Mike Butcher

Mike Butcher

Editor At Large

Mike Butcher MBE is Editor-at-large of TechCrunch.

As a writer, editor, interviewer, moderator and columnist in the tech media world he covers everything the smallest tech startups and the largest tech giants. Lately, he’s been writing a lot about Blockchain and Crypto.

Mike has been named one of the most influential people in European technology by various newspaper and magazines. He founded The Europas Awards, the non-profit Techfugees and has advised the UK government on tech startup policy. He was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list 2016 for services to the UK technology industry and journalism.

As well as being a long-time Writer, Broadcaster and Editor Mike is also co-founder of TechHub.com, a project to merge a thriving community with office space for fast-moving startups; co-founder of the UK’s Coadec.com lobbyist for startups; the non-profit TechVets for UK military veterans, and the UK event series ThePathfounder.com.

Mike has written for UK national newspapers and magazines including The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The New Statesman. He is a former editor of New Media Age magazine, the leading new media weekly in the UK, and the European edition of The Industry Standard magazine.

In 2000 he was nominated as NetMedia’s European Internet Journalist of the Year. In 2004 he was voted ‘One of the 100 Innovators of the UK Internet Decade’ by GfK NOP, the fourth-largest custom research business in the world. In July 2008 he was put at No. 47 out of the Top 100 people in London’s creative industry by The Independent newspaper and The Hospital Club. In August 2008 TechCrunch Europe was awarded the best “Web 2.0 and business blog” in the UK, by the readers of Computer Weekly magazine. In 2009 it was named as one of the Top 10 blogs out of the UK. Also in 2009 Mike was named one of the Top 10 bloggers on Twitter in the UK. In October 2009 he was named one of the Top 50 most influential Britons in technology by The Daily Telegraph. In April 2010 he was in Wired UK’s Top 100 influencer list, in 2011, in 2012, (there was no Top 100 list in 2013), in 2014 and again in 2015. In April 2010 TechCrunch Europe was shortlisted in the Specialist Digital Publisher category of the prestigious UK-based Association of Online Publishers’ Digital Publishing Awards. In November 2010 he was named as one of London’s most influential people in New Media and “king of dotcom commentators” by The Evening Standard Newspaper. He has been listed as one of the Top 100 most influential people on Twitter in the UK. He was named in the TechNation200 Almanac. He has been named as one of “The 100 coolest people in UK tech” by Business Insider. He was named in the “Smith & Williamson Power 100”. In 2016 British GQ magazine named him one of the 100 Most Connected Men in the UK. He has spoken at the prestigious World Economic Forum, the Monaco Media Forum, Le Web, Web Summit and DLD among many other conferences. Mike is a regular commentator on the technology business, appearing on BBC News, Sky News, CNBC, Channel 4, Al Jazeera and Bloomberg. Mike has advised the UK Prime Minister on tech startups, served on the Mayor of London’s Digital Advisory Board, the ‘Smart London’ Board and been a Technology Ambassador for London. He was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list 2016 for services to the UK technology industry and journalism. Mike’s personal blog is mbites.com, while he Tweets as @mikebutcher.

He owns shares in ETFs, shares in Verizon via employee stock grants and small amounts of various cryptocurrencies. More info: http://mbites.com/contact

The Latest from Mike Butcher

Potential new treatment for COVID-19 uncovered by BenevolentAI enters trials

Mike Butcher
BenevolentAI, a startup which has raised $292 million to apply AI to create drugs faster, today says it has uncovered an already approved drug as a potential treatment for COVID-19, after it applied i

Facebook to supply free Portals to some care home residents under NHS scheme

Mike Butcher
The U.K. government is pulling in tech firms to connect family and friends with isolated residents and patients in care via video call devices and services during the COVID-19 crisis. First to join is

Builder.ai launches pre-packaged apps for small businesses hit by COVID-19

Mike Butcher
Last year Builder.ai raised one of Europe’s largest Series A investments at $29.5 million, led by Lakestar and Jungle Ventures, with participation from SoftBank’s DeepCore. The company’s platfor

COVID-hit UK startups cry out for help, as UK gov trails Europe in its response

Mike Butcher
The UK government is reportedly looking at a range of options to support the startup industry, possibly involving a co-investment model involving state-owned funds (via the British Business Bank) and

