Suranga Chandratillake OBE FREng

Suranga Chandratillake is a prominent investor in the deep technology space, as well as founder and software engineer in his own right. As founder of AI video search engine blinkx, he is an inspirational success story for tech entrepreneurship, having grown the company to a market capitalisation exceeding $1 billion.  

Suranga developed his expertise in software engineering from an early age, when his interest in computer games led to initial forays in writing software code.  

After graduating from the University of Cambridge with a master’s degree in computer science, Suranga joined Autonomy as its lead R&D engineer. Early successes led him to found its Silicon Valley office, where he managed billions of dollars worth of investor money. 

It was an internal information indexing project that led him to create the blinkx software in 2005. The software enabled users to search for information at a desktop level. Suranga soon established it as a standalone search engine for video and audio files.  

From here, he decided to exploit its abilities as a multimedia service for advertising companies, a pivot that earned him widespread acclaim and huge investment upon going public on the London Stock Exchange in 2007. 

After the blinkx float, Suranga moved into an investment role and now serves as General Partner at Balderton Capital where he specialises in technology startups.  

In 2012 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and is the recipient of one of its prestigious Silver Medal awards.