This week's show features Salvatore DiMaggio from KPMG, alongside the Tech Innovators East of England’s competition winners Gwen Wyatt Moon (Prospectral) and runner-up Tim Smeda (Hypergen).

Prospectral is transforming industrial computer vision by bringing material inference to production lines in real-time - they've already secured paid pilots with Rio Tinto and the Singapore government.

Hypergen is solving a different problem entirely, making micro gas turbines viable for industrial power generation by running them 300-400°C hotter than competitors.

Both founders credit Cambridge and Cranfield's startup ecosystems with accelerating their learning curves. Key takeaways:

• Accelerators work best for mentorship and training, not just capital
• University connections unlock validation resources (Hypergen used Cranfield's Innovation Voucher to validate their concept)
• The ecosystem is bidirectional - founders benefit from and contribute back to their communities

What Happens Next

• Prospectral is closing a £3.3M funding round and hiring business development talent who understands camera ecosystems.
• Hypergen is securing corporate manufacturing partnerships to avoid capital-heavy production and hiring electronics engineers before their pilot launch by year-end.
• The competition itself continues to the London final where Gwen will pitch again, and the UK winner advancing to the global KPMG Tech Innovator event in Portugal in November.

Headline sponsor Holden Polestar

Produced by Cambridge TV

#CamTechPod

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The long-awaited on-the-road-in-a-Polestar episode is finally here! Tune in as normal - but this time, check out our YouTube channel - there's video too.

We took you behind the scenes of CWOD:

Prashant Shah opens the day with us, navigating the Cambridge innovation landscape as we drive through the city. He also reveals the launch of the Cambridge Stock Exchange - find out more about Pisces on their LinkedIn page.

Martin Frohock (Aveva) tells us about the development of 101 Cambridge Science Park as their new global HQ. Who knew Aveva was the first spinout from the University of Cambridge?

David Roach explains why Allia gets involved in CWOD, showcasing their tenants to the wider community. Including a catch-up with Hayden Salway (Clarity Sensors) on their progress since The Trinity Bradfield Prize, and Tim Hill (Orca Scan) updates us on their impressive growth.

Jonathan Goodacre (Keltie) rounds things out - he was involved in all five days of CWOD and is a great demonstration of how the broader ecosystem supports innovation.

And there’s a little more insight into your co-hosts too

Listen (and watch) now on all major platforms.

Headline sponsor Holden Polestar – The car! The car!

Produced by Cambridge TV

#CamTechPod

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Cambridge Tech Podcast, we sit down with Dan Thorp, CEO of Cambridge Ahead, to dig into the freshly published Cambridge Economic Overview (CamEO) Report - and the picture is more complicated than the headlines suggest.

The positives are real: 281 equity deals between 2020–2024 (the highest of any UK location outside London), three of the five biggest UK biotech VC deals in Q1 2026 from Cambridge companies, and meaningful government commitments - the Development Corporation, and the AI Hardware plan featuring ARM and Common AI.

But the data has a sting. New company formation has dropped nearly 50% - from an average of 1,129 companies a year (2013–2019) to just 620 in 2024–2025. Knowledge-intensive employment recorded its first annual decline since Cambridge Ahead began tracking in 2011. And businesses are increasingly citing access to scaling capital - not just talent, housing, and transport - as a real constraint.

What makes the CamEO distinctive is its insistence that success shouldn't be measured in GDP alone. Housing access, employment pathways, and mental health support for young people matter too. Programmes like Form the Future and Included are doing important work - but need sustained, coordinated funding to deliver at scale.

Dan's bottom line? "There is no other place quite like Cambridge to innovate and to scale tech companies." The fundamentals hold.

🎧 Listen now on all major platforms.

Headline sponsor Holden Polestar

Produced by Cambridge TV

#CamTechPod

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.