About

Founded in 2002, Braintree is one of the most innovative and forward thinking companies in the AI space. We are in the vanguard of research and development of intelligent computing solutions.

Our solutions tackle the big challenges faced by major corporations, public service organisations, government, and individuals. We create the future, today. Across everything we do, our purpose is to make life easier and more manageable.

The need and opportunity for AI

The digital world is here. With each day that passes, our lives become a digital existence as much as a physical one.

Innovations in computing technology that just a decade ago only existed in esoteric computing laboratories now permeate daily every aspect of our personal and business lives, so much so that we simply cannot imagine modern life without them.

We are creating a new digital universe, made from galaxies of data that swirl from our devices. This universe is filled with opportunities for us to expand our influence far beyond the limitations of our physical bodies. But our expanding digital universe is growing in complexity day by day. Every aspect of our lives is now intimately linked to this digital universe. Our cities, finance, retail, and entertainment – all are becoming dependent on the generation, exchange and analysis of data. Each day that passes, our wellbeing and happiness becomes more dependent on our ability to understand and navigate through this digital universe.

At Braintree we believe that Artificial Intelligence is the solution. A digital intelligence, born of a digital universe to be our friend and guide. AI will be our companion, our digital sibling. Living on the other side of the digital looking glass, it will make the digital universe accessible to us. By doing so, it will help make both our physical and digital lives easier and more manageable.

Ideas of AI are older than computers. All our computing pioneers from Alan Turing to Claude Shannon were involved in the creation of AI. The results of decades of AI work are already integrated into everyday computers. Braintree continues the work of these computer pioneers, developing wholly new digital intelligences that assist business and society.

At its core AI is simply clever computing, where machines learn to analyse data for our benefit. AI is when computing power is used to problem solve through rational cognitive processes conducted autonomously rather than through direct human input.

Today there has never been so much demand for AI solutions in the market.

Key driving factors are:

• The growth in data generated by all sectors globally which describes every conceivable human activity and phenomenon – from what we like to buy to patterns of weather;
• The growth of high-capacity connected consumer devices, enabling data to be accessed and processed anywhere, anytime;
• The growth of the Internet of Things - connected ‘smart’ devices that generate data and enable digital control of everything around us.
• The development of the ‘cloud’, which provides cost effective, high performance computing resources (storage and processing) to everyone;
• Continuous development of new software, new hardware, and new interfaces at a pace faster than any business or user can keep up.

Pushing the AI agenda

Braintree truly believes in the potential AI holds for our society, economy, and business. We started Braintree in the UK in 2011 because we know that this country can lead on these vital technologies and really set the pace for the rest of the world.

Our goal is to ensure that AI develops in the right way so that it benefits society as a whole – and we are engaging with Government, Parliament, regulators and policy makers to ensure it does.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) can be described as a range of new technologies that are fusing the physical, digital and biological worlds, impacting all disciplines, economies and industries.

The All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) is a forum of members of the House of Commons and House of Lords, formed to support and promote the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) in Parliament. The Group will encourage Government, parliamentarians, academics, the private sector, and other stakeholders to engage with 4IR-related issues.

Braintree is a supporting member of the APPG, providing technical advice to parliamentarians on the potential of AI.

Solutions

Braintree brings together world-leading scientists from across a number of disciplines, including biological, computer sciences, psychology and software developers, to provide game changing technological solutions.

We use AI to clean, merge, analyse and visualise huge datasets at high speed. Our intelligent software identifies problems and automates solutions to help large organisations better manage their structures and operating procedures, providing revenue generating opportunities, efficiency gains, as well as the highest levels of security and safety.

Braintree’s work ranges from providing an IT infrastructure for a major oil company resulting in increased profitability of millions, to automated analysis of sentiment in news articles for political campaigns, to research into higher order cognition by combining neural networks with graph databases.

12/06/2017 Prioritise Me!

Braintree sponsored the Prioritise me! Side-effects of online content delivery" workshop organised by the Knowledge 4 All Foundation (K4A). K4A is a distributed institute based in London, with two main streams of activities, on one side pioneering Machine Learning methods of pattern analysis, statistical modeling, and computational learning and on the other transform these into technologies for large scale applications in Open Education. The workshop focusses on the problem of bubbles and echo-chambers and new approaches to content prioritisation for on-line media.

