Ex-Darktrace boss Poppy Gustafsson named UK investment minister

Poppy Gustafsson, the co-founder and former CEO of UK cybersecurity darling Darktrace, has been named Britain’s new minister of investment as the new Labour government looks to win favour with big business.

Gustafsson will head up the revamped Office for Investment as part of a wider “Whitehall shake-up” designed to bring more money to British shores, the government said.

The appointment no doubt comes as a relief for Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who struggled for months to fill the role. It also comes just days before the government’s international business summit on Monday, where Starmer will look to pitch the UK as “open for business.” 

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

She co-founded Darktrace in 2013 alongside a team of mathematicians and intelligence experts from 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.

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Before Darktrace, Gustafsson worked at Lynch’s software firm Autonomy before its highly controversial $11.7bn sale to HP. The 42-year-old was awarded an OBE for services to cyber security in 2019.

“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.”

While political adviser and consultant Benjamin Wegg-Prosser was first choice for the role, Gustafsson’s business acumen is good fit for the position, past occupants of which have tended to be investors or business leaders. These include former ex-Barclays deputy chairman Gerry Grimstone and former Financial Times Group CEO Rona Fairhead.