Mel Morris, the tech entrepreneur and former chair of King, the company behind the mobile game Candy Crush, first started working in IT in the 1970s.
Back then, he says, computers were “the size of a cabinet and the same power as a tenth of today’s watches”. However, he maintains that it was a good entry point to the technology sector.
“Systems were far less sophisticated,” Morris explains. “My first computer was an ICL 1901 and it had 16 kilobytes of memory, which is nothing, but it forced me to be efficient.”
Technology has advanced a lot in the intervening period – Nvidia’s GB10 superchip, which is used by AI developers and researchers, boasts 128 gigabytes of memory, 8 million times more than Morris’ ICL 1901. However, he believes this ability to work more efficiently has stood him in “good stead” to outperform bigger competitors in the tech sector.
Taking on Google
Morris’ new company, Corpora, is an AI ‘research engine’. The tool, for which he is both an angel investor and CEO, was launched in December 2024 – days before Google’s public announcement of its Deep Research tool, an AI-powered research assistant.
These research tools differ from AI search programmes, such as ChatGPT, because they provide lengthier responses to users’ queries, making them useful for answering more complex or challenging questions. Although the quality of the research reports Corpora produces have so far been mixed.
“If you’re looking for the cheapest place to buy a TV, that’s not research,” Morris says. “Research helps you tackle difficult challenges that you need to understand in a reasonable amount of detail.”
It is efficiency, rather than raw computing power, that helps Corpora produce responses at a faster pace than some of its competitors. All of the public information that it uses to generate its responses is organised in a database, making it easier for AI to search.
“Our database structure allows us to interrogate information at much faster speeds,” Morris explains. “Other AI research tools have to search the web, go through the relevant pages and summarise their findings and, because AI is not exactly the most efficient technology in the world, the cost and time of doing that is quite extensive. But Corpora’s database means it doesn’t have to go through that process.”
Creating Candy Crush
Morris, whose total net worth is £312m, according to The Times, has reportedly invested $15m (£12m) in Corpora. He has a good track record of turning his tech investments into successes.
One of his earlier ventures was Udate, an online dating agency founded in 1999. At this point, the internet was quickly gathering momentum and by the year 2000, the site had over 1 million users. “It wasn’t something I had a brilliant idea to do,” he says. “My business partner wanted to set up a conventional dating agency and I said: ‘Look, I have no interest in that, but why don’t we have a look at doing something online?’”
However, as the company looked to float, the dot-com bubble burst and valuations of online businesses plummeted. “It was a nightmare,” Morris says. “We thought we were going to raise hundreds of millions of dollars but we ended up raising $7.5m on a reverse takeover.”
Looking back, Morris views that nightmare as a blessing in disguise. “The fact we raised less money meant we had to be much more efficient,” he says. Within two years, Udate had become the second-most-popular online-dating website and the most profitable internet company in the UK. It was sold to USA Interactive, the owner of Match.com, in 2002 for £93.6m.
Morris found similar success as an investor and chair of the games company King, which was co-founded by two of his former Udate colleagues, Riccardo Zacconi and Toby Rowland.
We were making games that would effectively fizzle out
When he first put capital behind the business in 2003, the company predominantly made skills-based online games and was struggling to retain users. “We were looking at games like FIFA, which had the benefit of being able to reincarnate the same game every year with new players and features,” Morris says. “In contrast, we were making games that would effectively fizzle out.”
King decided to transition from skills-based mechanics to games that were easy to play but hard to put down. Its greatest success is the mobile game Candy Crush Saga, which generated over $20bn in revenue and had been downloaded 5 billion times since its launch in 2012.
Not all of Morris’ investments have been a success. He had an ill-fated stint as the owner of Derby Football Club between 2015 and 2021, which ultimately ended with the club entering administration.
Morris is hoping for more success now that he’s back in the more familiar surroundings of the tech sector. “There will have to be a quantum step-change in the efficiency and performance of AI for it to start producing a meaningful return on investment,” he says “And we believe we’ve got a piece of technology that is core to that.”
The UK’s AI advantage
Throughout his career, Morris found that creative problem-solving and the ability to do more with less can lead to innovation and financial success. He believes that a similar attitude is what will allow the UK to “absolutely compete” with countries such as the US and China in the GenAI space, despite lacking the same technological infrastructure and resources.
“If you’re using a tuppence-ha’peny-worth of GPUs [graphical processing units, which are used in the deployment and training of AI models], like the UK is, you have to be really smart and efficient with how you use them,” Morris says. In contrast, he claims the Stargate Project in the US, which has committed $500bn of spending on AI infrastructure over the next four years, can afford to be more wasteful.
If you’re using a tuppence-ha’peny-worth of GPUs, you have to be smart with how you use them
He suggests that the Deepseek model of AI development is something that the UK should look to emulate. The Chinese company’s AI model – the announcement of which caused US tech stocks to plummet – is reported to have been created by a team of fewer than 140 people.
“Deepseek showed that sometimes you can make one GPU go a lot further,” Morris adds. “Britain has great intellectual capability and has always been brilliant for software development. That’s partly because we’ve not had access to a lot of wasteful hardware.”
While Morris sees clear potential in the UK’s AI capabilities, he believes the UK government should focus on producing some “quick wins” to encourage more investment in this space.
In January, the UK government set out its AI Action Plan, which aims to turn the country into an AI superpower. But Morris says that the plan amounts to little more than “a lot of very nice words”. “We need the government to lead by example and demonstrate how powerful AI can be,” he says.
Morris hopes that his AI business can demonstrate that the UK is still capable of punching above its weight in the tech space and, like Deepseek, prove that outspending your competitors isn’t the only route to success.
Mel Morris, the tech entrepreneur and former chair of King, the company behind the mobile game Candy Crush, first started working in IT in the 1970s.
Back then, he says, computers were “the size of a cabinet and the same power as a tenth of today’s watches”. However, he maintains that it was a good entry point to the technology sector.
“Systems were far less sophisticated,” Morris explains. “My first computer was an ICL 1901 and it had 16 kilobytes of memory, which is nothing, but it forced me to be efficient.”
