A teenage computer programmer who developed an AI startup in his London bedroom has secured $1 million investment from Silicon Valley. Toby Brown, 16, is set to fly to San Francisco in the next few months to join an accelerator program designed to help young businesses grow quickly. The teenager, from Twickenham, has deferred his GCSEs until 2026 while he focuses on his AI venture and has been supported by his family, friends and his school.
Upon returning to the UK, he plans to further develop his product, called Beem, with the goal of launching it to the public within the next year. Speaking about Beem, Toby said: “It’s what we are calling an AI native computer — a computer than handles all the boring stuff, so finding files, going through your calendar or your emails, finding the right Airbnb if you’re taking a trip and it can also use the web.
“It’s built on something called proactive context which means it learns about what you do or what you like and it can remind you to do certain things. “It keeps the human in the loop as much as possible but handles all the grunt work.”. The concept for Beem was inspired by the rise of AI chatbot, Chat GPT, which can perform tasks such as answering questions, writing essays or helping with research.
But what makes Toby’s platform different to others, is that Bean is optimised for humans and not for data. “We are kind of doing what Apple did with the iPhone, we are starting with the user experience and working back into the tech and it works,” Toby explained. “The important thing for me is that Bean never started as a company, it was a side project and developed because it was something that other people wanted. That’s how Facebook and Google were created, they never intended to be a company.”.
When asked what advice he would give to other young entrepreneurs, Toby said: “Go out with curiosity. Don’t wait for change, create it.”. Toby has always been curious about how things work. From an early age, he would take apart phones and cameras to explore how they operate. “I started coding when I was seven and building maths games for my times tables and that progressed when I was 10-years-old and built my first computer,” he said.
At just 13-years-old Toby joined Hack Club, a global community of teenage hackers and became the youngest member of its leadership team. The investment in Beem comes from South Park Commons, a venture capital fund based in San Francisco, and will be provided in two installments. The first $400,000 will be paid now and a further $600,000 will be paid when Toby raises his next round of capital. The company in return will take a 7 per cent stake.
