Sean Williams | |
|---|---|
| Born | 21 February 1979 London, England |
| Education | Haberdashers' Boys' School |
| Alma mater | |
| Occupation | CEO |
| Employer | AutogenAI |
| Spouse | |
Sean Thomas Williams is a British entrepreneur and business leader.
He is the Founder and CEO of AutogenAI, a company focused on developing AI-based solutions for bid writing and proposal development. AutogenAI was placed in the top 100 of Britain's fastest-growing private technology companies in the Sunday Times 100 Tech list 2026. [1]
Prior to AutogenAI Williams founded Corndel - a top 10 provider of training in the UK. [2] Williams sold Corndel to THI holdings in 2020 in a reported £47m sale having grown it to 250 staff and £25m in turnover. [3]
The London Evening Standard estimated Williams' net worth in 2023 at £48m. [4]
Prior to his entrepreneurial career Williams was a senior leader delivering active labour market policies in the United Kingdom including setting up and running multiple Work Programme contracts. [5] Williams was a vocal defender of a mixed economy in the provision of public services arguing for competition and payment by results contracts as the best means of delivering public outcomes. [6] [7]
Williams was born in Hillingdon. He went to school at Haberdashers on a bursary before winning a place at Trinity College, Cambridge to study philosophy. [8] Williams majored in logic, mathematical logic, political philosophy and feminist philosophy. [9] Williams has cited Wittgenstein as a major influence on his work in artificial intelligence and has referenced Wittgenstein extensively in his writings and talks. [10]
VentureBeat described AutogenAI as "Founded by serial entrepreneur and CEO Sean Williams, who began his journey as a bid writer". [11] They went on to say "AutogenAI has rapidly evolved into one of the fastest-growing generative AI companies in the UK."
Williams founded AutogenAI in 2022. [12] Raj Khaira joined the fledgling company as co-founder and Deputy CEO at the end of that year. AutogenAI describes itself as "proposal writing software that deploys artificial intelligence to help its customers win more bids and proposals". [13]
The Sunday Times wrote "More than half of the government’s 39 strategic suppliers use the company’s software. Sean Williams, 46, chief executive, and Raj Khaira, 40, deputy chief executive, started AutogenAI in 2022." [14]
AutogenAI released the first version of their software in September 2022 but Williams credits the release of OpenAI's Chat-GPT six weeks later as the real catalyst for AutogenAI's growth. [15]
AutogenAI raised a $22.3m Series A round from Blossom Capital in July 2023 [16] followed closely by a $39.5m Series B round led by Salesforce Ventures and Spark Capital. [17]
The Series A funding round led the Evening Standard to claim, "Sean Williams, founder of London-based AutogenAI, which generates draft proposals for government procurement bids, is estimated by the Standard to be worth as much as £48 million, after the firm completed a £17 million funding round in July." [18]
Williams is co-author (with ex-Olympian James Huckle) of the paper "Easy Problems that Large Language Models get Wrong" [19] - one of the first academic papers to explore the limitations of LLMs when compared to human-level intelligence.
The paper has been cited by researchers from Meta, Google DeepMind and Oxford University. [20] [21]
Prior to his entrepreneurial career Williams spent a decade designing and delivered active labour market programmes in the UK and Australia. [22] Williams worked on Employment Zones, New Deal, Flexible New Deal and the Work Programme.
Williams led G4S's Work Programme operations and was often called to defend them in the press and in parliament. [23] [24]
Amelia Gentleman described Williams as "a pony-tailed welfare-to-work evangelist." [25]
Paul Flynn in a fiery exchange with Williams at the Public Administration Select Committee said, "You present a picture instructed by the people who trained you to come before this Committee to give us glowing adjectives but not to deal with the reality of what G4S is doing."
Williams responded, "Paul, all I am telling you is that we deliver hundreds of contracts and it is absolutely right to focus on two very high-profile contracts that went very wrong. It is absolutely right to do that. However, if you then forget the hundreds of contracts that deliver a fantastic public service every day; if you forget the work we do in our prisons and our children’s homes; if you forget the 35,000 long-term unemployed people we have moved from unemployment into a decent sustainable job; if you do not look at it in the round, you are presenting what is, unfortunately, a very misleading picture. You then ask why the public have this picture. It is because they are given a very misleading picture." [26]
Williams is married to the actor and technologist, Zoe Cunningham.
Williams was Chair of the United Kingdom Backgammon Federation from 2015 to 2017. [27]
Williams is an avid guitar collector and founded Rare Guitar Club. [28]