James Wise

Partner @Balderton. Investing in AI, health and energy. Chair of UK Sovereign AI. Author of Start-Up Century. Mostly Generative.

[James Wise @Jameswise]

We’ve had an astonishing 338 British AI companies apply for our first ‘strategic assets’ programme at SovAI.

We aim to support a handful with multi-£M offers to build essential infrastructure here in areas like advanced wet-labs.

The team are working through it all - but as they say - we’re going to need a bigger boat!

[Ihtesham Ali @ihtesham2005]

A team at Oxford built a search engine for every drug the NHS prescribes, and it has quietly saved the health service millions.

It's called OpenPrescribing.

The NHS publishes its full prescribing dataset every month. It's 700 million rows of raw numbers nobody could actually read. So Oxford built a tool that turns it into live charts in seconds.

You type a drug name. It shows you which practices over-prescribe it, which regions are slow to follow new guidelines, and where the money is being wasted.

→ Search any drug across any GP practice in England
→ Find safety and cost outliers instantly
→ 70+ ready-made quality measures
→ Updates monthly, automatically
→ Free, open source, MIT licensed

20,000 people use it every month. Doctors. Researchers. Journalists.

Public data that sat unreadable for years is now one search away.

https://t.co/U9KI0mUCAp

[James Wise @Jameswise]

@mattotele We’re ingesting more everyday, so there may be some companies that are overweight initially but thanks for flagging

[James Wise @Jameswise]

There are already 19,780 jobs live on the free jobs portal we just launched for start-ups based in the UK & Europe!

There's no doubt AI is creating more jobs, but they will be different.

In the era of the PC, and the internet, it was the people who jumped in and worked out how to get the best from these new technologies that benefitted the most - the same will be true in the AI era ( of people, as well as countries ).

So do check out some of the roles in these mostly AI-first companies, great places to get experience or build an entrepreneurial career.

[James Wise @Jameswise]

Link to jobs and resources here:

https://t.co/LKHMQJGvhm

[Alex Volkov @altryne]

.@satyanadella just put the whole "water" debate to rest.

Datacenters run on a closed loop cooling system, the water usage of a datacenter for an entire year is roughly equivalent to a usage of 1 restaurant!

[Google DeepMind @GoogleDeepMind]

We believe AI can be a dedicated research partner to help discover the next breakthrough.

Enter Co-Scientist: our latest Gemini-based multi-agent system that can generate, debate and evolve novel hypotheses for complex scientific problems 🧵

[James Wise @Jameswise]

@balderton You can find out more at https://t.co/sn7IWYOMX0

[James Wise @Jameswise]

For over twenty years, @balderton has backed British & European entrepreneurs to build breakout technology companies. And there has never been a better time to do it.

More people than ever are interested in founding companies, in joining start-ups, and in taking on some of the biggest challenges of our time with technology, from energy to health, defence to finance, building from here to win globally. And AI is making it easier than ever to get going.

But there's a big gap with this positive movement, and the general coverage of the tech sector here, one which often suggests you can't or shouldn't try to start a business.

Today we've launched a campaign to help change that. It is a public celebration of some of the founders driving the frontiers of tech, and a digital portal providing support to potential founders and access to 1,000s of open roles at start-ups.

Yes there are challenges, and there always will be. But that didn't stop some of the founders that went before. We hope this helps nudge the conversation, and inspires a few more people to take the risk.

[Seb Johnson @SebJohnsonUK]

The founders of over 100 European startups have come together to get more people to build and join startups in Europe.

The campaign, named "Built in Europe", is an out-of-home and digital advertising campaign across five European cities.

It features:

> @mati of @ElevenLabs
> @NStoronsky of @Revolut
> @antonosika of @Lovable
> @HBO_Sweden of @lassie_co
> @vriparbelli of @synthesiaIO
> @FredrikHjelm4 of @voitechnology & @Pitdotcom
> @Barney_H_Y of @meetcleo

And many other great European founders and CEOs.

It's been organised by @balderton but features companies and founders from all over Europe.

The VC firm has built a website bringing together jobs from 1,000 leading tech startups on a single platform using direct data feeds and API integrations.

The overall aim is to get more people building and founding companies here which is AMAZING to see.

NICE @surangac, @Jameswise, @robmoff

[Mark Lewis, MD, FASCO @marklewismd]

Cheers, chills, and a standing ovation when RASolute 302 showed unprecedented survival on daraxonrasib for patients with progressive pancreatic cancer

Seldom do you sense you’re witnessing a historic moment in cancer care but this feels like ras targeting has arrived

#ASCO26

[James Wise @Jameswise]

@Yo__Rob @stianwestlake You’re right that broader exposure to equities is needed. But if you look at the best performing funds in the world - they have a mix of private & publics for a reason. And as companies IPO later ( if at all ) venture becomes a more important part of that mix.

[James Wise @Jameswise]

@Yo__Rob @stianwestlake UK pensions are under allocated to equities across the range - public & private and I agree they should have more exposure to both

[James Wise @Jameswise]

@greenwood_r @stianwestlake It’s of huge benefit to the many international pension funds, and other endowments, that they get allocation into UK venture and UK pension holders don’t - because of completely incorrect statements like yours.

[James Wise @Jameswise]

@greenwood_r @stianwestlake UK venture median IRRs are significantly superior to the FTSE and average pension fund returns over the last decade.

[James Wise @Jameswise]

In a world where online discussion of AI can be comically shallow - I thought this BBC Question Time episode was pretty good.

The questions, observations and balance of concern and excitement from the panelists and public in particular were generally informed and nuanced - and while I don’t agree with some of the views ( which is the point of a debate ) because it wasn’t positioned as a party political issue there was more discussion and less Punch & Judy.

It really reiterated again the urgent need for the UK to build greater resilience and sovereign capability across the AI stack.

Thanks @darrenpjones, @JuliaLopezMP, @vriparbelli, @MGawdat, Laura Gilbert.

https://t.co/DxjlH4bxYR