From Strategy to Production: Steve Chan, Stealth Labs

Steve Chan has spent his career inside some of the most demanding environments in which AI can be deployed, and he has learned what it takes to make it actually work. Eight years at BAE Systems Digital Intelligence were followed by five years at Microsoft, where he led GitHub Copilot rollouts across UK Government departments and worked with the Home Office, HMRC, the National Crime Agency and the FCDO on their AI transformation programmes. In 2026, he was named in Computing's AI Leadership Index, one of just 25 individuals recognised for shaping how AI is built, deployed and governed across the UK.

What Steve saw repeatedly, from the inside, was a fundamental gap between ambition and delivery. Organisations with real budgets and genuine intent were producing strategies without production systems. The consultancy model, in his view, was broken. In 2026, he co-founded Stealth Labs to offer an alternative: a technical AI studio where every person codes, every engagement ends in a working system, and responsible AI principles are embedded in the engineering from day one rather than applied as an afterthought.

That last point matters enormously in the contexts where Steve has built his expertise. In national security, tax authority and law enforcement, the consequences of AI systems that are opaque, unfair or ungoverned are not hypothetical, they affect real people and real outcomes. The frameworks for fairness, transparency, accountability and privacy that Steve helped develop at scale in government environments are now baked into how Stealth Labs builds for any client.

The economic contribution is direct and measurable. The UK has the AI ambition and, in many cases, the budgets to match. What has been missing is the ability to turn that ambition into deployed capability. Steve Chan and Stealth Labs are closing that gap, helping UK organisations capture the productivity gains that other economies are already realising, and doing it with the rigour that the public sector demands and the private sector increasingly expects.

To read more about the techUK President's Awards, visit our page here. Winners will be announced at the techUK Annual Dinner on 30 June.

Read more about our President's Award finalists: 

People Award

• Bringing Technology and Purpose Together: Fiona Dawson, Mayden
• Building a Future Where Disability Is No Barrier to Movement: Dr Malik Haddad, Northeastern University London
• Protecting People Online, at Scale: Robin Tombs, Yoti

Society Award

• Protecting Communities Through Intelligence: Clare Elford, Clue Software
• Putting Human Safety at the Centre of Technology: Dr Laura Bishop, British Standards Institution
• Connected Data, Public Value: Vishal Marria, Quantexa

Economy Award

• From Strategy to Production: Steve Chan, Stealth Labs
• Making Technology Work for Small Business: Laura Burley, Xero
• The Genetics Revolution, Made Real: Professor Sir Peter Donnelly, Genomics

Planet Award

• Sustainability by Design: Ray Knight, Atos
• Turning Buildings into Efficiency Engines: Javier Benitez, Colt Technology Services
• Technology in Service of Nature: Isobel Ashbey, Cambridge Consultants