Matt Clifford is stepping down as founding chair of the Advanced Research and Invention Agency, the UK government’s high-risk research funding body, five days after taking a full-time government-affairs job at Anthropic. Clifford announced his decision on September 7, 2026, and ARIA confirmed that he will remain in post on an interim basis, in agreement with the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade, while the agency begins the search for a new chair.
In his statement, Clifford said he had completed his first full term the previous month and had “decided to step down to ensure my new role at Anthropic doesn’t become a distraction from ARIA’s incredible work.” He said the Secretary of State had asked him to stay on for a short transitional period until November 6, 2026, to allow the department to launch a process to select a new chair, and that he had agreed to do so with appropriate safeguards against potential conflicts in place. The search for his replacement, he wrote, would kick off shortly.
From Retaining the Chair to Stepping Down
The departure reverses the arrangement Clifford set out five days earlier. On September 2, 2026, he announced that he was joining Anthropic as Managing Director for International Affairs, leading the company’s work with governments outside North America. In that post, he said he would be based in London and would work with governments across Europe and Asia-Pacific, and that he was staying on as chair of both ARIA and Entrepreneurs First, the venture firm he co-founded, while stepping back from everything else. The reversal means his continuation as ARIA’s chair lasted less than a week.
In his September 7 statement, Clifford described ARIA as a bold national experiment that, in his words, is paying off, pointing to a programme portfolio spanning neurotechnology, climate science and life sciences. He said the agency had become a beacon for global talent and that, under chief executive Kathleen Fisher, it would go from strength to strength. ARIA’s own statement said Clifford had played a central role in building the agency and that, through his leadership and guidance, it was set up to deliver on its mission to unlock transformational breakthroughs for society.
An Official Record of the Agency He Leaves
ARIA’s annual report and accounts for 2025 to 2026, published on July 15, 2026, records that Clifford was re-appointed as ARIA chair in September 2025, with a term-end date of August 14, 2030. The report describes ARIA as an executive non-departmental public body and states that it had active research and development funding agreements totalling £514.1 million as of March 31, 2026, up from £295.0 million a year earlier, with 15 programmes approved by year-end. It names Fisher, who took up the chief executive post on February 2, 2026 after leading DARPA’s Information Innovation Office, as ARIA’s accounting officer.
Under its governance framework, all ARIA board members are required to declare any personal or business interests that may influence their judgement, or that may be perceived to do so, and those interests are published on the agency’s transparency page. The framework names the Secretary of State as the appointing authority for the chair, the role now set to be filled through the selection process the department is preparing to launch.
From Founding Chair to Anthropic
Clifford was appointed ARIA’s first chair on July 19, 2022, in a government announcement that named Ilan Gur as the agency’s founding chief executive. The government set out plans to create ARIA in February 2021 to fund high-risk, high-reward scientific research, and the legislation establishing the agency received Royal Assent in February 2022. At the time of his appointment, Clifford was co-founder and chief executive of Entrepreneur First, an international investor in technical talent.
The department that asked Clifford to remain during the transition is itself new. GOV.UK states that the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology — ARIA’s sponsor department, which directed the preparation of its most recent accounts — is being replaced by the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and the Cabinet Office. ARIA’s statement on Clifford’s interim continuation is dated September 7, 2026; the chair selection process is expected to begin shortly, with Clifford’s tenure set to end on November 6, 2026.
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