Golden Gun award goes to SwiftKey’s Dr Ben Medlock MBE and Jon Reynolds MBE at 2016 Young Guns

Alumni accolade sees the tech entrepreneurs succeed 2015 Golden Gun winners James Watt and Martin Dickie of craft beer firm BrewDog

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Dr Ben Medlock MBE and Jon Reynolds MBE, founders of innovative keyboard app SwiftKey, have been jointly crowned Golden Gun at the Young Guns 2016 awards.

The accolade, which recognises the exceptional achievements of a Young Gun alumni business, went to 2012 alumnus Medlock and Reynolds following an impressive year in which their company was acquired by Microsoft for a reported $250m, and they received honours from the Queen.

Using artificial intelligence and natural language processing, the SwiftKey keyboard app takes note of a user’s commonly used phrases to give accurate next word prediction and correct spelling mistakes.

The app – which is now available in over 100 languages – has had millions upon millions of downloads and has seen SwiftKey generate revenues of £8.4m (2014) and employ over 160 staff in offices across London, San Francisco and Seoul.

Always keen to move with the times, Medlock and Reynolds recently announced the launch of the Swiftmoji emoji keyboard app which makes emoji predictions based on what you’ve just typed.

The duo take the crown from 2015 Golden Gun duo James Watt and Martin Dickie of fast-growth craft beer company BrewDog.

Medlock was presented with the Golden Gun award by Robert Leigh of Young Guns sponsor DeVono Cresa (pictured) at the 2016 awards luncheon held at the prestigious Kensington Roof Gardens in London last week.

Find out more about Medlock and Reynolds’ Young Guns success here. To view the Young Guns Class of 2016 click here.

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