George and Ian catch up on news and events affecting UK small and mid-cap tech.

IBM’s figures get George pondering the differing paths with AI for software vs IT professional services. He highlights the Asian IT services area, where growth is notably better than in the EU or North America, before looking at results from ActiveOps, GB Group and iOmart.

Ian comments on Oxford Metrics’ in-line update, Northcoders, and then Tracsis, where investors who bought into an earnings growth and digitalisation story have to work out what where the UK rail system is now heading.

Ian eulogises about the Stanford AI report. It provides some encouraging data for UK tech proponents and provides insight into how AI is actually being used and what limited gains AI provides.

George focuses on the AI benchmarks issue – are they meaningful? Which leads Ian to question, given the huge scale and nature of many AI projects, whether any of the returns and benefits data that everyone craves is going to be valid.