The Times Tech Podcast

Nikola Mrksic, CEO of Nvidia-backed London startup PolyAI, joins Danny and Katie to talk about AI voice assistants transforming customer service. He explains why voice AI is finally working, how PolyAI handles real-world calls and real-world accents, and what happens to jobs when bots can do the work of thousands. Plus, the ‘SaaSpocalypse’ – the $1 trillion sell-off that signals investors may...

Today’s episode is from The Business – The Times’ flagship podcasts covering business, finance and the economy. Octopus Energy has gone from market entrant to market leader in just 10 years. Greg Jackson, chief executive and co-founder is at the forefront of this business success story. The secret sauce? It’s nothing to do with energy - it’s the Kraken software that links the company to its custom...

A new open-source AI agent called OpenClaw has set Silicon Valley buzzing and with a single line of code, anyone can use it. Does this free tool threaten the AI business models behind trillion-dollar Big Tech IPOs, and could it signal a looming AI bubble? Plus, Danny Fortson and Katie Prescott also speak to Jurgi Camblong, founder and CEO of SOPHiA Genetics, about how AI is already being used in h...

Are we heading for the next ChatGPT moment? Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, has sparked debate about the growth of AI and its acceleration into a risky new phase. But is it real danger or Silicon Valley hype? Danny Fortson and Katie Prescott are joined by Barney Hussey-Yeo, CEO of UK fintech Cleo, on what it’s actually like building with AI right now and whether society is ready for the next turning p...

World leaders in Davos are talking about 'tech sovereignty', but can Europe or the UK really achieve digital autonomy when so much of the AI and cloud infrastructure is controlled by a handful of US firms? Danny and Katie talk to Hany Farid about the geopolitics of tech, and the fear of an 'AI kill switch' - is this scaremongering or a real concern? Guest: Hany Farid, UC Berkeley professor and Co‑...

What happens when AI gets it wrong? After a backlash over the misuse of Elon Musk’s AI tool Grok, new restrictions have been imposed on editing images of real people. Is this a sign that AI regulation is lagging, and who should be in charge – governments or Silicon Valley? This week, Danny and Katie are joined by AI computer scientist Kate Devlin from King’s College London to discuss why this mome...

What will tech look like in 2026 and are we heading for an AI bubble, or a boom? To gaze into the crystal ball for the year ahead, Katie and Danny speak to VCs Hannah Seal from Index Ventures and Jon Callaghan of True Ventures in Silicon Valley, and get them to make their predictions for the year ahead and the innovations to watch out for – AI solving healthcare? Robots replacing brickies? Image:...

Continuing our big name-dropping look-back with Sam Altman, Lisa Su, Sebastian Siemiatkowski, Satya Nadella, Matthew Prince, Arthur Mensch, Sir Demis Hassabis, Marc Benioff, and Dario Amodei, this is the second special Christmas edition of the pod – and this time we’re looking at what we’ve learned about the impact of AI on the real world since the Tech Pod started in October 2024 with DeepMind's...

In the biggest, most shameless holiday name-drop of the year, Katie and Danny bring you – in no particular order – insights from Sam Altman of OpenAI, AMD’s Lisa Su, Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski, Satya Nadella from Microsoft, Matthew Prince of Cloudflare, Arthur Mensch of Mistral AI, Sir Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind, Marc Benioff from Salesforce, and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei. A who...

Who has power in the tech world now – governments, big tech, or the investors writing the cheques? Danny and Katie are joined by Harry Stebbings, founder of 20VC, on how venture capital shapes what gets built, who wins the AI race, and what 2026 could bring.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What is Artificial General Intelligence? How close are we to achieving it? And who exactly is building it? Danny and Katie look at the global race for artificial general intelligence and speak with Surge AI CEO Edwin Chen, whose company uses human experts to train frontier models from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google. He believes only human expertise will get AI to the next level. Image credit: Surge...

What does AI truly mean for productivity, growth, and innovation? Tech giants IBM are well placed to assess the impact of AI and what it takes for an organisation to transform to being AI-first. In this bonus episode - made in partnership with IBM - two of its leading strategists, Leon Butler, Chief Executive, IBM UK and Ireland, and Dr. Juan Bernabe Moreno, Director IBM Research in Europe, s...

