Vodafone to bring its high tech incubator to London

Silicon Valley is coming to Paddington this year as Vodafone’s xone research hub – tasked with building and testing next generation mobile technologies – will shut down its US operations and move to the capital.

Vodafone's xone London hub will help to incubate local startups, between 10 and 20 at a time, who are exploring apps or services that could complement Vodafone’s technology in the future.

While the existing hub based on Redwood, California, is comprised of just five staff, Vodafone said this morning it plans to boost this to 20 once xone moves into Vodafone’s Paddington offices.

“Establishing a new hub for Vodafone xone in London will bring our product development team closer to the customers it serves. It will allow us to draw on a vast pool of technology talent in the UK and Europe and simplify our development process, enabling us to get the very latest technology into the hands of our customers as quickly as possible,” said Vodafone’s consumer services director Stefano Parisse.