'I've raised $50m but won't leave for US'

Happy Friday, it's been a hectic week of news, so I'm changing the pace today 😎.

Happening Today 🗓️

Forecast for next week: My main focus is on what the Competition and Markets Authority decides to do with its cloud investigation into Microsoft and Amazon. Its board will likely decide Tuesday or Wednesday whether to do a "strategic market status" investigation.

In Parliament: The prime minister will be quizzed by committee chairs on the Liaison Committee on Monday, including Chi Onwurah, chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee. On Tuesday, MPs will have plenty of questions for execs from Meta, X, TikTok and Google about harmful algorithms. On Wednesday, the Crime and Policing Bill has its third reading in the Lords. Peers will talk on Thursday about the government's AI Growth Lab, which Rachel Reeves said this week would be taken forward in a bill.

Meet Isambard: There is a summit in Bristol about the UK's fastest supercomputer, Isambard, on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Full calendar here.

News In Brief 🩳

Banking on AI: HSBC could cut up to 20,000 roles - 10 percent of its staff - over the next few years as it bets on AI to shrink back office jobs, Bloomberg reports.

Where we rank: Middle and lower income countries view AI far more positively than those living in wealthier nations, according to research by Anthropic. It has published data covering 81,000 people in 159 countries giving each nation a score of how positively they view AI. For the UK, it was 63 percent positive, below the global average but on par with the US and other higher income countries.

LFR pause: Essex Police have paused using live facial recognition cameras after finding they were more likely to target black people, the Guardian reports.

Under the microscope: The Competition and Markets Authority is investigating Adobe about concerns early cancellation fees on some membership plans may breach consumer protection law.

'You need an almost delusional belief in your own success'

Steve Basher founded SolveAI, an enterprise coding tool, last summer. The ex-Palantir engineer raised his first $5m with no team and no product, followed by a further $45m. The 31-year old tells us why he built in London, what policies need to change and why his ex-employer Palantir is great for future founders. 

You went from zero to a $50m raise in eight months. How did you do it?

I had no contacts but I started to very loosely speak to the VC world a couple months before I left Palantir. What helped me a lot was Palantir was getting very well-known for producing founders. Then I connected with people on LinkedIn that I knew were from respectable firms who seemed like they were well-suited to my area.

It helped me that there was alignment among VCs on the broader hypothesis that a company like SolveAI will exist. Then it became more a case of why me versus why the idea. 

What are the advantages of founding in London? 

I very heavily considered starting in San Francisco. It always used to be that it was much easier to raise if you were Valley-based. I don't think that's true anymore, which is a blessing. 

You get very serious investors in London and it is incredibly well set up as a tech hub, provided we do our part from a policy and government perspective. You're able to hire incredibly good people without the same insane level of competition as San Francisco. 

What are some of those policies that you think the government needs to get on top of?

We need to incentivise and encourage people to found here. That is not an easy thing to do, but if you look at why people found in the US, it's access to the market, it's the tax, it’s the legal system. We need to make things easier here; easier for founders from abroad to get visas and incentivise those founders by doubling down on tax relief. We also need to just reduce red tape around setting up and running a business. 

How much do you feel founders are born and how much is it experience that leads you to that point? 

I think it's probably equal parts nature and environment. I came from very little so I think that helped. I grew up in a council house in Hampshire. My parents are window cleaners. They're lovely people, but we've never had a lot. Throughout my childhood and teenage life, I had to work.

I was entrepreneurial as a kid, I was teaching myself how to build websites when I was 12/13 and figuring out how to sell them online. I was presenting myself as a company - Steve's Web Design! 

Palantir, for most people, is a mysterious place and there are a lot of controversial headlines about the company. 

Palantir is an incredible company and it's misunderstood a lot.

What are we misunderstanding? 

The idea that Palantir is some kind of data mining company is just false. It does work with Israel. It does work with ICE, it does do defence and there are use cases of power here that a lot of people wouldn't feel morally aligned to. That is every individual's decision. I never worked on any of those projects. I think Palantir is always very open that it is supporting democracy by helping whichever government is in power because it’s been voted in. 

I got a lot of value out of Palantir because of how it was run. It was very meritocratic. There was a zero-bullshit culture. There's a lot of autonomy which sort of self selects for entrepreneurs. It also means you get a ton of responsibility super early.

How much of that culture have you taken to SolveAI? 

There are two things. I think it's wrong to just not have opinions because you're worried about repercussions. I think that's actually not how you build a successful, impactful company.

But the big thing I've taken from Palantir is how we build a successful culture. People should always feel free to come up and tell me what I'm doing wrong, to have autonomy, to be their own unique self, and to be rewarded for their part in the company's growth.

Give us some advice you'd give to your teenage self.

The two things I'd say are don't ever lose the extreme ambition and almost delusional belief in your own success. I'm not spiritual at all, but manifestation is real in a cause-and-effect way. If you truly believe something without arrogance, but with faith, and as a result, you work hard, then I think that that breeds success and breeds luck.

Second, there's a piece here around maturing as early as you can. Most teenagers are very emotionally driven. So 31-year-old Steve would say, if I had less emotional drive in me as a teenager and had more ability to be objective, I think it would have saved me some time.

AI-Copyright? Our panel has cracked it 😉

Thanks to everyone who joined our first Q&A yesterday, covering the AI-Copyright update. There was a surprising amount of agreement between our four expert panelists despite coming from different sectors and sides of the debate.

The panel's main messages were:

-The government's "wait-and-see" position which it took in Wednesday's update was understandable but not helpful. It needs to set stricter timelines now.

-A commercial research text and data mining exception would be difficult to justify and wouldn't solve the problems it's meant to address. All agreed that transparency was crucial to public trust in AI.

-Stop treating this solely as a copyright policy issue. It is not simply a binary fight between tech companies and the creative industries.

William Bowes (YouGov) argued that other policy tools like tax credits, database rights reform and fixing the content market place haven't been adequately explored. Ann Kristin Glenster (University of Cambridge) took a more long-term approach and called for a strategic vision from the government on where AI and copyright fits with its wider policies.

Doniya Soni-Clark (techUK) emphasised the cost of delay and uncertainty to tech investment, while Richard Mollet (RELX) argued a growing licensing market already exists and works.

Thanks to RELX for sponsoring and for all the great audience questions.

Wishing you all brilliant weekends. Back Monday.

Tom