Odokai's founders also founded dotdigital, which later listed on the London Stock Exchange as dotdigital Group plc. We build the platform and help customers put it into production. We are based in the UK.
Founder and CTO
Lewis Barclay is the Founder and CTO of Odokai and a co-founder of dotdigital, the marketing automation platform he started with Simon Bird and David Ivy in 1998 and which later listed on the London Stock Exchange as dotdigital Group plc. He has spent more than twenty-five years building and leading software engineering teams, including for M&S, Gousto, Barclays and Fidelity Investments, and has spent the last three years integrating AI into core engineering practice.
Lewis Barclay is the Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Odokai. In 1998 he co-founded dotdigital with Simon Bird and David Ivy, building the marketing automation and customer data platform that later listed on the London Stock Exchange as dotdigital Group plc.
Over more than twenty-five years in software engineering, Lewis has held delivery and leadership roles with organisations including M&S, Gousto, Barclays and Fidelity Investments, shaping and running agile engineering teams at scale. His recent work concentrates on AI engineering and innovation, most recently with clients such as WPP, Peabody and Unitary.
A lean and agile practitioner (XP, Scrum and Kanban), he is product- and delivery-led, brings a DevOps mindset, and combines sharp engineering judgement with confident client-facing communication and design awareness.
At Odokai he helps to define and build the platform and works hands-on with clients as an AI engineer. He is a strong advocate of the software factory process, and keeps current with the fast-moving state of the art in AI engineering: agentic patterns, evaluation and guardrails, retrieval, model routing and the disciplines that make AI systems dependable in production.
CSO
Cliff came into the industry when protecting enterprise data meant tape libraries and a recovery plan nobody had tested. Over two decades he watched the problem change shape without getting easier: virtualisation, cloud, SaaS applications holding data nobody had thought to back up, and eventually ransomware, which turned recovery time into an existential metric. His work centred on cyber resilience: Zero Trust security, layered protection against attack and insider threat, and orchestrated recovery for workloads a business cannot operate without.
Cliff came into the industry when protecting enterprise data meant tape libraries and a recovery plan nobody had tested. Over two decades he watched the problem change shape without getting easier: virtualisation, cloud, SaaS applications holding data nobody had thought to back up, and eventually ransomware, which turned recovery time into an existential metric. His work centred on cyber resilience: Zero Trust security, layered protection against attack and insider threat, and orchestrated recovery for workloads a business cannot operate without.
AI followed a familiar path. Strong demonstrations and enthusiastic pilots stalled because nobody could answer the operational questions underneath them: where the data goes, who can reach which model, what is auditable, and what happens when an automated process does the wrong thing at scale. Cliff had spent his career on those questions.
He now advises leadership teams at the decision stage of evaluating Odokai. He covers what a single governed platform consolidates, what central control of an approved model catalogue means in practice, and which process to point it at first.
AI engineering consultant
AJ James, FBCS, is an award-winning technologist, author, and strategic leader with nearly 30 years of experience spanning cloud architecture, digital transformation, and agentic AI. A Fellow of the British Computer Society and winner of DevOps Leader of the Year at the Computing Digital Technology Leaders Awards 2019, he has a track record of leading complex modernisation programmes across highly regulated and public-sector environments, delivering measurable reductions in cost and time-to-value.
AJ James, FBCS, is an award-winning technologist, author, and strategic leader with nearly 30 years of experience spanning cloud architecture, digital transformation, and agentic AI. A Fellow of the British Computer Society and winner of DevOps Leader of the Year at the Computing Digital Technology Leaders Awards 2019, he has a track record of leading complex modernisation programmes across highly regulated and public-sector environments, delivering measurable reductions in cost and time-to-value. He is the author of Designed4Devops, a practical framework for digital transformation at scale, and today focuses on designing and delivering AI-first platforms and production agentic workflows that create real business value.
Non-executive director
David Ivy is a board-level technology and digital transformation leader with extensive experience delivering large-scale SaaS platforms, operational transformation programmes, and AI-enabled business initiatives across growth-stage and enterprise environments.
David Ivy is a board-level technology and digital transformation leader with extensive experience delivering large-scale SaaS platforms, operational transformation programmes, and AI-enabled business initiatives across growth-stage and enterprise environments.
As a fractional executive and adviser, David has operated across CEO / CTO / COO / CMO and board advisory / NED roles, helping organisations modernise operations, commercialise technology platforms, improve governance, and scale digital capability. As one of the Founders of dotDigital Group PLC, his background balances commercial views as well as growth and implementation knowledge.
David specialises in translating complex technology into commercially valuable, operational outcomes. He works with organisations moving from fragmented tooling and manual processes toward governed, scalable AI systems, across Start-ups, Scale-ups, and Enterprise PLCs.
With experience supporting businesses through turnaround, optimisation, growth, and exit preparation phases, David brings a commercially grounded perspective to AI adoption, operational efficiency, and platform strategy. He is particularly focused on helping organisations implement AI safely, pragmatically, and with strong governance and infrastructure control.
Areas of expertise include:
You can also connect with David via LinkedIn.
Non-executive director
Simon Bird built his first neural network in 1998 while studying Computer Science at Royal Holloway, University of London. Written in C++, it attempted to solve a frequency allocation problem using backpropagation and stochastic gradient descent. It showed a marginal improvement over brute-force algorithms, but it was extremely slow to train. At the time, computers simply did not have the power to run artificial intelligence at a reasonable speed.
Simon Bird built his first neural network in 1998 while studying Computer Science at Royal Holloway, University of London. Written in C++, it attempted to solve a frequency allocation problem using backpropagation and stochastic gradient descent. It showed a marginal improvement over brute-force algorithms, but it was extremely slow to train. At the time, computers simply did not have the power to run artificial intelligence at a reasonable speed.
Fast forward 28 years, and things have changed dramatically. Like many observing the rapid progress of large language models (LLMs) such as those powering ChatGPT and Gemini, Simon has been struck by their capabilities. Over the past 18 months, he has focused on bringing himself up to speed with how and why these systems work and, most importantly, how they can be used to benefit businesses.
Prior to this, Simon co-founded dotDigital, a marketing automation and customer data platform. He focused on technology and served on the board in an advisory capacity before retraining as a commercial pilot.
After being introduced to Odokai, Simon asked to join the company in an advisory capacity. He believes the AI landscape today is similar to the internet in 1999: companies recognised its importance and knew they needed to get involved, but lacked the skills and frameworks to use it effectively.
We are talking to investors and strategic partners. If that is you, get in touch.
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