UK tech bosses urge focus on AI skills and growth in high-stakes election — no matter who wins

Published

11 months ago

June 11, 2024

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U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (left), leader of the incumbent Conservatives, and opposition leader Sir Keir Starmer of the Labour Party. The politicians traded barbs in their first head-to-head debate on Tuesday ahead of the July 4 General Election.

Pa Images | Getty Images

LONDON — British technology executives and entrepreneurs want the next government to focus on promoting skills around the development and use of artificial intelligence and growth-oriented fiscal measures.

Brits are set to head to the polls on July 4.

The business community has been calling on the two main political parties to push for economic growth, a regulatory environment that is accommodating to technology innovation and a long-term vision that can cement the U.K.’s position on the world stage.

They say that, whether it’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak or Labour leader Keir Starmer that makes it into Downing Street, the next government is likely to be one that keeps high-growth tech businesses’ interests at heart.

Upskilling in an AI age

One thing U.K. tech executives are pushing for is fostering innovation in artificial intelligence and cultivating citizens’ grasp on AI-centric skills — across multiple generations.

Skills that help us feel better equipped with large language models and other next-generation AI tools rather than losing our grip on these tools and becoming controlled by them should be a key focus of any government, top tech executives told CNBC.

Innovation is heading very quickly towards autonomous AI. We need to have the skills in this country … to be able to adopt and use it in a responsible way, with the right controls and protocols.

Zahra Bahrololoumi

U.K. and Ireland CEO, Salesforce

At Salesforce’s World Tour London, a tech conference where the U.S. enterprise software giant hosts several major customers and partners, promoting growth and prosperity with new technologies like AI was a key theme.

At a press conference on the sidelines of the event — away from the mascots with full-body suits of Einstein and Astro, the raccoon character that guides users around Salesforce’s customer relationship management tools — the firm’s U.K. boss spelled out what she wants from the next administration.

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“With any government, I will be specific and I will bang this drum: one in 10 of us feel equipped with AI. Innovation is heading very quickly towards autonomous AI. We need to have the skills in this country … to be able to adopt and use it in a responsible way, with the right controls and protocols,” Zahra Bahrololoumi, Salesforce’s U.K. and Ireland CEO, said in response to a CNBC question.

“Any government appreciates that, most of the major parties do,” she added. “That would be my wish list — if there was one thing just to prioritize, [it should be] digital skills.”

Matthew Houlihan, senior director of government and corporate affairs for U.K. and Europe at U.S. enterprise tech firm Cisco, said the next government should seek to make the country a leader in innovation and emerging technologies like AI and quantum computing.

“It should also be an excellent time to review approaches to essential aspects of the U.K.’s digitising economy such as digital skills, tech adoption support and approaches to security to ensure that the benefits of digital technologies can be felt by as many people across the country as possible,” he added.

Political leanings

Many technology executives remain coy about which candidate will secure their vote come July 4 — but a growing number are beginning to make their political affiliations publicly known.

Last month, dozens of business executives, entrepreneurs, and investors signed an open letter stating their support for Labour in the upcoming election. “We, as leaders and investors in British business, believe it is time for a change,” they said in the letter.

Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer and Deputy leader, Angela Rayner, attend an event to launch Labour’s election pledges at The Backstage Centre on May 16, 2024 in Purfleet, United Kingdom.

Leon Neal | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Signatories included several influential names in the world of U.K. tech: Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, Founders Forum co-founder Jonathan Goodwin, and Atom Bank CEO Mark Mullen.

The writers of the letter say that the U.K. economy has suffered from a decade of stagnation amid a lack of both political stability and a consistent economic strategy.

Britain’s Sunak has said it will “take time” for the general population to “really feel” upward momentum in the economy.

Data released earlier this year showed that U.K. gross domestic product rose by 0.6% between January and March after slumping into a shallow recession in the second half of 2023.

