Why Birmingham, and why now

When something significant happens in AI, the rooms where British business works out what it means are almost all in London. The dinners, the closed briefings, the quiet conversations between people who run things: they exist, but not here.

That is a strange gap. The West Midlands is home to one of the largest business populations outside the capital, universities producing serious AI research, and a manufacturing base with more to gain from automation than almost any sector.

The cost of the gap is subtle. It is not that regional leaders lack information; everyone has the same feeds. It is that they lack each other. The founder who solved a problem in March never meets the chief executive hitting it in September.

The West Midlands AI Hub is our answer: a private club in Birmingham where the region's leaders keep each other ahead. One table at a time, starting with the inaugural dinner this September.

If that sounds like a room you belong in, the application takes five minutes.