Best Startup
At Best Startup UK we track over 130,000 UK startups and over 500,000 people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.
This list showcases the top United Kingdom based COO’ operating in the Artificial Intelligence space. If you think a COO’ is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on editor@beststartup.co.uk.
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Companies House UK, Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
Eric Collins
COO of Digital Surgery
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About Digital Surgery: Digital Surgery is a privately-held pioneer in surgical artificial intelligence (AI), data and analytics, and digital education and training
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Kit Tse
COO of Lemonaid Health
Kit Tse currently works as Chief Operating Officer at Lemonaid Health UK.
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About Lemonaid Health: Lemonaid Health is a telemedicine platform that uses technology to change the way people interact with health care.
Imam Hoque
COO, CPO & Co-founder of Quantexa
Imam has spent 28 years in the IT services and software industry and now specialises in large data driven solutions with a focus on financial crime. He worked as a developer, project manager and technical architect before becoming the CTO of an internet solutions start-up and then founding Detica NetReveal. He grew Detica NetReveal to a team of more than 300 specialists and then as a managing board director went on to acquire and integrate Norkom AML. Prior to Quantexa, Imam led the SAS Financial Crime practice for EMEA/AP.
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About Quantexa: Quantexa is a global data and analytics software company pioneering Contextual Decision Intelligence.
Omid Ashtari
Chief Operating Officer of Streetbees
Omid is General Manager at Citymapper and deals with everything business related that needs to be taken care of! He recently joined Citymapper after spending 2.5 years as a MD of Foursquare where he grew the international user base and revenue through strategic partnerships and ad sales. Before that he spent 7 years with Google in Dublin, London and San Francisco. During his Google tenure he held multiple positions in sales and business development, working with a broad range of clients and partners across the globe. This meant closing strategic deals for products like Google Search, Maps, Product Search, Google+ and selling the full suite of Google ad products. Omid holds a bachelor’s degree in European Business Administration from Cologne Business School Germany and graduated with Honors. He is currently based in London, UK.
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About Citymapper, Streetbees: Streetbees is a human intelligence platform that collects and analyzes offline consumer behavior.
Alexander Jevons
COO of Hummingbird Technologies
Alexander Jevons is the COO at Hummingbird Technologies.
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About Hummingbird Technologies: Hummingbird is a drone and satellite enabled imagery analytics business for precision agriculture.
Ivan Griffin
COO & Co-Founder of BenevolentAI
Ivan joined NESTA in March 2009. He makes and manages investments in the Healthcare sector. Prior to joining NESTA Ivan spent four years at IP Group where he was predominantly focused on healthcare and life science businesses. At IP Group his role encompassed all aspects of technology commercialisation, including identification of investment opportunities, spin-out company formation, business and corporate development as well as private and public equity financings and trade sales. Before joining IP Group Ivan spent two years at Oxford Technology Venture Capital Trust, and a year in post-doctoral research where he published several scientific papers.
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About BenevolentAI: BenevolentAI is a developer of artificial intelligence and computational medicine technologies.
Constanza Di Gennaro
Chief Operating Officer of BioBeats
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About BioBeats: BioBeats is a human company that creates digital artificial intelligence products to tackle mental health globally.
Varun Sahni
Co-Founder & COO of CreditEnable
Varun Sahni has built and operated multiple successful companies over the past 20 years across emerging and developed markets ranging across financial services, healthcare and high technology firms. He is co-founder of Impact Investment Partners a UK based FCA regulated asset manager which operates across multiple markets and sectors. Prior to which he was head of Acumen India and has worked with Unilever, CARE and Oxfam to build up their SME portfolios. Varun is on a range of global advisory boards and fund investment committees focused on emerging markets and sustainable investing. He has been widely quoted in international media over the years and is a Chevening Scholar from the London School of Economics, a TED Fellow and an Asia Society Global Young Leader. Varun has an MA from Columbia University, and is also a Chevening Scholar.
