Meet Oliver Yonchev: Co-Founder Of Potentially AI

Oliver Yonchev is Co-Founder of Potentially AI PLC, the London-listed company building what it calls Collective AI: the infrastructure that helps people create, protect and monetise what they make with artificial intelligence.

Yonchev has spent his career at the intersection of technology, media, and the creator economy. He was Managing Director of Social Chain AG, the publicly listed social media and e-commerce group that reached a peak valuation in excess of €500 million, before co-founding Flight Story, the group he built with Steven Bartlett.

He is also the founder of Cocreatd, the venture business through which Potentially was originated. Along the way he has worked with some of the world’s biggest brands, including Amazon, Apple, Coca-Cola, TikTok, Google, Disney and Uber.

Potentially was founded with co-founder Sukhveer Sanghera, an aerospace engineer whose career spans NASA Langley, LedgerX and Polymath, where he was Founding CTO. The company recently listed on AIM under the ticker AGI, joining a small group of AI companies choosing London’s public markets over the traditional venture capital path.

The company’s thesis is simple. As AI models improve and commoditise, the lasting value will not sit with the models themselves but with the people and businesses creating with them.

Potentially brings the world’s leading models into one protected environment, built on the principle that everything you create should remain yours, and that you should be able to earn from it. The company describes this as Create. Protect. Monetise.

In The Social Media Age, Is Quality Of Followers And Engagement Becoming More Important Than Quantity?

The last few years have seen a shift from connection-based algorithms, built on who you follow, to recommendation engines. That means follower count is less relevant than it has ever been. If you signal the right things with your content, you can achieve exceptional distribution regardless of audience size.I have never been a fan of followers at all costs.

What matters more today is cultivating a deeper connection with your audience, which means moving people beyond a single social channel and into places like email lists and podcasts, where you can have a direct relationship with a community.

How Is AI Working Alongside Social Media To Build Big, Powerful And Meaningful Companies And Ventures?

We tend to view technology moments in isolation. The last few years have been dominated by conversation around generative AI. But zoom out and consider the accelerant that came before it. Social media democratised attention, so ideas now spread across the internet like a virus. Combine that with the ability to make content, software, anything digital, faster and at a fraction of the cost, and you have uncharted territory.

You are seeing new expectations around the velocity at which a startup can grow and commercialise, and new expectations around value, which is reflected in the scale of fundraising behind AI companies. Social media is the fuse. AI is the bomb.

What Is Your Outlook For The British AI Industry And Innovations?

The UK has a tremendous legacy of driving industry. We have some of the best academic institutions in the world, we have the financial institutions, although they could do more to support early-stage companies, and we now have a government with genuine enthusiasm to compete in AI. I am bullish on the UK for all these reasons.

But we have to play to our strengths. The UK has some of the highest energy costs in the developed world, which makes it hard to compete at the infrastructure level, whether that is chips or data centres. Where we can compete is everything that sits above the models, and that is ultimately where Potentially wants to add value.

What Spurred You To Start Potentially?

I am someone who obsesses over how technology gets applied in the real world. Over a year ago, we made a bet. If you consider the innovation curve, the velocity at which models are improving, and the enormous capital expenditure required to build them, it becomes clear that models will commoditise.

At the same time, people and businesses are starting to grapple with the true cost of AI, and there is a growing unease across the industry about AI displacing people and changing jobs. So we took a contrarian bet, one that is becoming less contrarian by the day. We back the collective. We bring all models into one protected environment, we believe everything you create should remain yours, and we want to empower you to monetise it.

My personal view, which seems lost on many in the industry, is that technology should always be in service of people, not in service of itself. When I met Sukhveer Sanghera, an incredible technologist and engineer, we shared the same view of the future. We knew that at Cocreatd we had to take on a big, audacious bet. That bet is Potentially.

What Do You Want Potentially To Change About Who Owns And Benefits From AI?

We are living through a period where things once thought unthinkable are now possible. We are democratising the ability to create products and services in a way we never have before. It is an amazing time. But I do not believe the value being created should be absorbed by the big labs and the models alone. They are pioneering remarkable technology and deserve to share in the prosperity, but the biggest beneficiary should be people and businesses.

If you build the right infrastructure, the right environment, and the right network effects, that future is possible. And it is a future worth building.

What Is The Biggest Thing Companies Are Missing Out On When It Comes To Utilising AI?

Around 90 per cent of all model usage sits with Google, OpenAI and Anthropic. They make brilliant products, and I use them myself. But there is extraordinary innovation happening across every domain and every modality that most people have simply never experienced. There are models that do very specific tasks exceptionally well, and almost nobody knows they exist.

My prediction is that people will increasingly use different models for different things and that is exactly where we want to help.

Everyone Is Talking About AI But Are We Ignoring Human Ingenuity And The Human Brain’s Creativity By Over-Relying On AI?

It is a real problem. The brain, like anything, atrophies without use. We have spent decades learning how to remember things. Now we need to remember how to ask the right questions.

There is a broad shift happening where humans move from execution to judgement. The big question becomes: how do you practice good judgement? That comes from knowledge and experience, and we must be careful not to outsource the very things that build them.

How Can The UK Challenge The AI And Creator Powerhouses Of The USA And China?

I do not think we are framing it the right way. We cannot compete in every area, but we can collaborate across every area. The important thing is working as a collective, which is why we take the view that the future will be built by many contributions, not a few.

Do You Think That The UK And Europe Overregulate AI, Rather Than Foster Innovation, Growth And Creativity?

I have some empathy for regulators. This is hard. An entire rule book has to be rewritten. But regulators need to be pragmatic and recognise that this is a global race. We need legislation that does not put the UK and Europe at a disadvantage.

There are legitimate things to be concerned about, so I understand the caution. But the decisions regulators make over the next few years may determine the region’s prosperity for decades. The stakes are that high.

How Do You Get A Company Like Potentially Listed On The LSE So Quickly From It Being Founded?

Business is often simpler than most would have you believe. A business is a mission: a team of people in relentless pursuit of doing the best they can. A big part of our early progress has been taking a high-conviction bet, assembling the best team we possibly can, and choosing an alternative funding path in the capital markets.

Most of our contemporaries are exclusively venture-backed, and I understand why. My view is that if we are to be a serious company, being a regulated entity with the right governance from the earliest stage will force us to make the right decisions. I am not afraid of being accountable.

What’s Next For You And Potentially?

We have a truly ambitious mandate, so the next few months are heads down. Launching our first product. Continuing to build the team. Using early feedback to iterate quickly. And working towards being a sovereign champion for the UK.