Ex-Darktrace boss Poppy Gustafsson turns into British funding minister

Poppy Gustafsson, co-founder and former CEO of British cybersecurity darling Darktrace, has been named Britain's new investment minister as the new Labor government looks to win the favor of big business.

Gustafsson will lead the newly designed Office for Investment a wider “Whitehall restructuring” aimed at bringing more money to British shores, the government said.

The Appointment no Doubts are a relief for Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who fought for months to fill the role. It too comes just a few days ahead of the government's international economic summit on Monday, where Starmer will try to present the UK as “open for business”.

In September, Gustafsson left her long-standing position at Darktrace, shortly before US equity firm Thoma Bravo acquired the company in a £4.2bn deal earlier this month.

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She co-founded Darktrace in 2013 with a team of mathematicians and intelligence experts Invoke Capital, a VC fund owned by Mike Lynch – the British Tech tycoon who drowned in August after his yacht sank off the coast of Sicily.

Before Darktrace, Gustafsson previously worked at Lynch's software company Autonomy highly controversial sale to HP worth $11.7 billion. The 42 year old was awarded an OBE in 2019 for services to cybersecurity.

I have first-hand experience of building and scaling a business here in the UK,” she said. “I am thrilled to have the opportunity to share with the international investment community what I already know to be true; The UK is a great place to do business.”

Benjamin Wegg-Prosser was a political advisor and consultant first choice Gustafsson's business acumen is well-suited to the position, whose previous holders have typically been investors or corporate executives. They include former Barclays deputy chief executive Gerry Grimstone and former Financial Times Group CEO Rona Fairhead.

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