The architect of the UK government’s AI strategy has joined the US startup Anthropic in a senior role a year after stepping down from his Downing Street post.
Matt Clifford, a successful tech investor, was appointed as AI opportunities adviser by Keir Starmer last year but resigned from the unpaid role six months later for personal reasons.
Clifford is moving to Anthropic as managing director, international affairs, and will lead the company’s engagement with governments outside the US including in the UK, Europe, Asia-Pacific and India.
Anthropic said Clifford would remain as chair of government-backed Aria, the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency, which funds “moonshot” science and tech projects. He will also maintain his chair role at Entrepreneurs First, the tech venture capital firm he co-founded.
A not-for-profit campaign group said the move raised questions about the “revolving door” between government and industry for former government advisers as well as ministers.
The path from elected office to Silicon Valley is already well-established after the former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg took a senior role at Meta in 2018, followed last year by the former prime minister Rishi Sunak taking advisory roles at Microsoft and Anthropic – and the ex-chancellor George Osborne joining OpenAI.
Clifford, 41, said the most important decisions about AI would be made by companies and governments “together”.
He added: “Countries everywhere want real agency over how this technology is built and used, and my job is to make Anthropic a genuine partner in that – in Europe, Asia and beyond.”
Anthropic, the developer of the Claude chatbot, is preparing for a stock exchange flotation that could value the business at $2tn (£1.5tn).
Tom Brake, the chief executive of Unlock Democracy, a not-for-profit campaign group, said the move showed “the revolving door is a problem for advisers as much as it is for ministers”.
“Taking extensive knowledge obtained within government, about a policy as sensitive as AI to a private sector company shortly after leaving government gives that company a huge advantage,” said Brake, a Liberal Democrat MP from 1997 to 2019.
Beeban Kidron, the crossbench peer and prominent critic of the government’s AI policy, said: “We need more independent politics, which puts the interests of workers, citizens and society at the forefront of our relationship with the tech sector.”
MP Chi Onwurah, Labour chair of the science, innovation and technology committee, said Clifford had made a “significant contribution” to domestic AI policy and movement between the public and private sector should be allowed.
But she said it was a matter of “some concern” that he was taking his knowledge to a global AI player so soon after leaving government.
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“I hope he will use his skills and experience to promote responsible AI to Anthropic rather than promoting irresponsible AI to the UK government,” she said.
An Anthropic spokesperson said the UK was “one of dozens” of governments Clifford’s team would engage with. “We hire people with expertise and who understand how government works because our work requires it – in every market, not just the UK.”
Prior to his government work, Clifford was already an established figure on the UK tech scene as a co-founder of Entrepreneurs First, which has helped build tech companies with a combined worth of more than $20bn.
Clifford had worked with Sunak’s government as the former prime minister’s representative to the 2023 AI Safety Summit in the UK, and helped create the organisation that later became the world-leading AI Security Institute.
He was appointed as Starmer’s AI adviser after drafting the government’s AI action plan, which supports the creation of AI growth zones to host datacentres and the building of the UK’s own AI models.
He was appointed chair of Aria in 2022. It is understood that he will step back from any matter involving Anthropic at Aria.
