Short and full bio, plus images for the press.
Short biography
Chris Middleton (http://chrismiddleton.company) is one of the UK’s leading independent business and technology journalists, an acknowledged robotics and AI expert, an experienced public speaker and conference host, the author of several books, and the editor of (and contributor to) more than 50 other books.
Chris specialises in robotics, AI, the Internet of Things, and other Industry 4.0 technologies, such as blockchain, drones, and autonomous transport. He also writes extensively about digital finance, and about government ICT policy and strategy.
He has appeared several times on BBC1, ITN, Radio 2, Radio 5Live, Talk Radio, and BBC local radio discussing robots’ societal impacts, and has been quoted numerous times in the press, including in The Sun and the Evening Standard.
He is Contributing editor to diginomica (two million unique visitors). He is former editor of Internetofbusiness, Computing, Computer Business Review, and Professional Outsourcing magazine (now Intelligent Sourcing), among several other titles. He has also written for the Guardian, the BBC, Computer Weekly, the Times, the Sunday Times, and many others.
Private clients include Innovate UK/the Knowledge Transfer Network, for whom he helped lead two Expert Missions to the US, on digital health (2018) and robotics and AI (2019), producing detailed policy reports for the government.
Unusually, Chris owns several humanoid robots, which he hires out to events, companies, and schools.
Full biography
Chris Middleton (http://chrismiddleton.company) is what used to be called a ‘Renaissance man’, with a portfolio career.
First, he is one of the UK’s leading independent business & technology journalists and editors, specialising in robotics, AI, the Internet of Things, Industry 4.0, digital finance, technology strategy, and government ICT policy. He has appeared on BBC1, ITN, Radio 2, Radio 5Live, Talk Radio, and BBC local radio discussing robots and AI, and in the national press, including The Sun and the Evening Standard.
He is former editor of InternetofBusiness.com, Computing, Computer Business Review, UCInsight, Child Internet Safety, and Professional Outsourcing magazine (which he co-founded, now known as Intelligent Sourcing), among others. Chris has also written for The Guardian, The Times, the Sunday Times, the BBC, Computer Weekly, Blockchain News, I-CIO, and Citywire, among many other titles. He founded Strategist magazine, and is Consulting Editor for diginomica (two million unique visitors). Chris has also designed several magazines and websites.
Private clients include Innovate UK/the Knowledge Transfer Network, with whom Chris helped lead two Expert Missions – of academics, start-ups, and blue-chip companies – to the US, writing detailed policy reports for the government. The first was on digital health (2018) and the second on robotics and AI in extreme environments (2019).
Chris is the author of a number of books on the creative use of the digital world (published worldwide in several languages), and is the editor of more than 50 other books on robotics, movie special effects, design, and photography, several of which he contributed to.
In 2025, his definitive book on robots, robotics, and AI, The Robot Century, will be published worldwide by CRC Press. He is also the author of a poetic childhood memoir, An Insignificant Boy, documenting life with an abusive father who, as a young man, served for two years in Occupied Japan – in Hiroshima, scene of the first atomic bomb.
Chris is an experienced public speaker and conference chair/host. He has hosted the Digital Marketing World Forum in London, the Space Innovation Congress (interviewing NASA astronauts and astrophysicists), London AI/robotics conference Rise of the Machines (for The Crowd), and events on blockchain, IoT investment, unified communications, and cloud computing. He has also given speeches on AI and robotics at the Sensors Show (NEC Birmingham) and other events.
Chris is probably the only journalist in the UK to own several humanoid robots. One, the famous NAO robot Stanley Qubit, has co-presented a BBC1 breakfast show with Sian Williams and appeared at conferences, exhibitions, and universities. (In 2017, Stanley Qubit made history as the first real robot ever to appear in a dramatisation of Isaac Asimov’s ‘I, Robot stories’ on BBC Radio 4, in which Chris also appeared as a voice actor.)
Under a pseudonym, Chris has a parallel career as a songwriter, session guitarist, and electronic music producer, with multiple airplays on the radio (BBC6music, Radio 1, BBC Introducing, BBC Sussex, Radio Reverb, FreshOnTheNet), and TV.
He also plays lead guitar and sings with Brighton space-rock four-piece, Space Angel, for which he is the principal songwriter. The band’s first album, You Are Next, was released in 2023. The 14-song follow-up, DIVE!, will be released in 2025, produced by Chris.
In his spare time, Chris is a photographer, painter, collector, traveller, movie buff, and skater on vintage boards. He lives in Brighton, UK.
He was born in Folkestone, Kent, but grew up in Reigate, Surrey, where he attended independent school Reigate Grammar, alongside the likes of Sir Keir Starmer, Andrew Sullivan, Ray Mears, and Fatboy Slim, all of whom he knew.