13/04/2017 Robots that can learn

CTO Dr Peter Bentley wrote a 6-page article about AI which appeared in the BBC Focus magazine issue May 2017.

20/03/2017 The Creation of Employment Opportunities from AI

In his second article, Braintree CTO Peter Bentley discusses how Artificial Intelligence is helping to create new jobs for the future.

Bentley, P.J. (2017). The Creation of Employment Opportunities from Artificial Intelligence. Braintree Insight Report BIR-02.

Download insight report

01/02/2017 The Three Laws of AI

In the first of a series of articles, Braintree CTO Peter Bentley dispels common myths in AI by introducing his Three Laws. These fundamental truths explain why AIs will not get out of control and choose to make themselves superintelligent, why it takes more than lots of computer resources to make intelligence, and why the exponential speed up of computers will not provide a short-cut to cleverer AIs.

Bentley, P.J. (2017). The Three Laws of Artificial Intelligence. Dispelling Common Myths of AI. Braintree Insight Report BIR-01.

Download insight report

29/08/2016 New Journal Paper

CTO Peter Bentley and Chief Data Scientist Soo Ling Lim have just published a research paper on the topic of agent-based modelling of App Stores in IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, a prestigious journal in the field of AI:

Lim S. L., Bentley P. J., and Ishikawa F. (2016). The Effects of Developer Dynamics on Fitness in an Evolutionary Ecosystem Model of the App Store. IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation (TEVC): 20(4), pp. 529–545.

The research was conducted in collaboration with National Institute of Informatics, the leading research institution in Japan.

Download paper

A high res version of the poster can be found here.

04/07/2016 Braintree @ ALife XV

The Braintree team presented our work the 15th International Conference on the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems. Our paper won 3rd Prize in the Best Poster Award.

A high res version of the poster can be found here.

18/06/2016 Learning Abstract Concept Video

30 second video summarising the research paper Higher Order Cognition using Computers: Learning Abstract Concepts with Recursive Graph-based Self Organising Maps. The video will be shown in the ALife XV conference in Cancun, Mexico.

30/03/2016 New Research Paper

New research paper to be presented at major International Conference:

Bentley, P. J., Kurashov, A. and Lim, S. L.(2016). Higher Order Cognition using Computers: Learning Abstract Concepts with Recursive Graph-based Self Organizing Maps. In Proc. of the Fifteenth International Conference on the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems (Alife XV), pp. 398-405, July 4-8 2016, Cancun, Mexico.

Download paper

20/06/2017 CogX London 2017

CTO Dr Peter Bentley was on the The Impact of AI on Design, Manufacturing, & Robotics panel at CogX. CogX is an inaugural event run by CognitionX, in association with The Alan Turing Institute, bringing together business leaders, government officials and leading academics through talks, panels and breakout sessions.

Visit the event page.

26/05/2017 Podcast for Financial Times

CTO Dr Peter Bentley was interviewed for the FT Tech Tonic podcast about the limits of artificial intelligence.

Listen to the podcast.

26/05/2017 Quote for Institute of Mechanical Engineers

CTO Dr Peter Bentley comments that the best placed industries for AI are those with good automation and monitoring already in place so that the AI technologies can use the data in order to optimise and improve the processes.

Read article.

19/05/2017 AI in the Year 2040

CTO Dr Peter Bentley gave a Talking Science lecture to the general public at the Daresbury Laboratory in Warrington. In the talk, Peter returns from the year 2040 and tells us what it is like in the future. He explains how computers with Artificial Intelligence help us in many aspects of our lives, from self-driving cars, to robot teachers, to personal assistants in our homes. He also shows some of the problems that people have faced with the AIs and how human society has changed in response.

Visit event page.

24/02/2017 Article in CityAM

Braintree has been mentioned in an article in the popular London business newspaper CityAM.

22/02/2017 Artificial Intelligence: Fact or Fiction

Braintree hosted an exclusive dinner briefing for key journalists, politicians and business people on the topic of Artificial Intelligence, at the Churchill War Rooms. Braintree founder Nikolay Gurianov and CTO Peter Bentley discussed the positive impact of AI on society and debunked some popular myths.

14/02/2017 Interview on Euronews

Braintree CTO Peter Bentley has been interviewed for a story about implanting chips into humans.