An end to uncertainty

The past four years have seen the U.K. undergo particular adversity and economic instability — from the Covid-19 pandemic and Ukraine conflict’s impact on global supply chains, to the rising cost of living for both consumers and businesses.

Add to that the disastrous “mini budget” in September 2022 under Sunak’s predecessor Liz Truss, what British tech bosses say they are looking for now is stability and certainty.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (L) and Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt (R) during a visit to BAE Systems on March 25, 2024 in Barrow-in-Furness, England.

Danny Lawson | Wpa Pool | Getty Images

“In the last two years, both parties have materially converged in terms of the fact that businesses are important for the country’s growth — business is important, fintech [financial technology] is important, entrepreneurship is important,” Rishi Khosla, CEO of British digital bank OakNorth, told CNBC.

“The strong desire is for whichever party that comes into power to stay the course on that, to make sure that they stay the course on the narrative but also on what they do, whether it’s immigration, whether it’s tax, and they don’t create environments that go against that for populist measures,” Khosla said.

Big on statements, short on detail

One current source of frustration for U.K. tech leaders remains the fact that neither of the major political parties have yet explained how they’ll boost business — let alone the entrepreneurial community and high-growth technology industry.

Tech bosses CNBC spoke with found themselves unable to point to specific policies and plans from either of the main political parties.

British Finance Minister Jeremy Hunt recently unveiled a spate of new tax breaks and investments which he said would help to establish the U.K. as a world leader in high-growth industries.

Hunt hinted he’ll introduce new tax cuts if the Conservatives are re-elected, saying in an interview with The Telegraph that the priority will be “business taxes that boost investment,” as well as growth. He has refrained from offering further details on his plans, however.

Labour has previously committed to capping the headline rate of corporation tax at its current 25% rate, and confirmed it will maintain certain tax reliefs including for full expensing and research and development (R&D).

Labour says it will publish a roadmap for business taxation, if and when it is elected.

— CNBC’s Jenni Reid contributed to this report

Technology

From ‘Cockroach Award’ to the Big Board: Hinge Health’s unlikely path to IPO

Published

45 mins ago

May 5, 2025

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From 'Cockroach Award' to the Big Board: Hinge Health's unlikely path to IPO

Hinge Health co-founders Gabriel Mecklenburg (left) and Daniel Perez (right).

Courtesy of Hinge Health

At digital physical therapy startup Hinge Health, CEO Daniel Perez used to recognize hard-working employees with the “Cockroach Award,” a distinction that brought with it a “cockroach squad” t-shirt and a cash payout.

References to the insect were abundant at the company’s old headquarters in London, where a picture of a cockroach was prominently displayed on the wall. For much of Hinge’s 10-year history, the cockroach was the unofficial mascot. Staffers named it Flossy after the viral dance move “the floss.”

Perez relishes the symbolism. In his determination to build a company that will push through adversity, he’s encouraged employees to think of themselves like cockroaches, due to the creature’s grimy resilience and noted ability to survive harsh conditions.

“It was the identity of every individual in the company,” said Joshua Sturm, a vice president at Hinge from 2019 to 2024 and now chief revenue officer at cancer prevention startup Color Health. “We are all in this together, and no matter what happens, we are going to survive together.”

Perez and his 1,400-person workforce now face the ultimate test of their mettle. Hinge, which moved from London to San Francisco in 2017, is trying to go public at a time of such extreme economic uncertainty and market volatility that several companies, including online lender Klarna and ticket marketplace StubHub, have delayed their long-awaited IPOs.

Hinge filed its prospectus on March 10, announcing plans to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “HNGE.” Three weeks later, President Donald Trump announced a sweeping tariff policy that plunged U.S. markets into turmoil after tariff concerns had already pushed the Nasdaq to its worst quarter since 2022.

But Hinge. led by its 39-year old co-founder and CEO, appears determined to power through the chaos. Hinge declined to comment or make Perez available for an interview.