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About CreditEnable: CreditEnable provides data analytics, deep learning, AI and technology to build solutions to financial challenges.
Christopher Varin
COO of Cazana
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About Car and Classic: Cazana data helps motor retailers, insurers and lenders digitally transform with big data and machine learning technology
Lennert Acke
COO of Datatonic
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About Datatonic: Datatonic is a team of data and statistics experts that helps corporations drive their business through the power of analytics.
Steffen Tjerrild
COO, CFO and Co-Founder of Synthesia
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About Synthesia: Synthesia is an AI video avatar platform that creates professional videos from a text in different languages.
Ian Welch
Co-Founder & Chief Operating Officer of Callsign
Ian Welch is the COO of Callsign. Previously he held positions at Ladbrokers and Ascot Racecourse. Ian has a Bachelor Degree in Business Administration from Coverntry University
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About Callsign: Delivering digital trust through simple secure customer interactions
Chris Wray
COO of SYD
An experienced business consultant with 30 years strategic, financial, IT and operational consulting experience covering service delivery, account and practice management roles for Arthur Andersen, Andersen Consulting, Price Waterhouse and Deloitte. The role I perform best is one of integration – vertically between strategy, business design and delivery or horizontally across different competencies. In the role of account partner, business architect or program director, I have led the delivery of major business design and program delivery engagements for both small and large service based organisations. Line management responsibilities include managing consulting practices at a national, industry, service line, competency, regional and local office level.
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About SYD: Predictive population analytics for enterprise & AI virtual companion for employees
Rony Seamons
Chief Operating Officer & Director Of Operations of AMPLYFI
Rony Seamons is the Chief Operating Officer and Director Of Operations of AMPLYFI.
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About AMPLYFI: AMPLYFI is a privately held company that provides software platform capable of intelligently harvesting open source data from the internet.
Nick Rogers
COO & Co-Founder of Sky-Futures
Nick is Chief Regulatory and Training Officer (CRTO) and co-founder at Sky-Futures. He oversees the Training and Regulatory framework including the UK CAA National Qualified Entity (NQE) Status, ensuring that the Remote Pilot training is robust and fit for purpose. As a qualified civilian airline Captain who continues to fly Airbus A320 passenger jets, Nick’s aviation experience and understanding of the manned aviation environment have been instrumental in establishing a culture of safety and outstanding operational procedures that help enhance Sky-Futures position as a leading drone technology company.
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About Sky-Futures: Sky-Futures is a provider of drone-based inspection and data services to the industrial inspection market.
Megan Neale
Co-Founder & COO of Limitless
Megan Neale is the Co-Founder and COO at Limitless.
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About Limitless, Semafone: The Limitless GigCX platform enables businesses to connect customers with qualified experts to solve customer service enquiries on-demand.
Angie Ma
Chief Operating Officer, Co-Founder of Faculty Science
Angie is cofounder and COO of ASI Data Science, a London-based AI tech startup that offers data science as a service. ASI, since founding in 2014, has completed more than 200 commercial data science projects in multiple industries and sectors and regarded as EMEA-based leader in data science. She is passionate about applying machine learning to solving real world applications that generate business value for companies and organisations. She has experience delivery complex projects from prototyping to implementation. Prior to founding ASI, Angie, a physicist by training, was a researcher in nanotechnology working on developing optical detection for medical diagnostics.
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About Faculty Science: Faculty provides data science and engineering training services.
