Q&A: The Race for Growth — Five Years of The City Quantum & AI Summit
Editor’s Note: Over the last five years, The City Quantum and AI Summit, which takes place in the Mansion House in the heart of the City of London, has earned a reputation as a quantum conference that not only keeps its finger on the pulse of the rapidly emerging quantum technology landscape, but also one that provides an accessible forum for the field’s diverse community. Celebrating the UN’s International Year of Quantum, the Fifth Anniversary Summit will take place on October 8, 2025. Here, we chat with Karina Robinson, CEO of Radcliffe Advisory and the founder of this summit, to learn a little bit more about the upcoming 2025 The City Quantum and AI Summit, as well as add context to the fifth anniversary of one of quantum’s marquee events..
This year’s Summit is themed “Race for Growth.” What does growth mean in the context of quantum and AI, and why is now the moment to focus on it?
Our democracies are under threat from external sabotage, misinformation and governmental inability to deliver. The only way to avoid falling into the lure of the populists is for our economies to grow. Harnessing Quantum and AI is a way of achieving productivity gains and revenue increases.
To celebrate its Fifth Anniversary, the Summit is publishing Race for Growth, a report with contributions from CEOs, Chairs, and other board members on how to boost our economies through Deep Tech and international collaboration.
The speaker lineup this year includes more CEOs from financial and professional services than ever before. What message does that send about where quantum and AI are heading?
Board members of financial and professional services are aware that, generally, they lack enough knowledge of how Quantum and AI will disrupt their companies and sectors. That awareness has been growing over the last few years. By insisting on the Summit’s principle of ‘no lingo, no jargon, plain language only,’ top executives are comfortable talking and learning publicly about Deep Tech’s impact.
Geopolitical shifts have reshaped the global landscape. How do international tensions and alliances affect the collaboration — or competition — in deep tech sectors like AI and quantum? And how does the Summit expect to navigate these new waters?
The City Quantum & AI Summit will walk through the complex, evolving geopolitical maze with a light step! We have companies from the US, Europe, the UK and Taiwan present. The Trump presidency has upended traditional alliances, but collaboration is still a pre-requisite. We are especially focused on the UK and the EU working together more closely, with the US and democracies like Australia and Japan involved.
Defence and finance are rarely seen on the same stage, but you’ve made that blend a defining feature of the Summit. What’s the logic behind that mix?
There are two reasons for the unique mix. From the moment Ukraine was invaded by Russia three years ago it became obvious that, firstly, we needed to fight for our democracies rather than take them for granted, and secondly, that defence spending would accelerate exponentially. This was a great, albeit tragic, opportunity to advance the science. The results will be dual-use applications – from logistics to navigation – on a par with what came out of the Apollo Space Mission.
Additionally, finance is a pre-requisite for firms on the edge of innovation, while financiers need to be exposed to investing opportunities.
The Summit was built on three founding principles: no jargon, gender-balanced panels, and accessibility. In an era of accelerating complexity, are those principles more relevant than ever?
In this day and age it is indispensable to be understood by those outside your group. Gender-balanced panels are even more crucial today than they were five years ago, when the Summit began. The backlash against the excesses of woke politics is being used as an excuse to undermine basic Diversity & Inclusion and that needs to be combatted. Lastly, the Summit is streamed for free and all panels are then posted on social media.
How does the historic setting — the Mansion House and the presence of the 696th Lord Mayor — shape the tone and ambition of the Summit?
It is great fun to host a conference on breakthrough Quantum & AI in a historic palace with gold table-settings and chandeliers-a-plenty, rather than the usual soulless conference centre! On a more serious note, the Mansion House’s convening power is legendary, and key to attracting senior leaders from a wide variety of sectors who are open to solving the world’s problems. The halls of the Mansion House represent the historic location where top financiers have met for generations to finance world trade and innovation, and is the perfect setting to combine both them and the future leaders of technology and science under one roof.
What role do you see for the UK, and The City in particular, in driving international leadership in deep tech over the next five years?
The City of London has been at the forefront of financing progress for centuries. This Summit keeps the flame alive!
Finally, with tech leaders, financial giants, and defence strategists all under one roof, what would you like attendees to walk away thinking, feeling, or doing differently?
The outcome is all about cross-sectoral collaboration and cross-national collaboration, both in finance and defense. I hope all of us joining together at the Summit, be it in person or online, are able to see the growth potential of connecting with people in all fields.
What have you been most proud of about previous iterations of the Summit?
I am most proud of bringing together such diverse sectors. And when people tell you they found a job, an investing opportunity, or funding for their company at the Summit, I couldn’t be happier!
Speech at the Mansion House
Welcome all to the Annual Banquet of the WCIB and welcome to the Mansion House, the Heart of the City.
The Mansion House reminds me of the Villa Farnesina in Rome, built for Agostino Chigi, a banker who was treasurer to the Papal States in 1510 and a patron of great artists. He entertained his clients – Popes, Ambassadors, men of power – in such style that he was known as ‘the Magnificent’.
I should hope we have entertained you in such style today, that you too will say the International Bankers are Magnificent!
