Charlie Muirhead (born 29 May 1975) is a Scottish Australian[1] serial tech entrepreneur, investor and public speaker who has co-founded 8 companies spanning music, telecoms software, outsourcing, video streaming and social media, angel investment, artificial intelligence and business events.
In 1996 at the age of 21 Charlie founded his first company, internet software firm Orchestream,[2] which he took public 4 years later with UBS on the LSE and Nasdaq and which reached a valuation of over £1bn before being caught up in the telecoms crash.
[5] His most recent venture, CogX, is a community that brings together global leaders, the tech industry and the public to address the question, “How do we get the next 10 years right?”.
For 2023 the Festival moved to the O2 Arena and expanded to over 20,000 visitors, 500 speakers, and 10 programmes ranging from global leadership and democracy to artificial intelligence, industry transformation, the future of energy, education, life sciences, defence and ethics.
[4] He left Imperial early to work on the company full-time, though he received a note from the university stating that he could return if his business idea fell through.
[13] InterProvider supplied proprietary software and serviced interconnections to telecom operators, and Time magazine featured Muirhead as an up-and-coming entrepreneur in its coverage of the company's founding.
Early offerings included an exclusive channel run by Nelson Mandela's charity 46664, which partnered with t5m for World AIDS Day.
Content partners for the company came from a broad range of industries, from London Fashion Week to ITN Productions and The Guardian newspaper.
[21] Charlie Muirhead and Tabitha Goldstaub founded CognitionX in 2015, after identifying the need for greater clarity in the "fast-paced" and "increasingly fragmented" area of artificial intelligence.
In June 2017, CognitionX hosted the inaugural CogX, a two-day ‘Innovation Exchange’ for 1,500 delegates discussing how AI will shape the future of society.