As part of our SPARK programming, we are thrilled to welcome back Andy Phillipps, serial entrepreneur, angel investor, and Venture Partner. Andy will discuss his entrepreneurial journey and what it's like to start and scale companies. We'll also explore the founder qualities Andy looks for amongst his investment criteria.

Join us for an insightful panel discussion centred around what type of companies we should be building in a world full of generative Ai. Moderated by Sheelpa Patel and featuring Yonghong Peng and Umang Bhatt. We'll discuss trustworthy AI, what it means to build AI-native companies, human agency, and whether AI could enable small teams or solo founders to build billion-dollar companies.

Join us for a fireside chat with Joel Perlman, Co-Founder of OakNorth hosted by E-Lab Co-Founder Kamiar Mohaddes, where Joel shares what he has learned from both sides of the table: what the best-run scaling businesses get right, where they break, and what AI is genuinely changing in financial decision-making (beyond the hype), as well as how to raise over $1bn from world-renowned investors and much more!

Join us for a fireside chat with Ash Shrivastav, General Partner of Uma Ventures, hosted by E-Lab co-founder Kamiar Mohaddes. Ash will share his perspective on early-stage investing and building at the intersection of AI, deep tech and defence, drawing on his experience backing companies including Anthropic and Perplexity.

Join us for an exclusive insight into Tramlines Ventures, a London based ventures team investing at Seed into Founders with deep levels of domain expertise who are solving real problems in their industry. 

Join us for an inspiring evening with Cho Tak Wong (Cao Dewang), founder and Lifetime Honorary Chairman of Fuyao Group and one of the most influential entrepreneurs and philanthropists of his generation. From a small township factory in southeast China, Cho built Fuyao into the world's leading automotive glass manufacturer, supplying the likes of Bentley, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi, and Toyota, while giving back nearly RMB 26 billion to charitable causes along the way. In this fireside chat, he will share the philosophy, conviction, and sense of social responsibility behind four decades of building, scaling, and giving.

Join us for an inspiring evening with Sara García-Alonso, research scientist, member of the European Space Agency’s astronaut reserve, and trailblazer. Sara will share her remarkable journey through biotechnology to becoming a leading cancer researcher and one of Spain’s most influential women in science and technology.

Join us for our fifth Nobel Prize lecture with Kati Karikó, whose research was crucial to the development of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines, as she discusses her journey and breaking barriers in the field.

Join us for a fireside chat with Steve Smith as we chat about the company's efforts to modernise its energy networks, accelerate the energy transition, and navigate regulatory frameworks to achieve a cleaner, more reliable, and affordable energy future.

Join us for a fireside chat with Grace Forrest, Founding Director of Walk Free, exploring one of the most urgent human rights challenges of our time: modern slavery and exploitation in the global economy. This conversation will examine the hidden realities of forced labour, human trafficking, and exploitation across global supply chains, and what governments, businesses, investors, and civil society can do to drive meaningful change.

In this conversation, Allison Ellsworth, Founder and CEO of Poppi, will take the audience inside her journey of building a category-defining beverage brand from a homemade kitchen experiment into a multi-billion dollar company acquired by PepsiCo. In just nine years, she scaled Poppi from zero to a $2B exit, redefining what modern consumer brand growth can look like.

What does it take to invest behind transformation at global scale? Join us for a fireside chat with Simon Patterson of Silver Lake as he shares insights from some of the most consequential technology investments of the past decade, including Dell’s turnaround into an AI infrastructure leader.

From evaluating companies beyond public market narratives to building a European technology investment platform, this conversation explores how capital, technology, and leadership intersect in high-stakes environments.

In this feature-length, personal essay documentary, The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales, filmmaker and philanthropist Abigail Disney grapples with America’s profound inequality crisis. The story begins in 2018, after Abigail encounters workers at the company that bears her name struggling to put food on the table. Could she, a descendent, with no role in the multinational conglomerate, use her famous last name to help pressure Disney and other American corporations to treat low-wage workers more humanely?

Join us for a fireside chat with Dame Emma Walmsley, former CEO of GSK and the first woman to run a major global pharmaceutical company, as she shares insights on leading transformation across industries and organisations through periods of significant change.

