Innovator of the Year Awards: Business Services and AI

Every year, The Spectator travels the country in search of the best and boldest new companies that are disrupting their respective industries. In a series of five podcasts, we will tell you about the finalists for 2023’s Innovator of the Year Awards, sponsored by Investec. The awards winners will be announced in a prize ceremony in November.

Listeners will have heard businesses in all sorts of fields – from consumer goods to health technology, from sustainability to the cutting edge of British engineering. But what about the companies that make these businesses work? The behind-the-scenes, boiler room people who offer services to businesses themselves. These days, with advancement in artificial intelligence, their work has been made more effective than ever before. Britain, after all, brought us Alan Turing and Tim Berners-Lee.

Martin Vander Weyer, The Spectator’s business editor, judges the awards and hosts this podcast along with three other judges: Melissa Readman, partner and investor director at ESM Investments, a fund which invests in early stage companies; Caroline Theobald CBE, an entrepreneur and co-owner of FIRST, which provides enterprise training to young people and business leaders; and Michelle White, co-head of Investec’s private office.

The finalists in this category are:

• Igloo Vision, which creates immersive spaces using virtual reality for companies and organisations.
• Synthesia, an AI video creation platform that produces videos quickly and cheaply.
• ComplyAdvantage, which uses AI and machine learning to carry out financial due diligence for corporate clients.
• SoPost, which uses a digital platform to help streamline supply chains for retailers.
• Good-Loop, which converts clicks on online ads into revenue for partnership charities.
• Yoti, which provides digital IDs for identity verification.
• Exclaimer, which provides email signature solutions for the marketing and other needs of businesses.
• LegalVision, which provides legal advice on an affordable, subscription basis.
• Finboot, which uses blockchain to help businesses track the environmental impact of their supply chains.
• Huboo Technologies Ltd, which takes care of the storage and shipping needs of e-commerce businesses that don’t have their own warehouses.