Danny talks to Dara Ladjevardian, co-founder of Delphi - a company that creates digital AI versions of... well, you ! So, you can be you , more often. Answering queries, talking to your mom and making your own podcast... if only! Katie, meanwhile, is considering the Bank of England's warning of a potential AI bubble being deepened by the use of debt to help underpin $5 trillion of investment to bu...

The British Chancellor, Rachel Reeves has delivered her now annual Budget Statement - a sort of economic State of the United Kingdom address to parliament. And in it she promised to work with founders and investors to make the UK an "even more attractive place" to grow their business - "if you build here, Britain will back you!" So is Danny likely to join entrepreneurs in San Francisco and Dubai f...

Nvidia says AI demand is “off the charts”, and Jeff Bezos has launched a new $6.2 billion AI start-up, but Google’s Sundar Pichai is warning that no company will be safe if the bubble bursts. So what’s really going on? Bubble or no bubble? Danny and Katie dig into the numbers and speak to venture capitalist Suranga Chandratillake from Balderton Capital about how to spot the real bets from the hype...

Could today’s teenagers be the last to sit a driving test? Danny Fortson and Katie Prescott look at the rise of self-driving cars, from Waymo’s cars in San Francisco to new UK laws on autonomous vehicles. They also hear from Lyft CEO David Risher who explain why your kids may never need to drive and what that means for cities, carmakers and the rest of us. Image: Getty Hosted on Acast. See acast.c...

Katie meets Jensen Huang and Meta’s chief AI scientist Yann LeCun at No.10 as Nvidia hits a $5 trillion valuation. Plus, Danny and Katie discuss OpenAI’s $38 billion AWS deal and the Sam Altman–Satya Nadella interview, exploring what it all means for AI’s power, compute and future. And Katie reveals the tech-inspired Collins' Word of the Year – any guesses? Clips: BG2 Pod Hosted on Acast. See acas...

Danny road tests a new kind of relationship – an always-listening AI pendant that eavesdrops in on your conversations and then texts you so it too can be part of your life story! 22-year-old inventor, Avi Schiffmann, calls it a “living digital being.” Is this the future of companionship, or a step too far? And Katie and Danny discuss OpenAI’s shift to a for-profit business – what it changes for Mi...

Danny Fortson and Katie Prescott reunite in London to unpack the biggest takeaways from The Times Tech Summit 2025 – from the race to power AI’s energy demands, to News Corp CEO Robert Thomson’s fight to make tech firms pay for content, and former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg’s warning that Britain has become a “vassal state” in global tech. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more info...

As OpenAI’s chip spree rolls on, Danny Fortson and Katie Prescott ask the question – are we already in an AI bubble? And they hear from Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince about AI content wars and making LLM's pay for the content they use. Image: Getty Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Danny and Katie are joined by Rose Wang, COO of BlueSky, the decentralised social network born out of Twitter, to discuss how it’s rewriting the rules of social media, why it’s turning down ad money, and whether an open, user-curated model can rival the giants. And they look at OpenAI’s six gigawatt chip deal with AMD, the growing warnings of an AI bubble and Donald Trump’s TikTok return. Image: T...

Danny and Katie look at California’s new AI safety law, OpenAI’s in-chat checkout, and the rise of AI “actors”, and how it all depends on one thing – data centres, the hidden plumbing of the internet. They’re joined by Adaire Fox-Martin, CEO of Equinix, which runs the giant facilities where the world’s data lives, to explain how the company is racing to keep up with demand and why it plans to add...

In this bonus edition of the Times Tech Podcast we have teamed up with Smart Energy GB for a look at what smart meters can do for small businesses. There is more to tech than AI, and sometimes the most important tech developments are about getting the basics right. Katie Prescott has been talking to one small business in the North of England, and to an academic expert who has been studyi...

Danny and Katie are joined by Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone to dive into the company’s journey — from its rise as an internet pioneer to its reinvention in the age of AI, as he shares details of his plans for the 30-year-old tech brand, and what the relationship needs to be between AI and Yahoo's content. Plus, Danny and Katie unpack the latest in AI’s breakneck growth, including Nvidia’s $100 billion dea...

Is Britain in a "Goldilocks" moment for AI? US President Donald Trump’s state visit to Britain brought more than pomp and ceremony. American tech giants pledged £31 billion in AI and data centre investment, from Nvidia’s 120,000 processors to Microsoft’s GDP-boosting promises. Danny Fortson and Katie Prescott unpack what the new UK-US “tech prosperity deal” really means, and speak with one of the...