontier technologies.     Murray talks...

Yasmin Baba discusses pitching her early-stage health tech startup to a room full of men, how she coped with bootstrapping by “being a minimalist with big dreams” and how she believes that better data can bring down the half a million plus women on gynaecology waiting lists. Plus, why, as a machine learning engineer, she never says she runs an AI business.

Anna Wallace, CEO of the Centre for Finance, Innovation and Technology discusses why so many SMEs fail to get the financing they need and what they can do to change this (listen to the very end to get this vital information). She also talks about how CFIT is helping to speed up the house-buying process and provide companies with a digital ID that could help combat fraud.

Tools for Humanity was co-founded by OpenAI’s Sam Altman and provides ways to verify human identity with the belief that the only way to counteract fakery and misinformation is to prove our own humanity.   The group’s chief policy officer Nick Pickles discusses the technology the firm uses, the new partnership the firm has just signed with Zoom, and his long history of policy-making, including wor...

Iana Dimitrova, CEO of OpenPayd, discusses how we are moving towards a world where AI agents will be making transactions without human intervention, her thoughts on the governor of the Bank of England’s comments about stablecoins threatening the very nature of money and how the firm is looking to expand to the US.

Louise Ballard, co-founder of early-stage firm Atheni.ai discusses how we move AI usage to the next level, from simply responding to questions to actually building systems that can really benefit businesses and organisations. She also talks about why the UK government’s plans to reskill 10 million workers in AI might be seriously flawed and how, as a 55-year-old female founder, she has navigated t...

Anu Adebajo, CEO of Newton Venture Program, discusses how we train the next generation of investors, the real solutions to a lack of diversity in the industry and how much of VC success is down to pure luck.

Rebecca Sykes, a partner at Brandtech, discusses how AI is being used to transform marketing. The firm has worked with global brands and believes AI-generated content can revolutionise the creative industries. She describes the firm’s system as the nervous system of modern marketing, connecting cultural signals, media performance and sales data. She also discusses the rise of AI slop, and how bran...

Many people will have learning another language on their bucket list and with the help of AI that reality is creeping ever closer. Ed Crook, strategy and operation leader at German-based AI translation firm DeepL discusses how the startup is helping business get language nuance right, what it is like to build a startup in Germany and why he thinks there will always be a place for language learning...

Varun Bhanot, co-founder and CEO of Magic AI discusses the journey of growing one of the UK’s most successful AI firms, how the AI-enabled mirror his company devised is disrupting the fitness industry, what he learned from the 149 rejections he got when pitching the business and why his team consists are what he calls ‘interpreneurs'. Bhanot also explains how he juggles a young family with running...

Katie Gallagher OBE, managing director of Manchester Digital discusses why the city is being seen as a blueprint not just for tech start-ups but for wider economic growth too. Gallagher chats about Manchester’s rich heritage in digital technology from cyber-security to e-commerce and how it is building on that to be one of the UK’s key AI hubs. 

Amelia Armour, Partner at Amadeus Capital talks to Jane Wakefield about the impact of having a female co-founder in the male dominated world of VC, what tech she is excited about for the future and how AI might help democratise entrepreneurship.

Dr Farzana Rahman, chief executive officer of Hexarad, discusses her journey from medical doctor to startup founder, how companies like hers are tackling the high demand for medical treatments not being met by the NHS and how AI is being used in the health tech ecosystem.  Hexarad is an end-to-end radiology platform wherein users can get diagnoses from scans such as CTEs and MRIs. 

Beckie Taylor, co-founder of Tech Returners, discusses her long career in HR and how the buzzword of diversity has changed to questions about the impact of AI, how she found the journey from becoming a mum back into the workplace, and why CVs might not be the best way for women looking for a pathway back into the tech industry.      Taylor also spoke on her hometown of Manchester and whether it ho...

Sue Black OBE, a legendary British computer scientist, discusses her inspirational journey into computing, why too little has changed when it comes to sexism in the tech industry and her hopes and fears for the global workforce in the age of AI.  Black was the founding chair of the British Computing Society’s BCSWomen group, championed the preservation of the WW2 codebreaking HQ Bletchley Park and...

Finn Stevenson, co-founder and chief executive officer of Flok Health, discusses the slow pace of change and the strategic shortfalls of public health organisations, the real-world health impact of these challenges and why tech is one part of the solution needed.  Flok Health is an AI-powered physiotherapy clinic that provides patients with virtual appointments to treat back pain. The platform fus...