Richard Sargeant
Chief Operating Officer of Faculty Science
In 2016, Richard joined ASI Data Science as a Director to grow the consulting team of expert data scientists. ASI are bringing the power of artificial intelligence to everyone. We solve practical business problems using statistical and symbolic AI; provide modern software tools for analysts and data scientists; and deliver to equip and empower data scientists, executives, and analysts to take advantage of AI. Previously, he worked in the Government as Director of Transformation in the Home Office. Before this he was one of the founding directors of the Government Digital Service. He was Head of Energy Market Design at the Department of Energy & Climate Change, leading the Electricity Market Reform programme to secure an additional £200bn of capital investment into the UK Power Generation market. Before that he was at Google as their UK Head of Public Policy. Richard was a senior policy advisor in HM Treasury. His first role in Government was in the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, writing papers on innovation in the public sector and happiness, as well as unpublished work on education and healthcare. He co-founded Engineers Without Borders UK in 2001 while studying Social and Political Sciences at Cambridge University.
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About Faculty Science: Faculty provides data science and engineering training services.
Aditya Joshi
COO, Co-Founder of Greendeck
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About Greendeck: Greendeck uses AI to help brands and retailers with pricing optimisation and competitor intelligence.
Michael Michelis
Co-Founder & COO of Intelistyle
Michael Michelis joined Intelistyle as Co-Founder and COO in 2017.
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About Intelistyle: Intelistyle provides A.I. styling solutions to fashion retailers, helping them address the needs of customers looking for styling advice.
Deepti Atrish
CEO & Chief Operating Officer of PCL Health
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About PCL Health: B2B SaaS Connected care platform with IoTs, mobile Apps and Online Clinician Dashboard.
Thomas Fleming
Co-Founder & COO of Arctoris
Thomas Fleming is an award-winning chemist, cancer researcher, and SME Leader of the Royal Academy of Engineering. Tom is the Co-Founder & COO at Arctoris.
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About Arctoris: Arctoris is a tech-enabled platform company in biotechnology, combining robotics & data science to accelerate drug discovery.
Tomás Sabat
Chief Operating Officer of Vaticle
Tomás is the Chief Operating Officer at Vaticle. He works closely with Vaticle’s open source and enterprise users who use TypeDB to build applications in a wide number of industries including financial services, life sciences, cyber security and supply chain management. A graduate of the University of Cambridge, Tomás has spent the last seven years founding and building businesses in the technology industry.
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About Vaticle: Empowering engineers to solve complex problems – creators of TypeDB and TypeQL
Victor Dillard
Founder , COO & CEO of Desktop Genetics
A former chemical engineer keen on seeing personalized treatment realized, Victor has spent the past three years leading Desktop Genetics’ business development and CRISPR genome-editing initiatives. He has closed several partnerships with leading life science companies, placing Desktop Genetics at the forefront of CRISPR therapeutics research. Informed by his previous experience at P&G, GlaxoSmithKline, Flagship Ventures, Victor believes that software will be the key to unlocking the full potential of biotech R&D. He holds MEng, Chemical Engineering from Imperial College London and an MPhil in Bioscience Enterprise from the University of Cambridge.
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About Desktop Genetics: Desktop Genetics is an international company to help researchers discover and treat the root genetic causes of human disease.
Richard Fitch
Chief Operating Officer of Spring Financial Group
Richard Fitch has been serving as Chief Operating Officer at Spring Financial Group since May 1, 2016.
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About MQube, Spring Financial Group: Spring Financial Group is set to transform the way people in the UK get a mortgage.
Mark Little
Co-Founder, COO & CMO of Pynk
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About Pynk: Pynk is where everyday people invest better together.
Tom Blah
COO of Codec
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About Codec: We help brands to discover and tap in to the pockets of culture that drive growth. Powered by award-winning AI.
Peter Mildon
COO & Co Founder of Vivacity Labs
Peter is responsible for the commercial delivery of Vivacity. After graduating from Cambridge University, Peter joined a leading systems engineering consultancy, leading projects across the oil, civil nuclear, and renewables industries. With substantial process-driven experience under his belt, Peter leads operations at Vivacity, ensuring we deliver on time and to specification, every time.
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About Vivacity Labs: Vivacity Labs makes intelligent cameras to gather transport data, using the latest machine learning & computer vision techniques.
