Piers Linney
Most boards have approved an AI strategy and almost none have shipped one. Pilots multiply, vendor decks accumulate, and the operating model stays the same. The pressure now is not to talk about AI but to redesign teams around it before competitors do.
Piers Linney is a technology entrepreneur, former Dragons’ Den investor and co-founder of Implement AI who helps boards move AI from pilot to deployed digital workforce.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Piers Linney
- He is running an AI-agent business while he speaks about one. Implement AI has rolled out managed digital workforces inside more than 120 UK companies, so the deployment patterns he describes are ones he is shipping.
- His finance and policy lens is unusual for an AI speaker. Former Non-Executive Director of the British Business Bank during the GBP 90 billion Covid loan programmes, with prior careers in M&A at Credit Suisse and venture capital.
- He has been on both sides of the cap table. Co-CEO of Outsourcery through AIM listing and administration, then Dragon on BBC Two’s Dragons’ Den, then investor and co-founder again.
- He is a credible voice on diversity and social mobility without using the word as a slogan. MBE 2026, European Diversity Champion 2024, founding trustee of the Powerlist Foundation.
- He works on stage in the register a senior buyer needs: operator, not analyst. Mainstage keynotes at Tech Show London, AI and Big Data World, DTX, ICAEW and Elite Business Live.
Biography highlights
- Co-founder and Executive Chairman, Implement AI, winner of AI Startup of the Year (London), UK Startup Awards 2025.
- Investor on BBC Two’s Dragons’ Den, series 11 and 12, and subject of Channel 4’s The Secret Millionaire.
- Former Non-Executive Director, British Business Bank, appointed 2017.
- MBE, King’s New Year Honours 2026, for services to small business, entrepreneurship, banking, diversity and social mobility.
- Chairman and co-founder, Atherton Bikes, additive-manufactured mountain bikes used to win the 2023 UCI Downhill World Championships.
- Former Co-CEO of Outsourcery (AIM-listed cloud and communications business) and former Trustee of Nesta.
Biography
Implement AI now runs managed digital workforces inside more than 120 UK businesses, from manufacturers to marketing agencies. It is the latest company built by Piers Linney, who co-founded it in 2023 with Dr Aalok Shukla and serves as Executive Chairman. The work sits at the practical edge of the AI conversation: not whether to use it, but how to get agents into the operating model and measure what they return.
That operator stance is reinforced by an unusually wide finance and policy track record. Linney trained as a solicitor at SJ Berwin, moved into M&A investment banking at Credit Suisse, then ran the buyout that became Outsourcery, taking the cloud and communications business onto AIM in 2013 in a GBP 13 million flotation. He was later appointed Non-Executive Director of the British Business Bank, where he sat through the design of the UK government’s Covid SME loan programmes.
Audiences know him from Dragons’ Den, where he invested as a Dragon for series 11 and 12, and from Channel 4’s The Secret Millionaire. He chairs Atherton Bikes, the additive-manufactured mountain bike maker whose frames carried Atherton siblings to UCI Downhill World Championship titles in 2023. He sits on Sky’s Diversity Advisory Council and was a founding trustee of the Powerlist Foundation.
The MBE in the 2026 New Year Honours captured the through-line: small business, entrepreneurship, banking, diversity and social mobility. For boards trying to convert AI ambition into deployed capability, the value he brings is the rare combination of someone who has built and sold a tech business, sat on the board of a development bank, picked winners on national television, and is now shipping an AI-agent platform.
Key speaking topics
- Artificial intelligence and the digital workforce
- AI agent deployment and operating model redesign
- Entrepreneurship and scaling technology businesses
- Future of work and workforce transformation
- Access to capital and SME financing
- Diversity, social mobility and inclusion in business
Ideal for
- Boards and executive committees moving from AI pilots to deployed agent capability.
- CEOs, COOs and transformation leads redesigning operations around digital workers.
- Entrepreneur and scale-up audiences, including investor networks and chamber of commerce events.
- CHROs and learning leaders preparing workforces for AI-augmented roles.
Audience outcomes
- A working picture of what an AI-agent operating model looks like, with concrete examples from live deployments.
- Sharper questions for vendors, internal teams and investors about where AI does and does not pay back.
- A perspective on the capital environment shaping technology investment, drawn from a former development-bank director.
- Confidence in framing AI as an operating decision, not an IT project.
Talks
A keynote on how to convert AI ambition into a working digital workforce, drawing on Implement AI deployments across more than 120 UK businesses.
Key takeaways:
- How to identify the first roles to give to AI agents and what to keep human.
- What an AI Operating System looks like in practice across sales, support and analysis.
- The board-level questions that separate substantive AI strategies from theatre.
The career arc of an investor and operator who has built, listed, lost and restarted technology companies, and what that teaches a leadership team about AI.
Key takeaways:
- Lessons from inside the Den on what makes a venture investable.
- Why most AI projects stall and what changes when leadership treats agents as workforce, not software.
- A practical view of capital, governance and risk from a former British Business Bank director.