Kari Dempsey has spent 20+ years working in the technology sector as a CTO, Chief Data Scientist, Data Engineer, and Machine Learning Engineer, building and scaling AI and data solutions—and teams—across the commercial, defence, and government sectors in the UK.

As a CTO practitioner at RingStone, she works with private equity firms globally in an advisory capacity, conducting technical due diligence on AI and technology companies for both buy-side and sell-side transactions. She serves as Director of AI and subject matter expert, assessing AI maturity, technical risk, and scalability across a range of sectors, including SaaS, deeptech, robotics, and energy.

Prior to her work in diligence, Kari served as CTO at a marine robotics and data company, delivering world-firsts in subsea autonomy, leading technology through multiple funding rounds, and scaling distributed teams of 200+ professionals across multiple countries. Before that, she served as Deputy CTO and Chief Data Scientist at the UK Hydrographic Office (UK Ministry of Defence), where she built AI capability from inception into an award-winning, sustainable function.

Kari holds a PhD in Condensed Matter Physics and brings deep expertise in data engineering, AI, MLOps, cloud architecture, and technology strategy to her advisory work.