If you've invited people before and you've just hit a message asking you to confirm your email address first, nothing has gone wrong with your account. We added the check. This explains why, and how to clear it.
Clearing it takes about a minuteLink to this section
Whenever your address is unconfirmed, a banner sits at the top of the page.
- Click Send verification code.
- Look for a six-digit code in your inbox. It usually arrives in a few seconds. Check spam if it doesn't.
- Type the code into the banner and click Verify.
The banner disappears and invitations work straight away. If the code doesn't arrive, click Resend. You only do this once.
Dismissed the banner earlier in the session? Go to Settings → Account instead and confirm the address from there.
Why we checkLink to this section
Invitations and the other emails we send for you leave our servers with our name and your organisation's name on them, and they go to whichever addresses you choose. Before we send mail on your behalf, we confirm that the address asking us is really yours.
Anyone can type any email address into a sign-up form. Until that address is confirmed, we have no evidence that the person holding the account is the person who owns it. That matters most where we contact people who haven't chosen to hear from us, which is what inviting and these other emails do. Without the check, someone could sign up under any name, paste in a list of addresses, and have our servers deliver a message to all of them under an organisation they've never worked for. Confirming the sender is what stops that.
It also does something quieter but useful: it proves the address works. Invitations, password resets and billing receipts all go to it, and a typo nobody noticed would stop every one of them arriving.
Why we don't make everyone confirm at sign-upLink to this section
Plenty of products put a verification wall at the front door. Confirm your address, then you may come in. We decided against it.
Most people signing up are giving us a few minutes to show them something worth their time, and sending them off to their inbox first loses some of them for good. It also protects very little, because a new account starts in its own empty organisation. There's nothing in there yet to protect.
So we let you in and confirm the address at the point where it starts to matter. That's why this appears the first time you send something in your organisation's name, such as an invitation, rather than the first time you sign in.
Where the check appliesLink to this section
Your address needs to be confirmed before we send email in your organisation's name: inviting people, sending The AI State of Play or another pulse's link, briefing the team, starting the Leadership Position tool or sending its reminders, opening a Review, and starting the extension rollout. It's also needed to start or update the industry briefing, and to apply to the partner programme, where your agreement and every commission payment are tied to that address.
Everything else works with an unconfirmed address.
If you joined by invitation, you're already confirmedLink to this section
Opening an invitation from your own inbox proves you own the address, so we mark it confirmed the moment you accept. This only comes up for people who signed up directly, which in most organisations means the owner and anyone they added as an admin early on.
If the address on your account is wrongLink to this section
Confirm the code at the address that's currently on the account if you still have access to it, then change it in Settings → Account. If you've lost access to it, contact support and we'll move the account across for you.
Something missing or out of date here? Tell us.