Biography

Stan was a co-founder and CEO of Five, a UK start-up bought by Bosch that built a prototype self-driving car and sophisticated simulation technology for safe self-driving development and testing. Before Five, he co-founded and led two of the UK’s most successful venture-backed communications silicon and software companies, Element 14 Inc. and Icera Inc., bought by Broadcom and NVIDIA respectively. Since 1999, he’s raised a total of $330M in equity venture capital and sold the resulting companies for about $1.3B. He’s now an active angel investor.

Biography

Sean Redmond has nearly 40 years of experience in the semiconductor and software industries. Starting his career as a chip designer, he led two market leading design teams. Firstly in digital stereo sound for television and then the first embedded mobile phone chip with VLSI technology. Sean was VP Europe for Verisity Design Inc, taking them from a standing start to over 160 customer sites throughout Europe in 5 years. He instigated and led the strategic partnership with ARM, fueling its meteoric rise and successful IPO. Following their acquisition by Cadence, Sean became VP & GM of Cadence EMEA, doubling its business in 3 years. As VP WW Sales and Marketing for ARC, he helped turn its cash flow positive, leading to the eventual sale to Synopsys. In 2010 he founded and has been the CEO of Vertizan Limited, the developer of the Vitaq AI-driven Test Automation tool suite. He is Chairman of a UK semiconductor company, Cascoda Ltd. Sean has recently worked closely with the UK government on industrial digital strategy, co-chairing the ElecTech council and became a core member of the Secretary of State’s industrial digital leadership team. Sean has a BSc(hons), MSc EE from Kings College, London and MBA from Henley Management College.

Biography

Rebecca Dobson is a technology executive, board advisor, and industry leader with extensive experience across many technology sectors. Having held senior leadership positions at Cadence, Arm, and Inmarsat, she has spent her career at the forefront of technological innovation, helping organisations navigate growth, transformation, and emerging market opportunities.

Alongside her corporate leadership experience, Rebecca has worked for, and closely with start-ups and scale-ups as a board member, advisor, and mentor, supporting founders as they build and grow innovative technology businesses. She is particularly passionate about strengthening the UK technology ecosystem and helping ambitious companies scale from breakthrough ideas into globally successful businesses.

Rebecca brings a unique perspective on the future of AI, semiconductors, and deep technology, as well as the leadership, talent, and innovation challenges facing organisations in a rapidly evolving world.

Simon Thomas, CEO and Co-Founder of Paragraf. He has a diverse background in physics, engineering and materials science, combined with many years’ experience in the fields of semiconductors, functional materials, solid state devices and capital equipment manufacture. To date he has raised over $150m in private capital to steer the company through to the realization of the world’s first viable graphene electronics device foundry delivering novel, game changing, products to market.

Simon’s visionary leadership, in unison with a rare combination of significant academic and business experience, equipped him to overcome long-standing challenges in two-dimensional materials production, converting their lab proven characteristics into real world, high performance, societally benefiting products. In the next 5 years the company will make graphene and other two-dimensional materials standard in the semiconductor world, enabling industries to reap the high performance, low power consumption benefits of these extraordinary materials.

Simon holds a Master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering and a PhD in Materials Science & Engineering and is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. He is passionate about developing technologies that can solve today’s enduring challenges and beneficially affect global society. He believes that new materials hold the key to transformational products that will deliver a brighter, more sustainable future.

Dex Hunter-Torricke is a leading global thinker on AI and society, with two decades of experience at the intersection of technology and global power. His career includes key roles advising leaders including Elon Musk at SpaceX, Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook, Eric Schmidt at Google, and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Most recently, he led global communications and marketing for Google DeepMind where he launched Gemini.

In February 2026 Dex launched the Center for Tomorrow, an urgent international effort focused on identifying the conditions to build successful societies in the age of AI. Dex argues that the key challenges of the AI era are not technical but societal, and that every organization, community and country must urgently transform to prepare for a radically different future.

Dex’s work has been covered by TIME, Politico, the Wall Street Journal and New York Times among others, and he is a frequent public speaker on issues of AI and society. Dex also serves as non-executive director on the board of HM Treasury. He is currently authoring his debut book.

Paul Slaby is a veteran semiconductor industry professional, and Managing Director of Canada’s Semiconductor Council (CSC). His semiconductor career started with a post-doc research position at Carleton University, followed by a decade as a semiconductor R&D manager with Nortel Semiconductor and BNR. Subsequently he founded and/or ran several successful high-tech ventures including ATMOS Corp, MicroSemiX, VoIPshield Systems, Kaben Wireless Silicon, Teslonix and others. Now, with CSC, he’s on a mission to elevate Canada’s semiconductor industry to global prominence. He holds a MSc. in Applied Physics and PHD in Microelectronics.