Danny Fortson
Boards are being told that artificial intelligence will reshape every industry. The harder question is which parts of that story are real, which are sales pitches from the people building the technology, and what a leadership team should actually do this quarter. Most of the analysis available inside organisations is one step removed from the companies setting the pace.
Danny Fortson is The Sunday Times’ West Coast correspondent in Silicon Valley and the co-host of The Times Tech Podcast, helping leadership teams read the signal in artificial intelligence and emerging technology before it becomes consensus.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Danny Fortson
- Weekly first-hand access to the founders, investors and operators setting the direction of artificial intelligence, brought into the room as reporting rather than secondhand commentary.
- A working journalist’s instinct for separating substance from hype, sharpened by 2024 Business and Finance Journalist of the Year recognition for his coverage of the Mike Lynch story.
- Nearly 400 long-form interviews with technology founders and investors, including Bill Gates, Marc Andreessen and Sir Richard Branson, which translates into hosting and moderation craft most subject experts cannot offer.
- A column-writer’s eye for narrative, used to make complex technology decisions legible to non-technical executives without flattening the detail.
Biography highlights
- West Coast correspondent for The Sunday Times, based in San Francisco since 2016.
- Co-host of The Times Tech Podcast with Katie Prescott, The Times Technology Business Editor.
- 2024 Business and Finance Journalist of the Year, UK Press Awards, for reporting on the Mike Lynch case.
- Recognised by the Society of Editors as one of Britain’s top technology journalists in five of the past seven years.
- Conceived, reported, wrote and narrated Tales of Silicon Valley, commended by the British Podcast Awards.
- Has reported from more than 25 countries across Africa, Asia, South America and Europe.
Biography
The companies driving the current wave of artificial intelligence are concentrated in a few square miles of Northern California. The decisions being made inside them, on capital, talent, model architecture and product, will reach the operating reality of organisations everywhere within a quarter. Most of what reaches a boardroom is filtered through vendors selling into the same wave.
Fortson covers that ground in person. He is The Sunday Times’ West Coast correspondent, based in San Francisco since 2016 after 13 years on Fleet Street covering technology, financial services, defence and energy. The remit is straightforward: report what the founders, investors and operators of the Valley are actually doing, weekly, in print and in conversation.
The 2024 Business and Finance Journalist of the Year award, given for his reporting on the Mike Lynch story, sits behind the journalism rather than in front of it. The Society of Editors has put him on its list of Britain’s top technology journalists in five of the last seven years. With Katie Prescott of The Times, he co-hosts The Times Tech Podcast, the successor to Danny in the Valley, where he conducted close to 400 interviews with names including Bill Gates, Marc Andreessen and Sir Richard Branson.
For organisations, the value is interpretation. Fortson reads the Valley as a beat reporter, not a consultant with a deck. He tells leadership audiences which moves to take seriously, which are sales motions dressed as inevitability, and what the people actually building the technology are quietly preparing for next.
Key speaking topics
- Artificial intelligence and the operating reality of generative AI
- Silicon Valley as an industrial system
- Innovation and disruption in incumbent industries
- Founder thinking and operating discipline at scale
- Climate technology and the next investment wave
- Future of work under AI co-pilots and autonomous agents
Ideal for
- Boards and executive committees commissioning their first serious AI strategy session
- CIO, CTO and chief data officer leadership groups stress-testing in-flight AI programmes
- Sales kick-offs, leadership offsites and customer conferences where a senior outside voice is needed
- Conference programmes that need a moderator or interviewer capable of holding the room with founders, investors or political figures
Audience outcomes
- A clearer map of which AI capabilities are operational today and which remain demo-stage
- A working sense of how founders and investors in Silicon Valley are reading the next 12 months
- Sharper questions to ask vendors, partners and internal teams about AI claims
- Specific examples of incumbents responding well, and badly, to disruption in their sector