My experience at the London Tech Week conference 9-11 June 2025

London Tech Week

The London Tech Week website provides a good introduction to this annual event, which took place over 3-days between 9-11 June in London.

While I have attended many conferences specific to the Derivatives and Capital Markets industry, this was (probably) my first large technology conference.

What follows are my experiences and thoughts from the event.

Arrival

Arriving just before 9am on Monday morning. at Kensington Olympia, I was met by a long snaking line to enter the venue, (clearly should have got an earlier train), still it moved at a reasonable cadence.

While in the queue, there was a notification on the event app that Prime Minister Kier Starmer, would be the first session in a conversation with Jensen Huang of NVDIA, that certainly showcased the importance of the event.

After 10-15 mins of queuing, I was able to get my badge at the registration area and enter the venue, already thronging with hordes of attendees on the exhibition floor.

The above schematic gives an idea of the layout and to get to the Main Stage involved a long walk and further queuing, so I decided on one of the smaller stages, all of which were live streaming the opening session from the Main Stage.

Opening Session

To be honest, I don’t remember much of PM Kier Starmer’s opening speech, certainly there were a few announcements about initiatives and investments.

I do remember his story on Somers Town in his constituency, a stone throws from the Kings Cross Knowledge Quarter and how pleased he was that Google had opened an AI Campus right in Somers Town to provide education to local students.

Personal stories resonate, especially ones on aspirations and access to knowledge.

Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, which competes with Microsoft for the title of worlds most valuable company ($3.5 trillion market cap) talked about the UK’s “Goldilocks” moment (see Youtube), making it perfect for AI take-off.

The conversation between the PM and CEO, certainly gave the impression that the two had spoken in depth before and both needed good engagement from each other, as the UK pursues a tech-led growth strategy and NVIDIA powers the core infrastructure for AI.

Exhibition Area

The exhibition area itself was a huge hanger like structure, with the floor space covered by stands, as my photo taken from the balcony level shows.

All the major vendors you would expect, (AWS, Google, Microsoft), country pavilions and of-course a huge number of SMEs and start-ups.

So it was a case of finding time to visit a few stands in between talks that looked interesting at one of the six stages, Main, Founders, StartUps, Impact, Innovation and Tech Horizons.

Needless to stay AI took centre stage everywhere.

Stage Highlights

With six stages and concurrent sessions, it was hard to chose which to attend, even with the invaluable mobile app to assist.

Of the sessions that I managed to attend, my highlights were:

1. Reclaiming a Web that works for everyone – Sir Tim Berners-Lee
2. How UK and EU can compete with US & China in Transformative technology – Baroness Martha Lane-Fox, Markus Villig (Bolt), Suranga Chandratillake (Balderton Capital)
3. Why Diversity Still Wins – Allison Kirby (BT Group) and Baroness Martha Lane-Fox
4. How Will AI Redefine Healthcare – Five panelists
5. What Corporate Business can learn from the Cutting-Edge Tech Development Process in Formula 1 – Christian Horner (Red Bull Racing)
6. The Case for Human-First AI – Nicholas Pickles (Tools for Humanity), Richard Allan (House of Lords)

A lot of informative and inspiring content.

StartUp Pitches

Start-up pitches are great audience pullers and there was certainly no shortage of these, with several different organizations showcasing their cohorts.

Watching founders give a 3-minute pitch on their startup, value proposition and funding needs, is fast paced watchable action and I was able to see two of these.

Grow London Global, a program for London-based scaleups, which had 10 founders presenting, the ones that stood out for me were:

• Michelle He of Abound, consumer lending solutions
• Husayn Kassai of Quench.ai, a work AI assistant connected to your tools
• Caroline Cake, neu health, Parkinson’s and dementia care for all
• Dr Emilia Molimpakis, thymia, mental health assesments
• Joe Tighe, KleanDrive, electrifying diesel buses
• Shelley Kopsey, FYLD, a fieldwork execution platform

UK-Ukraine Techbridge Investment Accelerator, connecting high-potential Ukranian startups with scaling & funding in the UK, which had 10 founders presenting, the ones that stood out for me:

• Viktoria Kravchenko, Verba, an AI-powered toolkit for content creaters
• Halyna Kharkivska, Curify, finding and joining clinical trials
• Egor Avetisov, Deeployalty, engaging bank and retailer customers
• Nick Oseyko, Carbominer, affordable CO2 for food security

Hats off to these founders for pitching in their non-native language to a large audience with a lot of noise and distractions from nearby stands and foot traffic

Further details on these and the others can be found here.

Country Pavilions

In addition to the large Tech vendors, there were large stands for countries or regions, showcasing their firms or offering advice on their markets.

A great way for smaller firms to have some of their costs covered in business development for the UK market and be introduced to potential partners or customers.

I got to spend time with a few firms from the Country Pavilions for Pakistan, Turkiye, South Africa and UK Dept for Business and Trade, which was great, but could not get to many others, Costa Rica, Malta, Romania, Tunisia.

The Pakistan pavilion organisers pulled off a nice touch with a London Cab dropping off periodically outside the venue.

While Turkiye had the only exhibition stand with a roof-top lounge area serving coffee and delicacies, as can be seen by looking closely at the first photo above.

Networking

Finally there is the networking.

Making new connections

Catching up with acquaintances.

Talking and listening in the midst of the hubub.

A key part of the conference experience.

Certainly not one to be missed.

Overall a great event.

One to mark in next year’s calendar.