Benedikt von Thüngen

Benedikt is a prolific entrepreneur and is fascinated by the enormous scope that speech recognition has to change our world forever. In 2014, he became the CEO of Speechmatics to lead the commercialisation of the Speechmatics technology. Since then, Speechmatics has grown rapidly in resources, infrastructure and revenue.

After working from the age of 13 and travelling the world by the age of 19 Benedikt settled at the University of Edinburgh. During his first year he became involved in his first business; Renewable Zukunft, which designed, built and operated Biogas plants in the UK.

The crux of his involvement was in the identification of key technology in Austria. After this, the initial team of 7 quickly grew to 25. During this period, Benedikt also helped set-up and scale Austrian technology company BioG Biogas Technik.

In order to bolster his key business skills, in 2011 Benedikt joined C1 Conexus, a specialist management consulting firm for the Energy Industry, ultimately switching to PWC Consulting in 2013. Subsequently he spent two months working in Tanzania.

Building on his two-fold expertise in Business Development and emerging technologies, Benedikt studied a Masters in Bioscience Enterprise at Cambridge University, the alma matter of Speechmatics founder Tony Robinson PhD.

Benedikt and Tony met in 2014 and have since grown Speechmatics to 40 people. In transitioning the company from a research & development focus to a growing commercial business, they continue to work on re-defining speech recognition and its application across multiple different use cases.