Edge’s CEO and Founder David Glick took part in the House of Lords Digital and Communications Select Committee inquiry on Scaling Up AI and Creative Tech.

He gave evidence alongside me were Victor Riparbelli (co-founder and CEO at Synthesia), Peadar Coyle (Founder at AudioStack), Simon Barrat (Co-founder and CEO at Cooperative Innovations), Paul Murphy (Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners), Caroline Norbury OBE (Chief Executive Officer at Creative UK), Nick Poole OBE (Chief Executive Officer at The Association for UK Interactive Entertainment (Ukie)).

Commenting on the experience, David said:

There was discussion around how to focus on scale ups, and those creative tech and AI businesses that have a chance of being significant versus distributing small amounts of money for grassroots businesses that will always be over managed. The evidence given was that it would be much more beneficial for the UK to focus on businesses that are capable of significantly scaling.

Amongst other suggestions was the inclusion of creative IP in the R&D tax credit regime, the granting of tax reliefs for long term investment in funds investing in creative tech and AI and the necessity to improve access to talent, specifically making it easier to recruit from overseas and making it easier to hire and fire people to enable early stage scale up businesses to bring people on in an attempt to grow without fear of the cost of having to scale back where initiatives don’t work.

I learned a lot from being part of the select committee and I will continue to feedback to the committee and discussions with its members.

Watch the full session here.