Cambridge Tech Week unveils deep tech agenda for 2026

Cambridge Tech Week has unveiled the full agenda for its 2026 edition, featuring more than 100 speakers over five days.

The event will centre on the theme "How Deep Tech Changes the World", examining areas including artificial intelligence, quantum, semiconductors, health technology and defence-related innovation.

Organisers have structured the programme around questions of control, funding, infrastructure and regulation, rather than product showcases alone. The line-up brings together entrepreneurs, investors, policymakers and researchers from Cambridge and beyond.

Headline speakers include Kenneth Mulvany, Founder and Executive Director & Chair of BenevolentAI, and author Calum Chace. Other speakers include Sir Peter Knight, Professor Harald Haas, Sherry Coutu CBE, Dr Christina Yan Zhang, Mark Slack, Suranga Chandratillake, Tom Diethe and Karen Yu.

The opening day, Showcase Cambridge, will focus on the local technology ecosystem and its position in international competition. Phil O'Donovan, Co-Founder of Cambridge Silicon Radio, is set to deliver the keynote.

The second day, billed as Visionary Tech Day, will turn to the technologies and infrastructure that may shape the next decade. A headline panel titled "How Deep Tech Changes the World" will be chaired by Suhair Khan, while Lucy Yu, Chief Executive Officer of Centre for Net Zero within Octopus Energy Group, will lead discussion on the role of AI, compute, connectivity and infrastructure.

Professor Haas, known for his work on LiFi, is due to appear in a discussion on building the next generation of deep tech platforms. Dame Hayaatun Sillem, former Chief Executive Officer of the Royal Academy of Engineering, will chair the session.

Kenneth Mulvany is scheduled to deliver a closing keynote on "Intelligence as Infrastructure". Tim Fowler, Chief Commercial Officer at Cambridge Consultants, is also listed as a keynote speaker.

Scaleup Focus

The midweek programme turns to one of the most familiar questions in British technology policy: why strong research and early-stage company formation have not consistently produced large, globally dominant technology businesses.

That debate will feature Suranga Chandratillake, General Partner at Balderton Capital and Founder of blinkx, alongside Tom Adeyoola, Executive Chair of Innovate UK. Calum Chace is also scheduled for a fireside chat on artificial intelligence and artificial general intelligence.

The agenda suggests organisers want to place commercialisation alongside invention as a core issue for the sector, reflecting wider pressure on the UK to convert its research base into sustained industrial growth.

Innovation Alley, a showcase area for technology companies, will run across parts of the week. Sponsors for that section include HMGCC and Amazon Web Services.

Simon Fabri, Chief Executive Officer of HMGCC, said in a supplied statement: "This will be HMGCC's first time at Cambridge Tech Week, and we are thrilled to be taking part. The city of Cambridge has long been associated with so much amazing tech innovation, within both industry and academia. I think this will be an event rich in technological discovery. I look forward to meeting many incredible innovators and exploring how they could work with HMGCC in the future, using the best technology to keep the UK safe."

Sector Debates

The fourth day splits into specialist tracks on medtech and health tech, and quantum and AI. Both are areas where Cambridge has built a strong academic and commercial presence.

The health programme will open with a keynote from Professor Shafi Ahmed, Consultant Surgeon and Senior Partner at Purpose Tech Capital. Sessions are expected to focus on the challenge of applying new medical technologies within large and complex healthcare systems.

The quantum and AI strand will examine whether two heavily discussed technologies are ready to produce industrial returns rather than remain at proof-of-concept stage. Sir Peter Knight, Chair of the Strategic Advisory Board of the UK National Quantum Technology Programme, is among those due to take part.

A separate debate will look at dual-use technology and the increasingly blurred boundary between civilian and defence applications. The topic has become more prominent as private companies play a larger role in fields such as drones, AI and advanced computing.

The speaker list also includes Anna Knack of the Alan Turing Institute, Teemu Turunen of the Finnish Embassy in London, Daanish Masood Alavi of Cygnus X-1, Debbie Toms of Cusp.ai, Dr Carina Kern of LinkGevity and Sara Duodu of techUK.

Cambridge has long occupied a distinct place in the UK technology economy because of the concentration of university research, venture-backed start-ups and specialist engineering companies around the city. The agenda indicates that this year's event will lean heavily into the political and commercial questions behind scientific progress.

Those questions are likely to resonate beyond the local cluster. Issues such as sovereign AI, funding compute infrastructure, the route from laboratory work to commercial deployment, and the role of defence demand in shaping innovation are becoming central to technology policy in Britain and Europe.

The programme also points to a broader definition of deep tech than in earlier years, combining frontier computing, telecoms, life sciences and industrial applications in a single forum. That framing mirrors the way investors and governments increasingly treat digital systems, energy, biology and security as linked strategic domains.

More than 100 technology leaders are set to take part across the five-day programme.