Eric TophamCEO & Co-Founder at Octaipipe.aiSpeaker
Profile
Dr Eric Topham is CEO and co-founder of OctaiPipe, the edge AI company helping data centre operators cool more efficiently, turning live operational data into secure, explainable efficient control of their cooling systems. He founded OctaiPipe in 2016 and grew it from its roots in federated learning and edge AI for critical infrastructure into today's focus: getting more performance and resilience out of the cooling estate operators already run, rather than bolting on more hardware. His career bridges the lab and the field. Eric started in academia at Imperial College and Oxford, then moved into public-sector data science with the NHS and UCL, building machine learning methods for messy, high-stakes problems. That mix of academic rigour and operational reality shapes how OctaiPipe brings AI into environments where downtime isn't an option. He speaks regularly on the future of AI in critical systems and on what it actually takes to earn trust building for mission-critical infrastructure.