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Going public was already going to be a risky endeavor for Hinge. The IPO market has been mostly dormant since late 2021, when soaring inflation and rising interest rates pushed investors out of risky assets. Within digital health, it’s been almost completely dead.

Health-tech companies have struggled to adapt to a more muted growth environment following the Covid pandemic, and many once promising business models haven’t panned out as planned.

The starkest example is virtual health company Teladoc, which has a market cap of just over $1 billion less than five years after buying digital health provider Livongo in a deal that valued the combined companies at $37 billion. Teladoc’s BetterHelp mental health unit has been a particularly troublesome business as paying users dropped off in the years following the pandemic.

Over time, Hinge’s Cockroach Award transitioned from a monthly prize to a quarterly distinction. The company phased it out entirely about a year ago in preparation for its next public-facing chapter, but the survive-at-all-costs mentality persists, according to current employees. Now, staffers are recognized with the “Movers Awards,” a nod to the company’s focus on movement.

“We have many decades of work ahead,” Perez wrote in a letter to investors in March. “We hope you join us on this journey.”

CNBC spoke to 13 current and former Hinge employees, investors, and people close to Perez for this story, some of whom asked not to be named in order to provide candid commentary.

‘I gave him terrible advice’

Hinge uses software to help patients treat acute musculoskeletal injuries, chronic pain and carry out post-surgery rehabilitation remotely. Large employers like Target and Morgan Stanley cover the costs so their employees can access Hinge’s app-based virtual physical therapy, as well as its wearable electrical nerve stimulation device called Enso.

The company says its technology can help users manage pain, cut down health-care costs and reduce the need for surgery and opioids. Revenue increased 33% to $390.4 million last year, while its net loss narrowed to $11.9 million from $108.1 million a year earlier, according to the prospectus.

Hinge’s roster of clients expanded by 36% last year to 2,256, and the number of individual members jumped 44% to over 532,300, the filing said.

Hinge has raised more than $1 billion from investors including Tiger Global Management and Coatue Management, and it boasted a $6.2 billion valuation as of October 2021, the last time the company raised outside funding. The biggest institutional shareholders are venture firms Insight Partners and Atomico, which own 19% and 15% of the stock, respectively, according to the filing.

Daniel Perez, CEO of Hinge Health

Courtesy: Hinge Health

Perez and Gabriel Mecklenburg, Hinge’s executive chairman, started the company in 2014. The pair met while they were both pursuing PhDs in the U.K. — Perez at the University of Oxford and Mecklenburg at Imperial College London. They were distracted students, according to Perez’s twin brother, David.

By the time they launched Hinge, Perez and Mecklenburg had already co-founded two other ventures together. One was the Oxbridge Biotech Roundtable, an organization that connected academics and industry experts. The other was Marblar, which worked to commercialize academic intellectual property.

Perez took a leave of absence from Oxford while working on Marblar and never returned. His brother wasn’t a fan of the decision initially.

“I gave him terrible advice,” said David Perez, a graduate of Yale Law School and partner at Perkins Coie in Seattle. “I was like, ‘I think you’re an idiot, I think you should focus on your PhD. Only an idiot would not finish a PhD at Oxford.'”

The twins have two older siblings. Their mother immigrated from Cuba in 1968, followed 12 years later by their father. Their parents met in Miami, got married after just three dates, and are still together after more than 40 years.

The family moved from Miami to Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1990. Perez’s mother was a substitute teacher and his father worked at restaurants as a dishwasher and busboy. David Perez said their father “worked around the clock” and used to call out orders in his sleep.

“It wasn’t a lot of money, I think combined they made about $19,000 a year,” David Perez said. “But they stitched it together and raised four kids.”

The twin boys were competitive, particularly when it came to academics and playing basketball in the driveway. David said his brother got “great grades” and always had an inclination toward science and medicine, graduating from high school at age 16 and then starting college at Westminster University, a small liberal arts school in Utah.

“I swear,” David Perez said, “there were times where the only punishment that my mom could issue that would have the sting was restricting our ability to do homework.”

Hit by a car

Perez was a student in the Honors College at Westminster, and he graduated with a degree in biology. Richard Badenhausen, dean of the Honors College, described Perez as an independent thinker and an ambitious student, especially for his age.

“He didn’t care too much what people thought about him, which is a strength in my book,” Badenhausen said in an interview.

When Perez was 13, he was hit by a car. He broke an arm and a leg, and had to be airlifted to a nearby hospital. After three surgeries and 12 months of rehab, he had a newfound interest in orthopedics and physical therapy.

Mecklenburg had a serious injury of his own, tearing his anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) during a judo match, which also required a year of rehab, according to Hinge’s website.

One day in October 2014, the pair put their heads together and outlined the tools they wished were available while undergoing physical therapy. Musculoskeletal conditions affect as many as 1.7 billion people worldwide, according to Hinge’s prospectus, so there was no shortage of opportunities.

They had the early concept of Hinge within hours and a prototype ready by December of that year.

In Hinge’s early days, Perez and Mecklenburg would meet every Saturday morning to talk shop. Now, as they’ve aged and started families, they meet on Wednesday nights, according to colleagues. Perez welcomed his first child with his wife late last year.

“Seeing the growth over the last six, seven, eight years has just been unbelievable,” said Jon Reynolds, a tech founder who contributed to Hinge’s seed funding round. “That comes down to the quality of Dan and Gabriel as leaders. They complement each other really well, and they’ve obviously got that mutual respect.”

Perez is a hands-on CEO who expects a lot from his staff.

He’s direct, detail-oriented, opinionated, competitive and can be intense, according to current and former employees. But he’s committed to the mission and the wellbeing of his employees, they said.

“He’s one of those rare founder CEOs who I think can go all the way,” said Paul Kruszewski, a former Hinge employee who joined the company after it acquired his Canadian computer vision startup, Wrnch, in 2021.

Hinge Health’s Enso product.

Courtesy: Hinge Health

Employees say Perez is a voracious reader, often finishing two to four books a month. That includes books about business and leadership, an important source of information given that Hinge was his first real job. He’s a fan of “The Innovator’s Prescription,” by Clayton Christensen and others, “Crossing the Chasm,” by Geoffrey Moore and “The Long Fix,” by Dr. Vivian Lee.

He also likes his staffers to read. Executives will often prepare to discuss chapters from a book in their meetings.

“I’d come home and there’d be a package from Dan, and it’s a book,” said Sturm, who led partnerships and new market development at Hinge. “That was just the norm.”

Sturm, who has worked in the health-care and benefits space for around 30 years, said Hinge was very deliberate with hiring, so there wasn’t a lot of turnover among senior executives. He said Hinge’s recruitment process was the hardest he’s ever experienced.

Another “Dan-ism,” as Sturm called it, is Hinge’s philosophy around writing. Perez has employees write memos, typically up to six pages long, instead of preparing slide decks or other materials ahead of meetings. Perez was inspired by a similar practice at Amazon, according to current and former employees, and sees it as a way to force employees to think through what they want to say instead of hiding behind bullet points.

Hinge’s memo culture can be an adjustment, particularly for new employees. Sturm said he thought the practice was “insane” at first, but ultimately came to appreciate it and said it improved his pitches.

“When you sort of sit back, you go, ‘You know actually, he wasn’t wrong,'” Sturm said.

Hinge has come a long way since venture firm Atomico led the $8 million Series A investment in 2017. The London-based firm said in a blog post at the time that it was “extremely impressed by Daniel and Gabriel, and their determination to tackle a big problem in society.”

Carolina Brochado led the round, though she left Atomico a year later and now works at investment firm EQT Group. She said that getting Hinge to the brink of an IPO was a “one in a million chance,” but noted that the company has managed to build a sizable business in digital health despite having so many odds stacked against it.

