Octopus, Autocab, and Roku: A hub for global tech leaders at Circle Square
By Bruntwood SciTech
For global technology giants Octopus Energy, Autocab, and Roku, finding the right home in Manchester meant securing immediate access to skilled, digital talent. By choosing to co-locate at Circle Square, these pioneering companies have placed themselves at the very heart of the city's academic and tech ecosystem.
The proximity to the University of Manchester has provided an unmatched advantage for recruitment, while our dynamic workspace fosters the essential cross-sector collaboration needed to drive industry-leading innovation and global expansion. For these digital trailblazers, being part of this vibrant community is going to be a key part of their future success.
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Explore our thriving digital community at Circle Square.
At the start of 2021, we started to explore where across the Greater Manchester region that we would set up shop. Being here on Oxford Road, in particular in Circle Square, with great proximity to the ecosystem that is developing around ID Manchester is something that excites us very much at Octopus.
Autocab is a technology company; we're a Software-as-a-Service company. We provide software to hundreds of taxi and private hire companies. We've recently been acquired by Uber and look to globally expand our software offering. And what's cool about what we're doing is we are innovating right here in Manchester. The vision for what is being created at Circle Square and ID Manchester is game-changing for the city, and locally we're really excited to be a part of that.
Being at Circle Square places us beside leading academic institutions such as the University of Manchester and the R&D facilities that they provide. It also places us right in the heart of Manchester's diverse digital talent base, which is going to be essential for us not only as we establish Roku in this first year within Manchester, but also how we continue to grow our team here, enable us to innovate, continue to lead our industry, and grow our business.
A lot of our growth is constrained by the tech talent that we can hire. Accessibility to tech talent—and we feel being very, very close to the university gives us a huge, huge advantage. We're a tech company and we're an open book company, so an organisation that wants to attract the best talent from the local universities, but also seeking to collaborate with other businesses, the educational institutions, and hopefully do so all around the ecosystem that Bruntwood is seeking to create here. We don't know yet what all of that will look like, but we're at the beginning of what we hope will be something very exciting and will drive decarbonisation and help Manchester put its place on the map for that too.
We think the future of work is about having an enjoyable, exciting environment where you're at the office, and we think we found the perfect formula here at Circle Square. You know, I'd like to say it was a choice to be here; honestly, it's almost mandatory for us to be here where we are in order to achieve our goals.