Hargreaves Lansdown founder slams Neil Woodford for not being ‘truthful’ about frozen fund September 22, 2019 One of the founders of Hargreaves Lansdown (HL) has slammed beleaguered asset manager Neil Woodford for apparently not being “truthful” about the performance of his flagship fund in the run up to its suspension. Peter Hargreaves, who founded the financial services firm alongside Stephen Lansdown in 1981, also criticised HL for not having realised that [...]
UK must adapt to automation or firms will suffer, MPs warn September 18, 2019 MPs have warned that British businesses could lose out to foreign competitors if the country fails to quickly adopt new technologies such as automation, and have called on the government to take action. Read more: Robot rollout: Number of businesses using automation doubles in 2019 Parliament’s Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Committee said the [...]
Ranked: The most popular employers for UK tech talent September 17, 2019 Monzo, Skyscanner and the BBC are the most desirable companies to work for among UK tech talent, according to a survey published today. The survey, compiled by recruitment firm Hired, revealed fintech firms remain among the most attractive employers for techies, with Transferwise, Starling Bank and Revolut all making it into the top 10. Read [...]
Benevolent AI’s valuation halves to $1bn in further blow for Neil Woodford September 15, 2019 Benevolent AI, the tech startup backed by troubled stockpicker Neil Woodford, is set to lose half its value as it announces a major new investment. The London-based firm, which is led by former Facebook executive and government minister Baroness Joanna Shields, has secured a cash injection from Singapore sovereign wealth fund Temasek. Read more: Fresh [...]
Reviving the post-study work visa will help the UK attract international talent September 12, 2019 It is hard to think of a more short-sighted and self-destructive policy than Theresa May’s decision in 2012 to close the post-study work visa route for those wanting to live and work in Britain. Boris Johnson is right to bring it back. Britain’s universities are truly world class, attracting the best and brightest from across [...]
Ignore Elon Musk’s doom-mongering – AI will strengthen our society, not break it September 10, 2019 In Elon Musk’s mind, the dystopian thriller Ex Machina is forecast, not fiction. Debating Alibaba’s Jack Ma at the World AI Conference at the end of August, Musk claimed that humanity was directly threatened by the development of artificial intelligence, and that human beings were simply a “biological boot loader for digital super-intelligence”. The billionaire [...]
Podcast startup Entale secures £2m backing from Daily Mail September 9, 2019 Interactive podcast startup Entale has received £2m in funding from the owner of the Daily Mail to help expand its AI technology. Entale, which was founded in 2017 by former Conde Nast digital boss Wil Harris, enables audiences to view social media posts, images and product links while listening to podcasts. Read more: Audioboom posts [...]
AI investment in UK reaches record high September 9, 2019 Investors poured a record level of money into the UK’s artificial intelligence (AI) sector during the first half of 2019. Trailing behind only China and the US, the UK is currently third in the world for raising investment in AI after hitting an all-time high in the six months to June this year. Investment in [...]
Robot rollout: Number of businesses using automation doubles in 2019 September 6, 2019 The number of businesses adopting automation at scale has doubled in the last year, though most say they have yet to assess how this could impact their employees. Roughly eight per cent of companies have deployed over 50 cases of automation this year, twice as many as in 2018, according to a report by Deloitte [...]
Meet the 23 fintech startups on Tech Nation’s latest growth programme September 5, 2019 London startups dominate the list of 23 fintechs that have joined government-backed Tech Nation’s 2019 growth programme. Sixty per cent of the new cohort of financial technology firms hail from the capital, while 40 per cent boast at least one female co-founder, Tech Nation revealed today. Read more: Fintech is all the rage, but is [...]