“Lots of learnings along the way, of course, like a big tech correction in the middle,” Brochado said in an interview. “But it really is one of those rare examples of just an enormous market that was under penetrated.”

For David Perez, whose firm now serves as Hinge’s outside counsel, watching the startup grow has been “fascinating,” he said.

“I’m a partner at a major law firm,” he said, “and I am only the second most successful twin. But I think I’m okay with that.”

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Technology

Hims & Hers brings former Amazon executive into C-suite

Published

2 hours ago

May 5, 2025

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Hims & Hers brings former Amazon executive into C-suite

Bringing nearly 20 years of global experience at Amazon, Nader Kabbani is joining the executive leadership team to help the company further innovate on the delivery of affordable, seamless personalized care in the U.S. and globally.

Courtesy: Hims & Hers

Hims & Hers Health on Monday announced Nader Kabbani, a former Amazon executive who helped establish many of its health-care offerings, will join the telehealth company as its chief operations officer.

Kabbani spent nearly 20 years at Amazon, where he oversaw the launch of Amazon Pharmacy, the company’s acquisition of PillPack and its global Covid-19 Vaccination Task Force. He also helped stand up Amazon Kindle, Amazon Logistics, Amazon Music and Prime Video services.

Hims & Hers offers a range of direct-to-consumer treatments for conditions like erectile dysfunction and hair loss. The company, which saw revenue increase by 69% last year, said Kabbani will help the company continue to grow and scale.

“Nader’s experience scaling operations at the highest level makes him uniquely qualified to help us build the future of healthcare,” Hims and Hers CEO Andrew Dudum said in a statement.

In addition to his experience at Amazon, Kabbani also held executive leadership roles at the supply chain logistics company Flexport and the warehouse automation company Symbotic.

Stock Chart IconStock chart icon

Hims & Hers shares over six months.

Hims & Hers shares had a volatile start to the year, notching several double digit moves over the last few months. Investors have been paying close attention to the company’s weight loss offering, which was thrown into question after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced changes to the medication supply environment earlier this year.

Shares of the company closed up 23% on April 29, for instance, after Novo Nordisk said it would offer its weight loss drug Wegovy through telehealth providers like Hims & Hers.

The stock was down more than 1% on Monday but was up more than 70% year to date.

Hims & Hers is slated to report earnings after market close.

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Technology

Trump set to raise millions from crypto and memecoin this month

Published

2 hours ago

May 5, 2025

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Trump set to raise millions from crypto and memecoin this month

Jonathan Raa | Nurphoto | Getty Images

President Donald Trump has two crypto-focused dinners on the calendar this month — one aimed at deep-pocketed political donors, the other at memecoin millionaires. Both are poised to help him rake in millions.

The first event, a $1.5 million-per-plate fundraiser set for Monday, is among the priciest political fundraisers in recent memory. The second, on May 22, offers access to Trump’s inner circle not for cash — but for holders of the $TRUMP token.

Hosted by MAGA Inc., the “Crypto & AI Innovators Dinner” on May 5 features special guest David Sacks — who has been helping to rewrite the country’s crypto and artificial intelligence rules.

The committee receiving the funds, MAGA Inc. is a super PAC that supports Trump, but the president is constitutionally barred from running for a third term. It’s unclear how the PAC plans to spend the millions of dollars it is raising this spring at a series of dinners.

The crypto community has cheered Sacks’ growing influence in Washington, crediting him and other Trump-aligned appointees with a sweeping policy shift that’s already delivered a spate of regulatory wins across multiple federal agencies — in what many industry executives are describing as a 180 pivot from President Joe Biden.

The second gala dinner will be held at Trump National, the president’s private club in the Washington, D.C., area, later this month. The guest list will be decided by a blockchain-based contest run by the creators of the $TRUMP memetoken. Instead of cash, entry is based on how many tokens a user holds, with the top 220 promised dinner with Trump himself. The contest runs through May 12.