Day 2 Mainstage Highlights

Building for the Agent Era: Adapting Snyk and Tessl for a New Age

Guy Podjarny, Founder & CEO at Tessl - (Ex-Founder & CEO, Snyk)

The rise of AI agents is fundamentally reshaping how software is built, deployed and secured. In this session, Guy Podjarny, Founder of Snyk and Tessl, explores what it means to design technology for an agent-driven world — where autonomy, speed and scale redefine traditional development models. Drawing on his experience building and evolving two category-defining companies, Guy shared how Snyk and Tessl are adapting their platforms, cultures and architectures to meet the demands of this new era. 

Silence in the Breach: The Leadership Crisis Undermining Cybersecurity

Sarah Armstrong-Smith, Former Chief Security Advisor - Microsoft

Sarah Armstrong-Smith challenges the industry’s long-held narrative that employees are the ‘weakest link’. She exposes how blame culture, ineffective leadership, and fear of speaking up create the perfect conditions for attackers to thrive.

This keynote delivered an uncomfortable truth: psychological safety is now a front-line defence. Resilience isn’t built through fear, blame, or compliance, but through courage, conviction, and leaders who inspire people to follow them not because they have to, but because they want to.

No One Solves This Alone: Scaling the Digital Economy Through Skills, Platforms and Partnerships

Sasha Qadri, Presenter & Former News Anchor

Susan Bowen, CEO - Digital Catapult

Anna Brailsford, CEO - CodeFirstGirls

Guy Podjarny, Founder & CEO at Tessl - (Ex-Founder and CEO, Snyk)

This panel brought together leaders from global technology, digital skills and innovation ecosystems to explore why collaboration has become essential to success in the digital economy. From developing the right skills and choosing the right platforms, to building trusted partnerships across sectors, our panellists will share practical lessons on what effective collaboration really looks like, where it often fails, and what leaders must do differently over the next 12–15 months to drive sustainable growth.

Putting AI To Work

Piers Linney MBE, Co-Founder & Executive Chairman - Implement AI

AI is moving from pilots to production as agents become a second workforce inside modern organisations. In this keynote, Piers Linney explains what that actually looks like in practice. Not theory. Not hype. Real deployment.

Drawing on work with SMEs through to FTSE-100 organisations, Piers shows how AI agents are already running sales, support, operations and analysis at scale. They work 24/7, integrate into existing systems, and deliver measurable ROI in weeks, not years.  He covered where AI genuinely creates value, where it does not, how to move beyond pilots and board decks, and how to deploy AI as operational infrastructure rather than experimental tooling.

The New Rules of Scale: How the U.S. Is Rewriting the Data Centre Playbook

Mark Gusakov, CEO - Digital Infrastructure Alliance

Anahita Moura, Global Leader, Google Data Centre - Field and Reliability Quality - Google

Jeff Ivey, VP Data Centre Construction - Crusoe

Buddy Rizer, Executive Director - Loudoun Country Department of Economic Development

Adrian Mountstephens, Financial Services, Market Development Director & Disability ERG Leader - Equinix

Cliff Grossner, Ph.D, Chief Innovation Officer - Open Compute Project Foundation

A never-before-seen panel bringing together leading voices from the US data centre market — where hyperscale ambition, AI demand, power constraints and sustainability collide. From Silicon Valley to Virginia, the US is rewriting the global playbook for digital infrastructure at speed and scale. What can the UK and Europe learn? Where do we diverge? And who’s setting the pace for the AI era? Join this powerhouse panel as they reveal how the US is solving for land, power, latency, and carbon — and what’s coming next. Hear unfiltered insights, bold predictions, and lessons from the edge of innovation. This is the Mainstage finale built to leave you thinking bigger, faster, and greener.