Germany’s Xpension pension platform raises €25M in a Series C growth round

Mike Butcher
The German pension and insurance industry was a laggard in the world of online a few years ago, but in recent times it has quickly caught up. There’s further evidence of this trend with the news tha

Valispace raises $2.4M to become the ‘Github for hardware’, joins fight against COVID-19

Mike Butcher
Hardware engineering is mostly document-based. A typical satellite might be described in several hundred thousand PDF documents, spreadsheets, simulation files and more; all potentially inconsistent b

VR chair startup raises funds, as pandemic boosts prospects for VR and gaming

Mike Butcher
Roto VR, startup which markets an interactive, ‘360 degree’ chair, has raised £1.5 million in a funding round led by Pembroke VCT. Others in the round include TVB Growth Fund, managed by

Pre-school edtech startup Lingumi raises £4m, adds some free services during COVID-19

Mike Butcher
At these difficult times, parents are concerned for their children’s education, especially given so much of it has had to go online during the COVID-19 pandemic. But what about pre-schoolers who are

UK tech industry forms Code4COVID.org to fight the Coronavirus crisis

Mike Butcher
A coalition of grassroots UK tech initiatives has come together to co-ordinate the key groups of tech industry people supporting the UK’s response to the Coronavirus. COVID19 Tech Response (CTR) aim

UK’s National Health Service launches £500,000 COVID-19 tech competition

Mike Butcher
The innovation arm of the UK’s National Health Service, NHSx has launched a £500,000 funding competition for innovators and startups who can find digital ways to support people in need during the c

LetsBeatCOVID.net launches to track the spread of the Coronavirus in the UK/US

Mike Butcher
A startup behind one of the world’s most successful tech platforms for doctors has launched a new initiative to try and track the spread of the Coronavirus, initially in the UK but soon in the US. D

Here’s a wrap of the main tech-related coronavirus news in the last 24 hours

Mike Butcher
Much of the world is waking up to a strange new reality. As the coronavirus strain, COVID-19, swept across the planet, today may go down in history as the day when huge numbers of countries were large

Refurbished electronics startup Refurbed raises $17M round, led by Evli Growth Partners

Mike Butcher
Renewed phones, laptops and tablets can be as much as 40% cheaper than their brand new cousins, working equally as well and, because they have been saved from the scrapheap, are therefore a great deal

Insurtech startup Akur8 raises $8.9M from BlackFin and MTech Capital

Mike Butcher
Far from replacing humans, Artificial Intelligence is actually coming to the aid of a very old profession that has fallen out of fashion to such an extent that people are increasingly not joining it.

XYZ Reality secures £5M to bring a hologram headset to the construction industry

Mike Butcher
Augmented reality technology did not, it turns out, light the touch paper on a booming new industry. What we got instead were a few cute applications on smartphones and devices like Microsoft’s Holo

Insurance AI startup Synthesized raises $2.8M from IQ Capital and Mundi Ventures

Mike Butcher
The insurance industry depends on data to support a number of functions the average person in the street is usually completely unaware of, such as “informed risk selection,” underwriting and c

Ada Health built an AI-driven startup by moving slowly and not breaking things

Mike Butcher
When Ada Health was founded nine years ago, hardly anyone was talking about combining artificial intelligence and physician care — outside of a handful of futurists. But the chatbot boom gave way to

Frontline Ventures raises new $80M fund focused on bringing US firms to Europe

Mike Butcher
Frontline Ventures, based in Dublin and London, has announced a new $80 million fund designed to assist U.S. tech companies expanding into Europe. The new Frontline X fund — which means the firm now

Could lessons from the challenger bank revolution kick-start innovation on the climate crisis?

Mike Butcher
Now that the world is swimming in data we may be able to address the climate and environmental risks to the planet. But while there is plenty of capital to invest in things like ClimateTech, a lot of

Google, Toyota Tsusho invest in WhereIsMyTransport to map transport in emerging cities

Mike Butcher
In emerging markets, up to 80% of the population may have to rely on informally-run public transport to get around. Literally, privately-run buses and cars. But journey-planning apps that work well fo
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