Azeem Azhar

Azeem Azhar (born 1972) is a British serial technology entrepreneur and author. He founded the research group, Exponential View, and web technology company, Peer Index, which won the Europas Grand Prix in 2011.

Azhar wrote The Exponential Age: How Accelerating Technology is Transforming Business, Politics and Society, and hosts podcast Exponential View, distributed by Harvard Business Review, and the Bloomberg Originals television show and podcast Exponentially with Azeem Azhar.

Biography
Azhar was born in 1972. He was first introduced to computers as a child in Zambia after his family moved to London. He got a Sinclair ZX81. His parents ran an accounting firm in east London in the 1980s. He studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Merton College, Oxford University. While in the college, he participated in the creation of The Oxford Student, a student newspaper at the college, and was an editor of the student newspaper The Isis Magazine.

Career
In the 1990s, Azhar became a journalist, as a technology correspondent for The Guardian, where he published stories on the internet and designed the online (Go2) platform. He later became the business correspondent for The Economist. From 1997 to 1999, he was also a strategy manager for the BBC as well as launched the BBC Online. In 2005, he became head of innovation for Reuters. In 2004, Azhar was appointed to the Ofcom Communications Consumer Panel.

Azhar founded eSouk.com in 2000 and has also held leadership positions at Albert Inc., a data analytics and marketing company in 2002, and OxMedia Ltd, a management consultancy company in 2004. He founded Peer Index, a social media analytics company in 2009. Peer Index won the Europas Grand Prix in 2011, and was acquired by Brandwatch in 2014.

In 2015, Azhar founded Exponential View, a research group that generates newsletters AI and technological transformations. It was described by the Boise State Public Radio as the "leading newsletter and podcast on the impact of technology on our future economy and society".

Azhar is the host of the Bloomberg Originals television show and podcast Exponentially with Azeem Azhar.

Publications
Azhar is the author of The Exponential Age: How Accelerating Technology is Transforming Business, Politics and Society (2021). PD. Smith of The Guardian praised the book as a "a bullish survey of AI, biotech, renewables and more". The book was a part of the 2022 Management Book of the Year Shortlist by Chartered Management Institute. Financial Times writer John Thornhill selected it as one of his best books of 2021,, and The Times selected it as one of their 16 best philosophy and ideas books of 2021.

Accolades
Azhar was named to the Vox 2023 Future Perfect 50 list; Bryan Walsh described the Exponential Viewnewsletter as "the single best way to keep abreast of what’s happening in traditional tech, AI, biotech, and climate tech" and compared his outlook on technology to that of C. P. Snow. He was named to the 2023 Charter 30 list. Wired recommended it as one of the "best newsletters around". He is a member of the World Economic Forum's Expert Network, an executive fellow at Harvard Business School, and a Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford.