Greg Jackson (businessman)
British businessman From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Greg Jackson CBE (born September 1971) is a British entrepreneur and businessman who is the founder and CEO of Octopus Energy, the largest electricity supplier in the United Kingdom, serving over seven million households and active in 27 countries.[1]
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Biography
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Jackson grew up in Halifax,[2] West Yorkshire, and then Saltburn-by-the-Sea in North Yorkshire.[3] He became interested in electronics and computer coding in the early 1980s, leaving school at 16 to programme computer games.[2] He told the BBC that he remembered having his energy supply cut off when he was growing up.[4] He returned to sixth form college to study economics, before attending Pembroke College, Cambridge.[5]
According to website Move Upstream, "before the age of 30, he had owned and/or managed a number of small businesses employing 4–60 people and turning over £400k to £4m."[6] Jackson founded companies including e-commerce firm C360 and Consultant Connect,[7] a telemedicine provider, and was a director of several businesses, including Zopa, a peer-to-peer lender.[8] He is also an angel investor in companies including Xlinks, which is building the world's largest subsea cable to bring renewable energy from Morocco to the UK,[7] and carbon accounting company Altruistiq.[9]
"After experiencing my bills jump frequently when I was paying them myself as an adult, I knew that something had to be done to change this", Jackson told Energy Digital.[10] He founded Octopus Energy in 2016, and by 2024 the company was valued at over $9 billion.[1] The company is now the largest energy supplier in the UK, the first company to supplant British Gas since market liberalisation in the 1990's[11] [12][13] By 2024, Octopus Energy Group had raised over $2.3bn in funding. The Financial Times reported in 2023 that "Octopus’s credentials as a disrupter have helped win the backing of investors including Generation Investment Management, chaired by former US vice-president Al Gore"[14] among further institutional investors and energy giants.
Jackson lives in London and has two children.[2]
In the 2024 King's Birthday Honours, he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).[15] In the same year, he was named in the 100 Most Influential Climate Leaders in Business in Time magazine's Time 100 Climate.[16]
References
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