11/02/2017 Panel Discussion at Mathscon

Braintree CTO Peter Bentley took part in a panel discussion "Will machines ever out-think us?" at Mathscon (a conference on mathematics attended by several hundred maths students from across the UK). The hour-long discussion about all things AI was broadcast live.

21/12/2016 Interview on ITV News at Ten

Braintree CTO Dr Peter Bentley has been interviewed as AI expert on ITV News at Ten about Mark Zuckerberg's AI Assistant Jarvis.

Watch the video

22/09/2016 Coutts AI Club Dinner

Braintree was the principal AI company attending the AI Club Dinner organised by Coutts on the 22nd of September 2016. The dinner, which was co-sponsored by the International and Private Office client groups at Coutts, was a lively and stimulating event between entrepreneurs and investors, which has led to some exciting new opportunities.

15/09/2016 AI Autopilot in The Economist

CTO Dr Peter Bentley and research student Haitham Baomar have developed an intelligent autopilot system that uses machine learning to cope with various in-flight mishaps, from losing engine power to extreme turbulence or blinding hail.

Read the article

07/09/2016 Interview on Inside Science

Dr Peter Bentley, CTO of Braintree, has been interviewed by Inside Science about artificial intelligence.

Watch the video

05/07/2016 Interview on BBC World Service "Click"

Dr Peter Bentley, CTO of Braintree, has been interviewed by the BBC about Braintree's research on learning abstract concepts with recursive graph-based self organising maps.

Listen to the interview here. Peter's interview begins after about 6.5 mins. There are also some hidden extras featuring Peter at the end of the podcast accompanying the show.

10/12/2015 Relax, It’s only AI

On 10 December 2015, Dr Peter Bentley, the distinguished computer scientist and author, joined the Directors of Braintree to host a presentation on AI before an audience of leaders from business, government, and the media.

The era of AI has already arrived and is transforming society. Yet it has barely begun. RELAX, IT’S ONLY AI allayed the fears that this fast-growing and important field of technological and scientific discovery has invoked.

It showed how the building blocks of AI, represented by ever greater computer power and highly complex algorithms, can, when applied to almost unimaginably large volumes of data, bring about revolutionary benefits both to humanity and the planet.

When: 3.30pm, 10 December 2015
Where: Faraday Theatre, The Royal Institution, 21 Albemarle Street, London W1S 4BS

Listen to the event (1:13:59)

Leadership

The Braintree team is exceptionally talented, with expertise spanning computer science, design and software development.

The business is led by two leading figures - founder and international businessman Nikolay Gurianov and Dr Peter Bentley, a pre-eminent computer scientist in the research and development of innovative AI methods. Their shared vision is to become a global leader in creating positive change in business and society through the application of the power of sophisticated artificial intelligence. They bring together an extensive track record of entrepreneurship, computer science, creating intelligent systems for large corporations, and leading-edge R&D in the AI space.

Nikolay Gurianov Chief Business Development Officer

In 2002, Nikolay, who had already developed several successful businesses in Moscow, realised that any future business success would be related to big data and set up a research company to explore the synchronization of huge databases. Just two years later, he had his first major result, which led to further research into the nature of intelligence in order to build knowledge.

Braintree was formed in 2008 and by 2010 the company was purely focused on AI. Nikolay set up a subsidiary in London in 2011, and moved there in 2014 as he recognised the need for better access to networks and co-operation with partners in order to grow the company globally. He met Dr Peter Bentley in 2014 and they became business partners.

Dr Peter J Bentley Chief Technology Officer

Dr Peter J Bentley is Chief Technology Officer at Braintree. Peter is a leading computer scientist, author, researcher, expert media commentator and international public speaker with more than 20 years experience. He is Honorary Professor and Teaching Fellow at the Department of Computer Science at University College London (UCL), where he runs the Digital Biology Group, reflecting his interest in the investigation of how natural systems compute information, and nature-inspired computation. Peter’s research group is now based at Braintree Ltd, where he supervises UCL PhD students and helps forge strong links between UCL and Braintree.

Core Team

Dr Soo Ling Lim Chief Data Scientist

Alexander Kurashov Chief Knowledge Engineer

Alexandra Gurianova Marketing & Design