Skip to content
Welcome, thoughtbot's Giant Robots listeners!Start here
MC
PersonGB

Matt Clifford

Co-founder of Entrepreneur First; managing director for international affairs at Anthropic (from September 2026).

Clifford resigned as chair of the Advanced Research and Invention Agency on 7 September 2026, five days after announcing his move to Anthropic as managing director for international affairs, after the Commons committee had flagged the conflict.

Last refreshed: 22 September 2026 · Appears in 1 active topic

Key Question

Why is a deep-tech VC angel-backing a synthetic gas plant?

Timeline for Matt Clifford

#15 7 Sept

Resigned as ARIA chair after accepting a role at Anthropic

UK Startups and Innovation: Clifford quits ARIA chair for Anthropic
#2 20 Apr

Angel-invested in Rivan's £25m fundraise

UK Startups and Innovation: Rivan raises £25m for Europe's biggest SNG plant
View full timeline →
Follow UK Startups and Innovation →

Background

Clifford co-founded Entrepreneur First with Alice Bentinck in 2011, a London talent-investor programme that invests in individuals before they have a co-founder or an idea; that remains Clifford's primary identity outside government.

He also angel-invests independently of EF: in April 2026 he was one of three named backers, alongside Thomas Wolf and Markus Villig, in Rivan's £25m round for Project Steadfast, a 15MW synthetic natural gas plant in Wiltshire billed as Europe's largest SNG facility and the first to inject synthetic gas directly into the UK grid.

Clifford chaired the Advanced Research and Invention Agency from its establishment until September 2026, a dual position as both a founder-backer of UK deep tech and a government adviser on how it is funded. He is now managing director for international affairs at Anthropic, keeping him close to Britain's frontier-AI relationships from inside a lab rather than a government agency.

Key Issues
ARIA chair exit

Clifford quits ARIA for Anthropic

Matt Clifford resigned as chair of the Advanced Research and Invention Agency on 7 September 2026, five days after announcing a move to Anthropic as managing director for international affairs.

Dame Chi Onwurah's select committee had already flagged the arrangement as a conflict of interest before he quit: a sitting chair of a public research-funding agency joining a frontier AI Lab whose interests his own agency's decisions touch. The resignation removes Clifford from ARIA's board but does not resolve the question the committee raised, since a successor chair had not yet been named.

Common Questions

Reference

Who is Matt Clifford and what is Entrepreneur First?
Matt Clifford is the co-founder and CEO of Entrepreneur First (EF), a London talent-investor programme that matches individuals into co-founder pairs and backs the resulting companies at pre-seed. He co-founded EF with Alice Bentinck in 2011.
Why did Matt Clifford resign as chair of ARIA?
Clifford resigned as chair of the Advanced Research and Invention Agency on 7 September 2026, five days after announcing he was joining Anthropic as managing director for international affairs. The Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, chaired by Dame Chi Onwurah, had flagged the conflict between the two roles.Source: event
Why did Matt Clifford invest in Rivan?
Clifford joined a £25m round for Rivan's Project Steadfast, a 15MW synthetic natural gas plant in Wiltshire, in April 2026. The investment signals his thesis that net-zero Energy infrastructure is the next frontier for technology angels.Source: Lowdown
What companies has Entrepreneur First backed?
EF's portfolio includes Magic Pony Technology (acquired by Twitter), Cleo, and Tractable, among others. The programme runs cohorts in London, Paris, Berlin, Singapore, and Bangalore.