I recently hosted a small roundtable in London with 10 enterprise chief technology officers (CTOs) and two venture capital investors (VCs). We covered hiring, product strategy, funding challenges and, of course, artificial intelligence.
It dominated the agenda.
Here’s what we learned from the CTOs:
AI is 99 per cent hype…
…but no one wants to miss the one per cent that changes everything. CTOs are terrified of buying the wrong AI tool. But equally terrified of being left behind. Everyone’s waiting for signal in the noise, but meanwhile, the fear of missing the real breakthrough is driving experimentation, investment and late-night conversations.
Big Tech is bluffing
The so-called ‘FAANG’ stocks – Meta (Facebook), Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google (Alphabet) – are overselling their AIcapabilities to protect their valuations. But insiders aren’t buying it. There’s a general sense that many of the boldest public claims don’t match the real state of the technology behind closed doors. The marketing is ahead of the engineering.
The real AI boom? It’s still early
Think 1997. If we’re in a dot-com-style cycle, the bust is a few years off. And the big winners haven’t even launched yet. There’s growing consensus that we’re still in the infrastructure phase. Tools and standards are still forming, and we’ve yet to see the generation of companies that will define the next era.
CTOs are building in-house, not buying
The best tech leaders are building up their internal teams and skipping vendor noise. Build and buy. They’re avoiding one-size-fits-all AI platforms and focusing on tailored, domain-specific models and capabilities. The aim is to maintain control and avoid being locked into tools that won’t scale with their business.
Agentic AI is not the same as AI agents…
…and that difference matters. This will separate the serious products from the gimmicks. Many tools on the market are being positioned as ‘AI agents’, but the reality is they’re often simple automations wrapped in new branding. True agentic AI, capable of reasoning, planning and autonomous action, is a much higher bar. The distinction matters and will become more obvious over time.
Vibe coding is real
Engineers are coding by intuition, supported by large language models (LLMs) like GPT-4. The workflow is changing. Developers are increasingly working alongside these models, prompting, iterating and adjusting rather than writing code line-by-line from scratch. This shift is subtle but growing, and it’s changing how teams think about productivity and tooling.
AI is a tool, but it’s not the goal
Smart CTOs are the ones that focus on outcomes, not shiny features. AI only matters if it delivers value, whether that’s faster shipping, improved customer experience, or cost efficiency. The focus is moving from ‘we need AI” to ‘we need to solve this problem, does AI help us do that?’
UK startups could dominate Europe if they pay closer to US salaries
They’d attract leading AI talent and massively increase their odds of success. There’s a strong talent pool in the UK, but many of the most capable engineers are being lost to the US because of more competitive compensation. Bridging that gap could be the key to creating world-leading AI companies from the UK.
Building lean is now the norm
The trend is fewer hires, smaller headcount, and sharper execution. AI is enabling smaller teams to do more with less. This shift is becoming a standard operating model: lean, focused and product-led. Teams are avoiding over hiring and prioritising clear output over growth-for-growth’s-sake.
The job market is a mess
Hiring is increasingly automated, cold, and frustrating – great people are not getting hired due to lack of human interaction through the process. Algorithms are screening CVs. Recruiters are overwhelmed. And some of the most capable engineers are falling through the cracks. The hiring experience is broken for both candidates and companies.
Here’s what we learned from the VCs:
Series A funding in London sits between £2million and £8million
In the US? It’s between $10million and $20million. No wonder UK Seed and Series A founders are moving Stateside. The funding gap is pushing ambitious UK founders to look abroad… not just for capital, but for ecosystems that support more aggressive growth. This is creating a quiet brain drain that may accelerate if it’s not addressed.
100+ AI decks a week
With almost no revenue, investors are drowning in slides and starving for traction. The flood of early-stage pitches has made it harder than ever for founders to stand out. VCs are more cautious, asking sharper questions and looking for signs of early customer validation: not just ambition or impressive tech.
Technical founders who won’t hire sales, marketing, HR or ops
The VCs are walking away from ‘brilliant but stubborn’ founders. A great product isn’t enough. Investors are now filtering for founders who understand go-to-market, know when to bring in operators, and are willing to build teams beyond engineering. Refusal to do so is becoming a red flag.
The AI hot zones are legal, cyber, pharma and real estate
If you’re building in these sectors, now is your moment. These are sectors where the pain points are obvious: too much admin, too many rules and way too many spreadsheets. That makes them perfect for automation. AI has real utility here, cutting costs, speeding up decisions and handling the boring but important stuff. Investors know it. So do the buyers.
And my take?
UK companies are sleeping on the opportunity
Talent is cheaper and available vs. the US. With US funds looking for high-growth opportunities outside North America, the window’s wide open. Founders in the UK have a chance to build global AI companies with strong margins and deep talent pools… if they move decisively.
