AI feeling hungry with software on the menu, by Nick Freer

When you look at the success of the Scottish tech startup scene to date, in the main it is startups building software to deliver innovation across B2B and B2C have underpinned this exponential growth.

So, think online travel giant Skyscanner or sports betting star FanDuel - both multibillion-valued companies who began their lives as startups here in Edinburgh, from where they both took their first fledgling flights before hitting global scale and becoming the nation’s first unicorns.

This week, digital consultancy CreateFuture (formerly xDesign) announced a technology partnership with Skyscanner, following on from a previous engagement with FanDuel, which will see CEO and founder Euan Andrews and his 500-strong team based across the UK and Europe, support Skyscanner in areas including audience experience, data and AI tooling, and app experience.

As CEO Andrews noted in CreateFuture’s press announcement this week, “We think this says something about the evolution of the Scottish technology ecosystem as a whole.”

He is right, it does, because while the big tech brands generally garner the news headlines, we shouldn’t forget the specialist firms that provide supporting roles, and some of our native digital consultancies and software development firms should be filed under this category.

Global tech players like Skyscanner and FanDuel know how to spread their butter when it comes to employing and deploying tech talent within their businesses, and equally they know the value of using external talent to support the development of their technology.

Rewind to August 2019 and another Scottish software studio, Cultivate, was in the news after being acquired by Deliveroo, marking the food delivery app’s first acquisition in the UK.

Cultivate, headquartered at CodeBase in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle, had a relatively small team of engineers and developers, but small can be beautiful and these beautiful people were helping Deliveroo around its payment system which handled millions of transactions every day.

Renowned venture capitalist Marc Andreessen’s 2011 declaration that “software in is eating the world” proved prophetic, but as we know technology waits for no man or woman and six years later Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang moved Andreessen’s metaphor on, famously remarking: “Software is eating the world… but AI is eating software.”

Arguably, the most important software conference in the world, ‘SaaStr’, takes place in San Francisco in May every year with software-as-a-service (SaaS) founders, executives, and investors gathering in the Bay Area to network, hear from SaaS leaders, secure investment, and sell.  And it was with little surprise that the organisers added “AI” to the name of the conference this year.

Last month, McKinsey & Company released its ‘Technology Trends Outlook’ report for 2025, in which the global management consultancy stated: “Even as excitement builds, realising AI’s full potential across sectors will require continued innovations to manage computing intensity, reduce deployment costs, and drive infrastructure investment.  This will also demand thoughtful approaches to safety, governance, and workplace adaptation, creating a wide range of opportunities for industry leaders, policymakers, and entrepreneurs alike.”

Food for thought.