Britain’s high-risk science funder is hunting for a new chair after its founding leader walked away from the post. Matt Clifford told ARIA on September 7 that he would hand over leadership of the Advanced Research and Invention Agency, explaining that the full-time job he accepted at Anthropic should not bleed into the agency’s work.
Anthropic hired him on September 2 as Managing Director for International Affairs, a London-based mandate covering governments across Europe and Asia-Pacific. At the time he promised to keep chairing ARIA while trimming his other commitments. The plan unravelled within days.
Clifford had just finished his first full term at ARIA, and he told the agency’s backers that the right move was a clean handover. The government asked him to stay on an interim basis until November 6 while it recruits a successor, and he agreed, with conflict-of-interest safeguards in place for the transition window.
His portfolio at ARIA has run from neurotechnology to climate and life sciences, and he described the agency as a bold national experiment that is paying off. Before ARIA he served as the UK’s AI envoy and helped stage the early international AI safety summits that put Britain at the center of frontier governance talks.
The departure thins the ranks of British officials with close ties to frontier labs at a moment when Westminster is still deciding how hard to regulate them. Clifford keeps his post at Entrepreneurs First, the venture firm he co-founded, and will now steer Anthropic’s government work from the other side of the table.
