As the year comes to a close, it's a time for reflection on what's been achieved and planning for the future. Despite the challenges posed by Covid-19, there have been many positives, including increased adoption of flexible working and normalization of mental health discussions. The deep-tech ecosystem has experienced significant growth, with investment in the UK sector rising 291% to £2.3bn and a projected total investment of over $120bn for 2021. This trend is expected to continue, with small businesses and innovation playing a crucial role in driving economic stability. Speechmatics has made huge progress this year, including the launch of its Autonomous Speech Recognition technology, which uses unlabelled data to train on diverse audio files, significantly improving voice characteristics and promoting inclusivity.