Chris Hill-Scott, 29, gave away his stake in SwiftKey which yesterday was sold to Microsoft for the massive sum, in return for a bicycle

From fluffing that job interview to missing the grade – we have all made mistakes we regret in life.

But none can measure up to one Cambridge graduate whose decision to become a photographer has cost him a share of £174million.

Chris Hill-Scott, 29, gave away his stake in SwiftKey - a predictive text app- which yesterday was sold to Microsoft for the massive sum, in return for a bicycle.

University friends Jon Reynolds, 30, and Ben Medlock, 36, have walked away with over £25million each after seven short years.

Mr Hill-Scott, who now designs websites for the government, earning just above £50,000 per year, yesterday tweeted: 'The biggest mistake I have ever made.'

Mr Reynolds and Ben Medlock founded the company in 2008 after leaving university.

But despite them each nabbing a reported £25million each for their seven years work for the company, founder Mr Hill-Scott, 29. from Buckinghamshire, did not receive a penny.

He gave up his directorship two weeks into the project to pursue a career in photography.

Alongside his comment, posted on Twitter, he published a document from Companies’ House detailing his resignation as a director.

The Times reported last night that Mr Hill-Scott disliked the long hours associated with working for a technology start-up and struggled without a salary.

HOW DOES SWIFTKEY WORK? SwiftKey works by understanding how words work together in context and continually learning to improve its knowledge. This means it can predict your next word when typing, but also radically improves the accuracy of autocorrection. The app also lets you type by sliding your fingers across the screen, which can speed things up. It can also store your preferences online so they can be used on all your gadgets, and is constantly updated with trending phrases as new words become popular. Advertisement

A spokesman for SwiftKey said he left the company on good terms with his friends.

Mr Reynolds and Dr Medlock went on to develop the text technology that went on to be used in more than 300million smartphones and tablets around the world.

The software uses so-called artificial intelligence to learn from the person using the phone, and improve its predictions.

It suggests the next word a user is about to type and can even remember slang and nicknames.

The company estimates its software has saved its users 10 trillion keystrokes, which amounts to more than 100,000 years of typing time.

The pair also helped Stephen Hawking to upgrade his computer-generated voice by applying predictive language software to his system and enabling him to speak faster and continue to give lectures.

Silicon Valley, the name for America’s west coast technology centre, has tried to tap into British expertise in artificial intelligence before.

His university friends Jon Reynolds, 30, (left) and Ben Medlock, 36, have walked away with over £25million each after seven short years

The software uses so-called artificial intelligence to learn from the person using the phone, and improve its predictions. It suggests the next word a user is about to type and can even remember slang and nicknames

In 2014, Google bought DeepMind for £400million – a programme which develops artificial intelligence for computer games.

Last year Apple bought VocalIQ, which makes software to help computers and people converse more naturally.

Mr Reynolds, an undergraduate studying natural sciences met Dr Medlock, a post-graduate in natural language ad information processing, at Cambridge in 2004.

SwiftKey’s app, which works in more than 100 languages and has been downloaded more than 10 million times, has topped the download rankings in 47 countries.

The technology also appears automatically on hundreds of millions of smartphones after the company did deals with businesses including Samsung, the Korean phone maker.

SwiftKey has worked with Cambridge-based Professor Steven Hawking, having applied predictive language software to his communication system

A spokesman for SwiftKey said: ‘When SwiftKey formed there were three founding members. Chris was a friend of Jon’s from school and Ben was a friend from his university in Cambridge.

‘Two months after forming the company Chris decided to leave… Jon and Ben bought his shares. He left on good terms.’

The company added on its website yesterday: ‘Eight years ago we started out as two friends with a shared belief that there had to be a better way of typing on smartphones. We’ve come a long way since then; today hundreds of millions of people around the world, and many of the leading mobile manufacturers, rely on our language prediction technology.