Swiftkey Makes UK Graduates Millionaires

Young Brits who invented “robot” keyboard are set to become multi-millionaires after Microsoft buys their company.

17:53 04 February 2016

Two tech-savvy Brits who developed a “robot” keyboard has sold their company to Microsoft in a cool £174 million deal.

 

Jon Reynolds and Dr Ben Medlock, who both graduated from Cambridge University, quit their jobs to work on Swiftkey, a predictive keyboard powered by artificial intelligence.

 

The duo also worked with Professor Stephen Hawking in upgrading his communications, applying predictive language software to his system.

 

Jon and Ben said in a statement: "We're excited to announce an important milestone on SwiftKey's journey. As of today, we have agreed to join the Microsoft family."

 

Microsoft's executive vice president of technology and research, Harry Shum, said: "We love SwiftKey's technology and we love the team that Jon and Ben have formed.

 

"That's why today I'm excited to welcome the company's employees to Microsoft. We believe that together we can achieve orders of magnitude greater scale than either of us could have achieved independently."

 

SwiftKey is now being used on 300 million devices everyday and has topped the download rankings in 47 countries. The app was named Best Startup Business at the 2012 Guardian Innovation Awards and was in third place in the Sunday Times Hiscox Tech Track 100 – a list of Britain’s best private technology companies in 2014.