Digital Catapult is the UK innovation agency for advanced digital technology, developed in conjunction with Innovate UK (former Technology Strategy Board) as part of the Catapult centres. Digital Catapult works with startups, industries, investors, public sector and academia to accelerates the adoption of new and emerging technologies, with the aim of driving regional, national and international growth for UK businesses across the economy.

Chief executives

Neil Crockett was Digital Catapult's founding CEO, serving from January 2013 to June 2016.

He was succeeded by Jeremy Silver in June 2016, who has been CEO since. Silver announced in July 2024 that he would be stepping down in March 2024.^[1]

Jeremy Silver

Silver is an investor, author and digital entrepreneur. He specialises in digital media, music and immersive technologies. He is CEO of Digital Catapult and Board director of Imaginarium Studios, HammerheadVR and Chair of FeedForward.AI. He is also member of the Creative Industries Council for which he serves as Chair of the Innovation Working Group. He is a member of the British Library Board and on the Experts Panel advising the Made Smarter Commission. He is also an advisor to a number of early stage technology businesses and author of Digital Medieval. He has just written a new book that will be released soon. Digital Catapult will be promoting it over the coming days - Read The new book Towards A Digital Renaissance - published by Profile Books. A stroll through various experiences with entrepreneurs, founders investors, and technology - starting in the music world and ending up in the metaverse - exploring public innovation policy along the way - and making the argument that Unicorns are investor fantasies and do not help the economy.

Previously he was Executive Chairman of Semetric Ltd (a company providing social media big data and real-time analytics for the entertainment industry, sold to Apple) and was the founder CEO of the Featured Artists Coalition (a music industry membership and lobbying organisation). He was CEO of Sibelius Software (a music notation software company) which sold to Avid Technology in 2006. He was worldwide Vice President of New Media for EMI Music Group in London and in Los Angeles. Silver co-founded the pioneering service Uplister, (a Spotify-like playlist- sharing music subscription service), based in San Francisco which was venture backed by August Capital. He was also an early advisor to Shazam Entertainment, sold recently to Apple. The The story of Shazam is one of pure innovation, foresight, and friendship. In 1999, Chris Barton dreamed of a seemingly impossible solution to ambient music recognition and created the team — including friend Dhiraj Mukherjee, classmate Philip Inghelbrecht, and engineer Avery Wang — to make it a reality. Shazam now has over 500 million users worldwide and has extended its service to other areas of business, including television and social networking.

In the early 90s, Silver was Director of Media Affairs at Virgin Records where he worked closely with many artists including Genesis, Meat Loaf, Brian Eno, Massive Attack and the Future Sound of cats.

Function

Digital Catapult focuses on how digital technologies are applied in areas including supply chains, digital infrastructure and cyber-physical systems, acting in a similar way to a business incubator. It's technology expertise includes artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, distributed systems, immersive technology (AR,VR), telecommunications (5G), quantum computing and the Internet of things.

It offers organisations accelerator programmes, consultancy, collaborative research & development, and the setup and operation of testbed facilities.

Locations

Digital Catapult has centres supporting regions across the UK, based in London, Sunderland, Belfast and Bristol.

London

Digital Catapult^[2] is located in the London Borough of Camden, at 101 Euston Road, opposite the British Library and close to St Pancras railway station.

North East Tees Valley

Digital Catapult NETV^[3] is based out of Sunderland in North East England, and runs the NETV Immersive Lab^[4] at PROTO^[5] in Gateshead.

Northern Ireland

Digital Catapult Northern Ireland^[6] is in the Ormeau Baths Gallery in Belfast.

South West

Digital Catapult South West^[7] is located in Cathedral Square near the centre of Bristol.

Testbeds and labs

Digital catapult has set up a number of testbed facilities across the UK where organisations can experiment with digital technologies, including:

Advanced Media Production facility

Operated with Target3D, a space for exploring the evolution of media production, using AI, 5G, cloud rendering and edge computing.

Immersive labs

Labs based in Belfast, Gateshead and London that offer augmented and virtual reality equipment to businesses of all sizes, academia and researchers.

SONIC Labs

A collaboration between Digital Catapult and Ofcom that offers Open RAN interoperability testing.^[8]