At one banquet, in an extravagant gesture, the silver dishes were thrown into the Tiber River after use. I therefore ask you to pick up any silver left on your tables and we shall throw it into the Thames. Or perhaps not!
Immigration is key to attract global talent
This is an abridged version of a speech given to a Mansion House packed to the rafters with 350 members of the International Bankers and their friends.
My year as Master (Chair) runs till October 2020.
Welcome all to the Annual Banquet of the WCIB and welcome to the Mansion House, the Heart of the City.
The Mansion House reminds me of the Villa Farnesina in Rome, built for Agostino Chigi, a banker who was treasurer to the Papal States in 1510 and a patron of great artists. He entertained his clients – Popes, Ambassadors, men of power – in such style that he was known as ‘the Magnificent’.
I should hope we have entertained you in such style today, that you too will say the International Bankers are Magnificent!
At one banquet, in an extravagant gesture, the silver dishes were thrown into the Tiber River after use. I therefore ask you to pick up any silver left on your tables and we shall throw it into the Thames. Or perhaps not!
Rumour has it that il Magnifico’s servants had placed invisible nets in the river, and thus recovered the silver.
Banking, and financial services in general, is about covering your risk. As he did.
The City faces many risks. Today, I want to concentrate on one risk only. Arguably the most crucial one. The war for talent.
Mark Hoban, a former City Minister - who is present tonight - chairs the Financial Services Skills Taskforce, which published a damning report last month on the City’s talent recruitment and retention. I quote: “There is no doubt that the financial services sector is facing an existential skills crisis.”
The demand for talent already exceeds supply and this trend is set to become more acute. Additionally, “The lack of gender and ethnic diversity is both a social issue and a skills issue. Talent that the industry needs is not being utilised.”
This is the reason why Professor Grace Lordan from the London School of Economics – also here tonight - and I are co-founding The Inclusion Institute at the LSE. The Institute arose out of a report commissioned by the International Bankers. In partnership with City companies, the Institute will use behavioural science and data to lead to more diverse talent recruitment and retention, to dynamism and creativity, and to changing culture for future success.
Cognitive diversity is necessary to deliver better company returns in a transformed digital marketplace. How does this innovation happen? It is most likely to occur when you mix gender, generation, ethnicity, sexual orientation and nationality, on your boards and in your teams. And ensure they feel accepted, or included, and thus able to speak up.
The City is working hard on its D&I. Yet it is already a world leader in one form of diversity. Nationality. We have a wider mix and more nationalities in the City than in any other major financial centre. 40% - that is four zero – of City workers are foreign-born – and they are fully included.
What other country would have a Canadian leading its central bank, a Frenchman till recently leading its stock exchange, and an American woman, leading one of its main financial derivative companies, IG? Plus, at a much lower level, voting in another foreigner – me - as Master of the Worshipful Company of International Bankers. I am grateful!
But the City’s USP is under threat. The government’s recently announced, hard core policy on immigration is undermining the City’s search for talent. They should care, because we bring in over 10% of tax revenues.
We would not have the strongest Fintech sector in the world, without the Open Door, Open City policy of earlier governments. We wouldn’t be leaders in Green Finance without that Open Door, Open City policy. Note that the UK Green Bond market is already worth $44 billion. There is so much more that we in the City need to do to help finance the environmental transition for our planet’s survival.
For that, we need the best talent in the world.
There are at least three things wrong with the new system.
In the first place, an immigration policy that gives way too much importance to higher education, such as PhDs, cannot be right. Skills are of as much importance as a university degree in our disrupted world. The Russian founder of Revolut, a City-born start-up which was just given a valuation of $5.5 billion dollars, doesn’t have a PhD. Let alone the Richard Branson’s of this world. Or even the Mark Zuckerberg’s.
Secondly, an immigration policy that harks back to an era of central planning cannot be right. Five-year plans surely went out with Stalin?!. Yet a Tory government believes in the future it will be able to figure out where the skills shortages are in the economy and make short term changes to policy to fill them. That’s in a world where we don’t even know what many of the jobs of tomorrow will look like.
And finally, an immigration policy which will only allow large, well-capitalised firms to import foreign workers, is not right. The cost and bureaucracy of work permits is such that SMEs, start ups and the like won’t be able to afford them – and they are the accelerator in the economy.
Let my last quote be from Catherine McGuinness, the CEO of the City: “We need an immigration system that works for the whole of the financial services ecosystem. This includes those supporting industries which keep the City ticking and we look forward to engaging with the Government on this particular issue.”
I am not sure she meant that last line…
The City understands that this government has an obligation to those who voted it in, a number of whom believe that immigration – rather than globalisation and automation - is to blame for inequality and the precariousness of modern jobs. But Boris Johnson’s government has a duty to destroy myths about immigration and a duty to care for the City, let alone the whole economy. Our tax revenues and our inventiveness will help in financing a better future for all.
The City is a British jewel, a European jewel, and a world jewel – in fact, it is a public good and I would ask that you join with me, in any way you can, in pressing this government to change its policy, and return to an Open Door, Open City.