Greg Jackson

Jackson was born in Germany in 1971, where his father was then a surveyor in the British Army; the family returned to the UK a few years later, and after his parents divorced he and his two younger siblings were brought up by his mother in Halifax, West Yorkshire. He spent part of his childhood in the North Yorkshire seaside town of Saltburn, where he attended Huntcliff secondary school.⁠[1][1][2][3]

He left school at 16 to write video games and returned to education a few years later to complete his A-levels.⁠[1][3]

Jackson entered Pembroke College, Cambridge, in 1991 and earned a degree in economics; after graduating he joined the graduate scheme of Procter & Gamble, where he worked in marketing.⁠[4][3][1]

After leaving Procter & Gamble, Jackson became managing director of a mirror manufacturer while still in his twenties, later also ran coffee shops, and invested in a series of tech start-ups; before the age of 30 he had owned or managed a number of small and medium-sized businesses. He also founded C360 UK Ltd and served as its chief executive.⁠[1][3][5][6]

In 2006, Jackson sold a customer relationship technology business for £4.5 million.⁠[3]

From 2008 to 2010, Jackson was chief executive of Tangent Labs; from 2010 to 2018 he was a non-executive director of the peer-to-peer lending platform Zopa.⁠[6][6]

From 2013 to 2015, Jackson was managing director of HomeService Alliance; from 2015 to 2022 he was co-founder and chairman of Consultant Connect Ltd.⁠[6][6]

In 2015, Jackson secured £10 million of investment to start the energy company Octopus Energy; he has said it took years to raise the money he needed to launch it. The group launched its service in 2016.⁠[1][5][3][7]

He has said that bringing down energy costs was one of the reasons he started the business. Octopus developed its own technology platform, called KrakenKrakenKraken is a digital-asset trading platform founded in 2011 by Jesse Powell and Thanh Luu and launched for trading in 2013. As Payward’s flagship brand, it has expanded into spot and derivatives trading, equities, tokenized assets, custody and payments through jurisdiction-specific entities.Open the full entry, which it later began licensing to other utility companies.⁠[3][3]

During the UK energy price crisis of 2021, when large numbers of energy suppliers failed, Octopus took on 600,000 customers of the collapsed supplier Avro Energy.⁠[3][3]

By June 2022, Octopus had more than 3 million customers in 14 countries and was valued at £4 billion. Jackson said the company had been on course to make its first profit but had put everything it expected to earn into customer support, so it would not make a profit that year; the company had earlier pledged £50 million to cut customer bills until the price cap rose that October.⁠[3][3][3]

Referring to the suppliers that had failed, he argued that companies without the money to hedge should not enter the energy market, and proposed hedging checks for suppliers with more than 10,000 customers.⁠[3][3]

In November 2021, the green energy supplier Bulb collapsed and entered special administration. On October 29, 2022, the UK government announced that it had approved an agreement between Bulb’s special administrators and Octopus Energy under which Bulb’s 1.5 million customers and 650 employees would move to Octopus, with the sale to be completed through a statutory process called an Energy Transfer Scheme.⁠[3][8][8][8]

In 2023, Octopus took over Shell Energy’s household business, adding 1.3 million customers and overtaking British Gas by customer numbers to become the UK’s largest domestic electricity supplier. In May 2024, after shareholders Generation Investment Management and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments) increased their stakes, Octopus’s valuation rose to $9 billion.⁠[9][9][9]

In the 2024 King’s Birthday Honours, Jackson was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to the energy industry.⁠[10][5]

On July 11 of that year, Teesside University awarded him an honorary Doctor of Business Administration; in the same year, Pembroke College, Cambridge, elected him an Honorary Fellow.⁠[2][4]

On August 19, 2025, the UK Cabinet Office announced that Jackson had been appointed a non-executive member of its board for three years, with a term running from July 21, 2025, until 2028. Non-executive members provide support and challenge to ministers and senior officials on the delivery of key policies and programmes.⁠[6][6]

On September 18, 2025, Octopus announced that it would spin off its software business, called Kraken Technologies, as an independent company. By then the platform was connected to more than 70 million household and business accounts, with clients including EDF, E.ON Next, and National Grid US; Octopus itself had become the UK’s largest energy supplier earlier in 2025, serving 7.7 million households. Jackson said he had set the platform a goal of 100 million accounts by 2027 and that it could now aim to serve a billion people.⁠[11][11][11][11][11]

In a transaction announced afterward, the company completed a $1 billion standalone funding round led by D1 Capital Partners at a valuation of $8.65 billion; after the spin-out Octopus was to retain a 13.7% stake and Australia’s Origin Energy to hold 22.7%, with completion targeted for mid-2026.⁠[12][12][12]

On January 17, 2026, the UK Department for Science, Innovation and Technology announced a new unit, CustomerFirst, to shape how government services are designed and run, led by Tristan Thomas, formerly of Monzo, with Jackson as its first co-chair; the co-chair is an unpaid adviser. The first organization to partner with the unit was the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA). Jackson said that with modern technology, including AI, and empowered teams, service could be improved without increasing costs.⁠[13][5][13][13]

As of October 2026, he was also a member of the UK government’s Industrial Strategy Advisory Council.⁠[5]

On April 15, 2026, The Venture Room released a street-interview video filmed on Regent Street in London in which Jackson was one of the interviewees. He described Octopus Energy as now the UK’s biggest energy retailer and said his mother, a single mother of three who worked in a pub in the evenings and studied by day, had been a huge inspiration to him.⁠[14][14][14]

Asked how he would make his first million if he started again, he said he would build AI services helping small businesses develop online transactions and a following; he also recommended the book Obliquity, about creating something valuable to others, and distinguished short bursts of stress from pressure imposed by other people.⁠[14][14][14]

On May 6, 2026, Jackson was named Personality of the Year at the 2026 City A.M. Awards, held at London’s Guildhall.⁠[15][15]

“Relentlessly focus on customers: if you know what your customers want, you can build a better business for them.” He described this as the secret to building a market leader. (at 06:22 in the video)⁠[14]

“If you get one customer a day, by the end of the month you’ll have 30, and with 30 customers you should be able to start a business.” He suggested first going online to see what is working for others, then walking into every shop and knocking on office doors to put yourself out there. (at 06:34 in the video)⁠[14][14]

“People think selling is about talking; selling is about listening. The moment you think you should pitch is exactly the moment to listen some more.” (at 07:10 in the video)⁠[14]

“If you get rich quick, you’ll get poor quick. If you want to build something of value, it has to be solid.” He cautioned against setting out just to make yourself rich. (at 07:20 in the video)⁠[14][14]

“It’s not the big that eat the small, it’s the fast that eat the slow.” He said that even a company that is already big has to stay fast or it will be eaten. (at 07:37 in the video)⁠[14][14]

Octopus Energy: Official website: https://octopus.energy/ (opens in a new window).⁠[7]