Come along to celebrate the book launch of ‘Dangerous Knowledge’ through conversation with its contributors for discussions on prison reform, de-colonising justice, the sensory violence of war, and how we can bridge academic thought to entrepreneurship.

Join us for a fireside chat with Lord Karan Bilimoria, drawing on his unique vantage point as both a global entrepreneur and a member of the UK House of Lords to explore how global businesses can strategically leverage the India–UK Free Trade Agreement and the evolving bilateral business corridor.

​​Join us for a panel on Innovations for the Smart Grid of the Future with Clementine Chambon (Axle Energy), Genna Boyle (Gridcog) and Luke Hodgkinson (Adia), organised in collaboration with Cambridge University Energy Technology Society and the University Sustainability Initiative.

Join us for a fireside chat with Greg Jackson, Founder and CEO of Octopus Energy Group for a night of insight into the role of innovation and entrepreneurial thinking in the energy sector.

Join us for a fireside chat with Steve Smith as we chat about the company's efforts to modernise its energy networks, accelerate the energy transition, and navigate regulatory frameworks to achieve a cleaner, more reliable, and affordable energy future.

‘Colossal Wreck’ is a feature documentary journeying into the depths of the COP climate conference in Dubai. Are these enormous get-togethers all about false promises that hinder change? Or are they the only hope we've got for world-saving unity?

With his innocuous selfie-stick, filmmaker Josh Appignanesi moves unnoticed through Dubai's seductive slickness to reveal the talks, meetings and backroom parties behind the strange mixture of global cry for help and political jostling that is a COP.

Join us for a lecture and Q&A with Janet Echelman, the internationally acclaimed artist behind monumental and site-specific fibre sculptures that transform public space. Drawing on engineering and architecture, Echelman will discuss her creative process, the politics and poetics of working at scale, and how her immersive installations invite collective reflection. The talk will be followed by an open Q&A, moderated by the King’s E-Lab.

Join us to talk for an evening with Nigel Newton, Founder and Chief Executive of Bloomsbury Publishing.

Are you building an entrepreneurial venture? Are you a current student, post-doc, or Alumni of University of Cambridge?

If so we have an incredible opportunity for you to incubate, fund, and grow your venture with Kings E-Lab this summer.

Join us on Thursday 12th Feb where we will celebrate the opening of applications for our second cohort. This event will share more about our residential incubator programme and host a fireside with alumni of SPARK 1.0.

Join us for a fireside chat with Billy Boyle, co-founder and CEO of Owlstone, on his experience spinning out of Cambridge in the med tech sector.

Sir Ronnie Cohen, a pioneering social innovator who is driving forward the global Impact Revolution, joins us to discuss the new edition of his book IMPACT: Reshaping Capitalism to Drive Real Change. 

As part of the E-Lab Social Ventures Residential, this fireside conversation brings Hajiya Imaan Sulaiman-Ibrahim, Honourable Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, to the University of Cambridge for a wide-ranging discussion on entrepreneurial leadership and how social ambition is translated into real-world impact.

Join King’s College Provost Gillian Tett for a conversation with Pinterest CEO Bill Ready as they explore the role of positive social media platforms, Pinterest's use of AI, particularly in visual search, and the need for safe online environments, particularly for young people.

Join us for this event, co-hosted with climaTRACES Lab, when Lily Hsueh (Arizona State University) will be discussing her work on “Corporations at Climate Crossroads: Multilevel Governance, Public Policy, and Global Climate Action” with plenty of time for discussion. The event is brining together a diverse group of people from economics, geography, politics, engineering, business, earth sciences, natural sciences, and history, generating interdisciplinary discussion.

Join us for a conversation with Bobby Yerramilli-Rao, Chief Strategy Officer and Corporate Vice President for Corporate Strategy at Microsoft, as we explore “Strategy in the Era of AI.”

A fireside chat between Susanna Kempe, CEO of the Laidlaw Foundation, and Gillian Tett on investing in education and inspiring the next generation of global leaders as part of a week celebrating the launch of Cambridge’s 2026 Laidlaw Scholars Programme.