The founder of a startup acquired by Amazon for a reported $26 million is now investing in AI
Sam Shead/Business Insider UK
William Tunstall-Pedoe sold Evi Technologies, his voice recognition startup to Amazon in 2012, for an undisclosed amount that TechCrunch reported to be around $26 million (£20 million).
Following the acquisition, Tunstall-Pedoe became part of the Amazon family. However, his investment activities have been somewhat limited over the last four years.
"I did a bit of investment while I was in Amazon but obviously that was constrained by Amazon legal; I had to get permission if it overlapped at all with anything Amazon did and most things overlap with something that Amazon is doing," Tunstall-Pedoe told Business Insider at his home in Cambridge.
"Since February I've been much more active," he added, saying he's backed a total of 13 companies, including Magic Pony Technologies, which was acquired by Twitter in June for $150 million (£113 million), and mental health startup Big Health.
The Cambridge computer science graduate, who is currently on a career break, states on investor website Angel List that he's "primarily interested in advancing the state-of-the-art of what computers can do in a way that has an enormous positive impact globally."
Tunstall-Pedoe, whose IP sits at the heart of AI assistant Amazon Alexa and the hardware that supports it, Amazon Echo, has also become a fellow at a startup incubator in Canada called the Creative Destruction Lab, where he "might be" making some personal investments.
"They have a very big machine learning track," he said. "I'm basically going to go to Toronto every couple of months for the next year, immersing myself in many 10s of AI machine learning startups.
"They've got this very very capitalist mission which is to maximise the equity value of the companies that pass through them. They're trying to create hundreds of millions worth of dollars of value but they themselves are non-profit."
When asked about UK incubators, Tunstall-Pedoe said he's interested in London-based startup factory Entrepreneur First but that he keeps missing their demo days.
Tunstall-Pedoe said he's gently thinking about what to do next in his career, adding that it's quite likely to be another AI startup.
- US buys 81 Soviet-era combat aircraft from Russia's ally costing on average less than $20,000 each, report says
- 2 states where home prices are falling because there are too many houses and not enough buyers
- A couple accidentally shipped their cat in an Amazon return package. It arrived safely 6 days later, hundreds of miles away.
- SC refuses to plea seeking postponement of CA exams scheduled in May
- 10 exciting weekend getaways from Delhi within 300 km in 2024
- Foreign tourist arrivals in India will cross pre-pandemic level in 2024
- Upcoming smartphones launching in India in May 2024
- Markets rebound in early trade amid global rally, buying in ICICI Bank and Reliance