We’re very happy to share that Simon Bouton, Chief Experience Officer at Google DeepMind, has joined our board as our first AI Non-Executive Director. We believe that artificial intelligence has evolved from a technology initiative into a board-level responsibility.
Simon’s role will be that of strategic adviser to our board and leadership team on AI strategy, governance, and product-market fit for AI-enabled products and services.
We have an important role to play as a studio that has spent the last decade applying machine learning and AI across healthcare, financial services, consumer products, and enterprise environments. From partnering with Mustafa Suleyman to launch Pi, to applying conversational AI to RVO Health’s smoking cessation programme, Hope, to designing clinical products for Fresenius Medical Care, our work has shown us what it takes to utilise AI across products, services, and teams. With organisations from the Global 500 including UBS, HSBC, and L’Oréal, we’ve helped to transform how businesses work with AI adoption. This alongside recent initiatives like our partnership with the University of Bristol on PRSIM, an open-source IDE plug-in that gives software developers directional guidance on the environmental impact of their AI usage.
Simon’s appointment brings us independent challenge and strengthens how we think about governance, capability, risk, and value creation across the studio.
Sue Siddall, Chair of ustwo’s board, said: “We’re thrilled to welcome Simon Bouton to the board. His tenure at Google DeepMind, one of the world leaders in artificial intelligence research, gives him a rare vantage point on where AI is actually heading, informed by valuable earned experience, outside the distraction of hype. Having that expertise on the board will be a critical driver for the next chapter for ustwo, one where we’re just as disciplined about measuring outcomes for clients as we are about the technology itself.”
Simon has spent more than 10 years working alongside Google DeepMind and Isomorphic Labs. He was involved in the early origins of AlphaFold, DeepMind’s protein-structure-prediction system, which went on to reshape structural biology and win a Nobel Prize. More recently, he has led DeepMind’s collaboration with Stanford’s Human-Centred AI Institute, studying how AI is changing organisational coordination and decision-making.
AI is already changing the briefs we see, the products we design, and the organisations we work with.
Nicki Sprinz, ustwo’s CEO, said: “We build digital experiences people stick with. That’s been true for more than 20 years and it’ll be true when the current AI conversation has moved on to whatever comes next. Simon’s appointment is how we make sure any work with AI stays anchored to lasting value for customers, businesses and society. In a market where product development is increasingly commoditised, the studios that last will be the ones whose AI work is built to endure, not just built to ship.”
This is why Simon’s perspective is valuable to us. He brings first-hand experience of AI at the edge of scientific research, product development, organisational change, and public responsibility.
As Simon put it: “I’ve worked alongside the ustwo team since 2013, and what’s stayed consistent across all those years is their refusal to treat responsibility and ambition as trade-offs. The work itself is being reimagined right now, not just the tools we use, and having spent my career on the frontier of that shift, I’m less interested in what AI can do today than in what it means for how we’ll all work two years from now. I’m looking forward to bringing that same scrutiny to the board table.”
Simon joins us at a moment of momentum for us. We’re expanding in North and Latin America, have grown our AI and technology leadership with the appointment of Nayan Jain as Executive Director of AI and elevation of Nick Hegarty to Executive Director of Technology, investing in new tools and proof of concepts, and working with clients on increasingly complex product challenges. Simon’s appointment gives us an even larger scope to keep building the next chapter of the studio with technical depth and ambition.