Liz Upton aims to do for robotics what she helped do for Raspberry Pi

Liz Upton, who is in worldwide demand for her marketing and executive consultancy skills, has added another BOW to her string.

She has become chair of Sheffield-based but universal robotics software company BOW. She is also CEO at new businesses Negroni Venture Studios and Negroni Capital Partners and has been fielding options to help steer other enterprises. Already developing a significant portfolio, Liz plans to achieve some of this from a base in “the lovely” King’s Parade in Cambridge.

She makes it clear from the outset that the work with BOW will involve robotics software that drives pragmatic solutions in settings such as industrial, factory-type outlets rather than in robot varieties such as quadrupeds that might frighten the family pets!

BOW – which stands for “Bettering our Worlds” – makes it possible for any software developer to create and deploy robotics applications and manage robots.

By removing the need for highly-specialised robotics programmers, BOW’s universal platform allows companies to leverage the skills of generalist software developers and opens up valuable new use cases in sectors that have previously been underserved by robotics.

It acknowledges that realising the full potential of robotics is out of reach for many companies and industries because of the high cost and complexity of programming robots, Liz stresses.

She says BOW’s robot-agnostic software development kit (SDK) and the BOW platform solves this bottleneck, making it possible for the first time to program any robot using any operating system in any programming language.

Upton, who co-founded Raspberry Pi in 2008, played a crucial role as Chief Marketing Officer in the company’s growth, achieving sales of over 60 million units worldwide and a successful IPO on the London Stock Exchange earlier this year.

Her new appointment follows news of BOW’s recent partnership with XPLOR, the world’s first Live Events R & D and Innovation centre. The partnership is pioneering the adoption of robotics in the film and creative industries, focusing on developing new applications, improving efficiency and lowering production costs.

Upton says: “What my husband Eben and I achieved at Raspberry Pi was lovely and having been head-hunted by BOW I would like to build on their success to date and be in on the start of something really big.

“It is not easy dovetailing global demand from international clients with running a family of two children, for example, but I relish the challenge.

“BOW has some brilliant global relationships from Germany to China and is poised to take a leading role in piloting new standardisation for maximising use of robotics for general industrial applications.”

She says the BOW team’s passion for innovation and their commitment to developing the world’s first universal robotics platform is “inspiring. At Raspberry Pi, we have always been driven by the mission of democratising computing for all.

“Robotics similarly has the potential to help solve global challenges but only if we can remove the barriers to its adoption. BOW solves the current complexity of developing robotics applications and makes programming any robot in any programming language possible for the first time.

“I’m excited to join this pioneering and fast-growing company as Chair and to help BOW make the tremendous benefits of robotics universally accessible.”

CEO Nick Thompson believes that welcoming Liz to BOW as new Chair could be a genuine game-changer. He said: I’d like to thank our former Chair, Pete Hopton, for his tremendous contribution to BOW since we founded the company in 2020. Liz brings a wealth of experience in scaling a transformational technology business globally.

“In addition, her deep commitment to innovation and education aligns perfectly with BOW’s mission to enable millions of software developers to develop robotics applications for the betterment of our world.”

• For more information about BOW and its leadership team, visit https://usebow.com/