Anthropic recruits former UK AI adviser Matt Clifford to lead international affairs
After advising Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer on artificial intelligence, the British tech entrepreneur will oversee Anthropic’s relations with governments outside North America.
Matt Clifford, one of the architects of Britain’s recent artificial-intelligence policy, is joining Anthropic after three years working closely with the British government.
The entrepreneur has been appointed managing director for international affairs at the American AI company. Based in London, he will oversee relations with governments in the UK, Europe, India and the Asia-Pacific region.
The move takes Clifford from the heart of Whitehall’s efforts to respond to the rise of generative AI to one of the companies most directly affected by those policies.
Announcing his appointment on LinkedIn, Clifford said his new job was consistent with the work he had already undertaken in government.
“The decisions that will shape AI’s impact shouldn’t be made by any one actor — it will take industry, governments and civil society working together,” he wrote.
A central figure in Britain’s AI policy
Clifford’s involvement with the British state began before the explosion of interest in ChatGPT and generative AI.
In 2022, he was appointed chairman of ARIA, the Advanced Research and Invention Agency, created to finance ambitious scientific and technological research.
His political profile rose considerably the following year. Rishi Sunak chose Clifford as his representative for the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park, where Britain gathered political leaders, researchers and executives from the world’s leading technology companies.
The summit was an important part of Sunak’s attempt to establish Britain as an international centre for AI policy and safety. It was followed by the creation of the UK’s AI Safety Institute.
Clifford remained influential after Labour returned to power.
In January 2025, Keir Starmer asked him to draw up the government’s AI Opportunities Action Plan, intended to accelerate the adoption of artificial intelligence across the British economy and public sector. He subsequently stayed on as an adviser to help implement the plan.
He stepped down at the end of July 2025, after six months in the role, citing personal reasons.
His arrival at Anthropic is likely to add to scrutiny of the movement of senior political figures and advisers into the technology industry.
Britain already has several prominent examples. Former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg joined Meta in 2018. Rishi Sunak has since taken advisory positions involving Microsoft and Anthropic, while former chancellor George Osborne has joined OpenAI.
The practice is hardly new. Banks, defence companies and large multinationals have recruited former politicians and officials for decades. But AI companies occupy an unusual position. Governments are simultaneously courting them as sources of investment and economic growth, relying on their technical expertise and considering rules that could determine how their most powerful systems are developed and deployed.
That makes knowledge of government — and access to it — particularly valuable.
From Entrepreneurs First to Whitehall
Clifford was already a familiar name in European technology circles long before entering government.
In 2011, he and Alice Bentinck founded Entrepreneurs First, the London-based investor and company builder that backs founders at a very early stage, often before they have established a company.
The organisation has since expanded internationally, and the companies associated with its programmes have reached a combined valuation of more than $20 billion.
Clifford will remain chairman of Entrepreneurs First. He will also retain his chairmanship of ARIA.
At Anthropic, he will report to Mariano-Florentino “Tino” Cuéllar, who was appointed the company’s first chief global affairs officer. Cuéllar previously led the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and served as a trustee of Anthropic’s Long-Term Benefit Trust.
Clifford will also work closely with Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei and president Daniela Amodei.
The appointment comes as relations between governments and the handful of companies developing the most advanced AI systems become more complicated.
Questions that only recently belonged largely to researchers — the capabilities of frontier models, the risks of increasingly autonomous systems or the computing power required to train them — have become matters of industrial and foreign policy.
Washington has restricted exports of advanced semiconductors. Brussels has introduced its AI regulatory framework. London has sought to attract investment while presenting itself as an important centre for AI research and safety.
For Anthropic, those political decisions increasingly matter.
The company therefore needs more than engineers and researchers as it expands abroad. It needs people who know how governments work.
Few recruits fit that description as neatly as Clifford. He has spent much of the past three years helping the British government decide how it should deal with companies such as Anthropic. He will now help Anthropic decide how it should deal with governments.
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