Simon Baxter

Bringing you opinionated, authoritative research & analysis on the UK technology scene.

Bringing you opinionated, authoritative research & analysis on the UK technology scene.

Artificial Intelligence (in particular GenAI) is disrupting all areas of the UK Software and IT services market, with technologies including AI-enhanced automation, AI agents and Copilots putting pressure on suppliers to adapt their value proposition and respond to customer demands for productivity gains, engaging customer service and enhancing the employee experience.

Gateshead startup Wordnerds has raised £1.6m for its AI software that enables organisations to easily generate data driven insights from customer feedback.

Google has unveiled Veo 2, its new state-of-the-art video generation model, as well as improvements to Imagen 3, its advanced image generation tool. These AI models are designed to push creative possibilities further by generating high-quality, realistic outputs with greater control and precision, providing competition to models such as Sora from Open AI (See - OpenAI launches ‘Sora’ text to video AI model ) and Meta Movie Gen (See - Meta teases AI video generation tool )

Bringing you opinionated, authoritative research & analysis on the UK technology scene.

1Password, a provider of identity and access management solutions, is making the UK a key part of its expansion strategy in the EMEA region. Spearheading the effort is former Cisco executive Ollie Cheal, now General Manager for EMEA at 1Password. I recently caught up with Cheal to understand more about the company’s growth plans and how 1Password can help improve the overall security posture of UK businesses.

The UK Government has launched a consultation on how the UK’s legal framework for AI and copyright supports both creative industries and the AI sector. This initiative, part of the UK’s Plan for Change, seeks to address uncertainties around the use of copyright-protected material in AI model training.

AI Infrastructure and data centre operator Vultr has raised $333m from investors including chipmaker AMD, valuing the company at $3.5bn, a significant amount considering it is the company's first round of external funding. Vultr is seeking to capitalise on the demand for AI infrastructure, offering an alternative to the ‘hyperscalers’ Microsoft, Google Cloud and AWS.