Robin Tombs

Co-Founder and CEO Yoti

Last Reviewed: September 26, 2026

Executive Summary

Robin Tombs is co-founder and chief executive of Yoti, the London company that provides digital identity and age assurance technology. He set it up in 2014 after more than a decade building online gaming businesses. With Noel Hayden he co-founded the web games business IDM, which they sold in 1999, and then Gamesys in 2001, where he was finance director. In April 2026 the company said its technology had carried out more than a billion age checks and that Tombs had received a Lifetime Achievement in Age Assurance award.

Career Highlights

• Co-founder and CEO of Yoti. He has been a director of Yoti Ltd since its incorporation on 15 April 2014 and of the parent company, Yoti Holding Ltd, since April 2015.
• Received a Lifetime Achievement in Age Assurance award at the Global Age Assurance Summit in April 2026, according to Yoti.
• Co-founded Gamesys with Noel Hayden in 2001 and served as its finance director. He was a director of Gamesys Limited from 2002 to 2005.
• Co-founded IDM, a web games business, with Noel Hayden; it was sold in 1999.
• Director of the Yoti Charitable Foundation since 2017.
• Founded the youth charity ZING in 2009.

Professional Journey

Tombs’s business partnership with Noel Hayden began with IDM, a web games business the two co-founded and sold in 1999. The UK company register shows him as a director of Internet Digital Media Ltd from 1997 to 2001. In 2001 they co-founded Gamesys, which became a large online gaming operator. Tombs was its finance director, and Companies House records him as a director of Gamesys Limited from September 2002 to April 2005.

Yoti began in April 2014. Tombs says the idea came to him at a Spartan race in California, where he watched thousands of competitors struggle through an identity check based on paper documents. He co-founded the company with Duncan Francis. The company behind it was incorporated in London that month as Lampkicking Ltd and renamed Yoti Ltd in 2015, and Tombs has been a director since the day it was formed. A holding company, Yoti Holding Ltd, followed in April 2015, and the Yoti Charitable Foundation in 2017. Yoti’s About page names him as chief executive.

Yoti offers a free digital identity app and age assurance services. According to the company, it has carried out more than one billion age checks globally, and in 2022 it took part in UK Home Office sandbox trials of age checks in supermarkets. When Yoti announced his Lifetime Achievement award in April 2026, it credited him with a privacy-first approach and with helping shape the regulatory frameworks for the sector. “From day one, we believed there was a better way to prove age and identity, one that protects privacy rather than compromises it,” Tombs said.

The company has also come under regulatory pressure. In March 2026 Spain’s data protection agency fined Yoti €950,000 for GDPR infringements relating to its Digital ID app. Yoti rejected the decision and said it had begun an appeal to the Spanish High Court.

Outside Yoti, Tombs has been an angel investor in a number of technology companies. In 2009 he founded ZING with his childhood friend Chris White, a charity that supports organisations helping young people realise their potential. He is also a member of Founders Pledge.

Education

No record of his education was found in any source reviewed.