Victoria Peppiatt
Co-Founder & Chief Operating Officer of Phrasee
Victoria is a person who gets things done. Vibrant, enthusiastic and often loud, Victoria plans and executes all of the things, be they small or large, that make an exciting, growing business run. Previously, she founded and ran an innovative creative & branding agency, and is an expert in design, usability and Prosecco. As COO, she is responsible for customer success – and also for making sure the entire team is on task. She’s an eternal optimist, and the possessor of the biggest smile in SW London. She holds a BMus in Music & Technology and is the proud mum to Max and Marni.
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About Phrasee: Phrasee is AI that specializes in language generation for email marketing, push, and Facebook copy.
Patrick McCann
Chief Operating Officer of Kompli Global
Patrick has spent the last 20 years consulting to SMEs in the property, telecoms, commercial insurance and financial services sectors. Previous roles include head of productivity for the Royal Mint and the national sales manager role for Unite the Union. He has also held the posts of head of financial crime research and head of search partnerships. Patrick is also a qualified Project Manager (PRINCE2 Practitioner) and HR practitioner (Chartered MCIPD).
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About Kompli Global: Kompli Global is develops networks, multi-jurisdictional, multi-lingual due diligence, search platform.
Joshua Scotton
COO & Co-Founder of Personify XP
Josh is the brains behind Personify XP. With a PhD from the Intelligent Systems group at the University of Warwick, he has worked with some of the world’s largest companies across Retail, Finance, CPG and Travel. Josh has spent the last 10 years living out his passion for personalization, researching customer analytics, marketing and customer engagement modelling.
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About Personify XP: Personify XP uses AI and automation personalization SAAS technology to help retailers understand what their customers are shopping for.
Sybil Wong
COO of Sparrho
Sybil completed her PhD in Biochemistry at the University of Nottingham and Barts Cancer Institute, QMUL. Prior to joining Sparrho, Sybil was SVP Business Development & Director of OneStart, the world’s largest biotech and healthcare startup accelerator, at the Oxbridge Biotech Roundtable. Through OneStart, Sybil supported 70 budding biotech and healthcare startups from across Europe, North America and Asia, and managed partnerships with top pharma and venture firms, including SR One/GSK, Roche, Johnson & Johnson, and AstraZeneca/MedImmune.
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About Sparrho, Synthace: Sparrho lead the world in democratising science using augmented intelligence.
David Brain
Co-founder and COO of Symphony Ventures
David is a process and automation expert. He has designed and led billion pound outsourcing deals, developed BPO product suites, and built industry-leading Incubation Labs. Most recently, David has gained recognition as the pre-eminent expert in Robotic Process Automation, building BPO’s most recognized capability in the field. David’s mission at Symphony is to ensure flawless solution design and execution, providing clients with the innovation journey they have long sought.
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About Sykes Enterprises, Symphony Ventures: Symphony is a professional services firm passionate about creating value for the world’s leading organizations.
Duncan Mann
COO of Hoxton Analytics
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About Hoxton Analytics: Cloud computer vision software to digitise and automate processes in physical spaces.
Timothy Waltniel
Chief Operating Officer of Toyota Connected
Prior to joining Toyota Connected Europe, Timothy Waltniel worked for more than 15 years across Toyota’s European and global operations to expand its use of advanced technology. This includes expanding the use of digital technologies as part of Toyota’s manufacturing operations and the Toyota Production System, delivering opportunities for academic and future business collaboration around new technologies including next generation ICT and advanced powertrain, and developing the company’s connected and mobility business strategy in Europe. Waltniel holds a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and management degrees from both Vlerick and IMD business school.
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About Toyota Connected: Toyota Connected re-imagines the use of data and technology to deliver effortless services that make life easier and driving safer.
Wasif Mehdi
Chief Operating Officer of Unmanned Life
Wasif Mehdi is the Chief Operating Officer at Unmanned Life.
