Sam Dhesi

Sam Dhesi is a British-Indian entrepreneur, former surgeon, and technology leader who has built an unusual career path from the operating theatre to government and then to the forefront of AI-driven recruitment. He trained as a doctor and began his career in medicine, but transitioned into technology after developing a viral app during the COVID-19 pandemic. This pivot led him to a role as Head of Emerging Technology for the UK Government's COVID-19 crisis response team, where he experienced first-hand the acute difficulty of screening and hiring candidates at scale under emergency conditions — an insight that would directly inspire Popp AI.

In 2022, Dhesi co-founded Popp AI in London alongside James Cochrane-Dyet and Ilyes Benmansour, with a shared conviction that recruitment was broken: too rigid, too impersonal, and too reliant on static forms and keyword-matched CVs. As CEO, he has led Popp AI to develop a conversational AI platform that allows enterprise hiring teams to engage candidates in meaningful, open-ended dialogue at scale — automatically analysing responses, ranking candidates by fit, and providing detailed AI-generated reports, all while maintaining a human feel. Dhesi's medical background informs his commitment to building systems that are both high-performing and equitable.

Popp AI raised £3.6 million in a seed round co-led by Emerge and SuperSeed Ventures in late 2024 and has since become a go-to platform for some of the world's largest staffing firms, including Randstad Sourceright and Robert Walters. The company won the 2025 TIARA Talent Tech Star Champion of Champions award, and in 2025 raised additional capital to accelerate growth across enterprise recruitment teams globally. Popp's platform now operates in over 50 languages and integrates directly with leading ATS and CRM systems.