During his state visit to the United States, King Charles III convened a meeting with six of America's top tech executives at the Blair House in Washington, D.C. The guest list included Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Apple CEO Tim Cook, AMD CEO Lisa Su, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, and Alphabet president Ruth Porat. The topic at hand? The struggle for university spinout startups in the UK to secure funding.
Charles described these founders as "always the hardest to get started — they fall into that terrible valley of death." Huang replied that there are massive opportunities in AI and quantum robotics, but the UK needs a more vibrant venture capital and startup culture — a sentiment reinforced by a recent TIME ranking of the most influential AI companies. Charles then quipped, "You're all deadly competitors." Huang shot back, "Nobody has to die." The king asked, "Really?" Laughter ensued.
Bezos shared his own origin story: in 1995, when he founded Amazon, he could only raise $50,000 at a time and was rejected by 40 investors. Charles said, "Those 40 people are now regretting it," comparing the missed opportunity to publishers who turned down Harry Potter.
Last September, during then-President Trump's visit to the UK, Microsoft, Nvidia, Google, OpenAI, and other firms pledged to invest £310 billion (about $420 billion) in the UK over the coming years, covering AI, quantum computing, and civilian nuclear power. Later that evening, all the tech leaders attended a state banquet at the White House in Charles's honor.