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About Unmanned Life: Unmanned Life is the leading software platform for seamless orchestration of autonomous robotics
Jamie Euesden
COO of askporter
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About askporter: AskPorter is an AI machine learning messaging platform that optimises property and facilities.
James Serjeant
COO & CFO of ContactEngine
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About ContactEngine: ContactEngine is a proactive Conversational AI technology that automates conversations between corporates and their customers
Pete Shannon
Chief Operating Officer of HelloDone
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About HelloDone: Automating social messaging for online retail brands
Jason Muller
Co-founder and COO of Pivigo
Jason has an extensive and successful background in UK business having co-founded a group of healthcare recruitment firms in 2006, grown it to 30+staff and over £28m turnover in four years, studied an MBA at Cranfield University in 2011/12 and co-founded Pivigo in 2013.
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About Pivigo: Data is and will continue to change our lives. It is generated by us, for us and around us.
Richard Mcconnell
Co-Founder & COO of Liopa
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About Anaeko, Liopa: Liopa’s LipRead deciphers speech from lip movements. It uses AI and deep learning for automated lip reading.
Agata Boczkowska
COO and Co-Founder of RAIS
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About RAIS: The Customer Intelligence Business – helping D2C brands grow the value of their customers faster.
Adrien Hitz
Co-Founder and COO of Materialize.X
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About Materialize.X: Data-Driven Directors for Manufacturing
Elizabeth Fairley
Founder, COO of Talking Medicines
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About EFB Services, Mironid, Talking Medicines: Talking Medicines captures the unstructured global voice of the patient using AI, ML, and NLP technologies.
Marcus Dixon
COO of ChAI
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About ChAI: Predicting commodity prices with AI on Alternative Data to mitigate price volatility for manufacturers.
Nadeem Shakoor
Co-Founder and Group COO of AI-XPRT
Nadeem is a highly focused and experienced commercial and risk specialist with extensive global networks and experience in the HSSE, Energy, Technology, Finance, IT and Telecoms industries. Nadeem has been a cofounder of two businesses Senoi Ltd and Eduworks UK Limited. He has over 20 years commercial experience in the software sector. Seven of those years have been spent in developing solutions using AI and Machine Learning. Nadeem has led successful global direct and indirect teams to deliver complex solutions and revenue.
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About AI-XPRT: AI-XPRT is provides artificial intelligence solution to automate regulatory compliance assurance and financial audit.
James Loft
COO of Rainbird Technologies
A man with his finger on the pulse of an ever-evolving marketplace, James is always looking ahead to the next ‘game-changing’ advancement in artificial intelligence. His mission: to demystify the world of ‘Applied AI’ for organisations and users alike. With a history in innovation and service design – he previously led an artificial intelligence consultancy firm that helped companies develop AI tools to fit their business needs – he possesses an in-depth understanding of the possibilities of the technology and the key part it will play in the future of industry. In his role as Chief Operations Officer, James is responsible for the daily business operations of the company. A knowledge management graduate from Loughborough University, he advocates an MVP-style approach to new technology that is designed to deliver the best results in the smartest way.
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About Rainbird Technologies: Truly intelligent automation for complex decisions and scenarios
Henrike Grund
COO of AtHashtags
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About AtHashtags: Combined Online and real world Marketplace that allows vendors to sell and connect with consumers online and in multiple physical locations
Adam Bacon
Co-Founder and COO of Feebris
Adam Bacon is the Co-Founder and COO at Feebris.
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About Feebris: AI-enabled platform bridging the gap between community and health system.
Jim Scott
COO of The Hackerati
Jim Scott is the President ResponseDM.
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About ResponseDM, The Hackerati: The Hackerati is a technology company of developers, designers, and scientists.
Jim Scott
COO of The Hackerati
Jim Scott is the President ResponseDM.
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About ResponseDM, The Hackerati: The Hackerati is a technology company of developers, designers, and scientists.
