Former UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to advise Microsoft and Anthropic 

Rishi Sunak, who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2022 to 2024, has taken on senior advisory roles at Microsoft and Anthropic. The Guardian reports this.

Letters from Parliament’s Office of the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (Acoba), which made Sunak’s appointments public, raised concerns that the ex-Conservative prime minister’s privileged information “could give Microsoft an unfair advantage.”

Sunak has some history with Microsoft, which has several active contracts with British government departments. In 2023, he unveiled a £2.5 billion deal with Microsoft to invest in new data centers and training in the UK

Acob too noted that “there is a reasonable concern that your appointment could be seen as giving unfair access and influence within the UK government… given the ongoing debate over how best to regulate AI, and at a time of intense debate and lobbying around the world over what the approach should be.”

Sunak said he would remain clear in advising on UK policy issues, stick to high-level perspectives on macroeconomic and geopolitical trends, and avoid lobbying. He said he would pay his salary to the Richmond Project, a charity he founded with his wife earlier this year.

The former prime minister also serves as a senior advisor to investment bank Goldman Sachs and a speechwriter for companies such as Bain Capital and Makena Capital.

Sunak is not the first British politician to take on a role in helping Silicon Valley tech giants navigate government affairs. Sunak’s senior political adviser, Liam Booth-Smith, is also on Anthropic’s payroll. And former Liberal Democrat Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg was Meta’s president of global affairs until January 2025.

In the United States, the revolving door between Silicon Valley and the US government is constantly active. At Meta, Clegg was replaced by Joel Kaplan, George W. Bush’s former deputy chief of staff, and Dustin Carmack, a former adviser to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, joined the firm’s policy team in 2024. Microsoft’s current president of global affairs is Lisa Monaco, a former deputy attorney general under Joe Biden.