wWhen the billionaire chief executive of AI chip maker Nvidia hosted a party in central London for Donald Trump’s state visit in September, the power imbalance between Silicon Valley and British politicians was starkly exposed.
Jensen Huang quickly took the stage after the meetings at Checkers and gathered hundreds of his guests to cheer on the power of AI. In front of a giant Nvidia logo, he urged the venture capitalists in front of him to usher in “a new industrial revolution”, announced billions of pounds in AI investment and, like Willy Wonka, handed out golden tickets to a few lucky recipients in the room.
“If you want to be rich, this is where you want to be,” he declared.
But his biggest party trick was having a surprise guest waiting for him. At Huang’s signal, the British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, walked out as the crowd screamed at Huang’s pulling power.
Starmer, seeming slightly bewildered, saluted his host’s “absolutely phenomenal” presentation, told the audience how he had been “messaging away” with Huang and thanked one of the world’s richest men for his “belief in what we are doing, in your investment, in your vision.” Huang sent him off with a gift: an inscribed AI processing unit.
When that did not happen, Huang called Liz Kendall, the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, to the stage, followed by Peter Kyle, the Secretary of State for Trade. The parade of British Cabinet ministers at this private Nvidia event spoke volumes about how successfully American tech oligarchs have pulled British politicians – serving and former – into their orbit.
This week, they had another big fish. OpenAI, the $500 billion ChatGate maker, hired former Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, telling him loudly that he was joining “the most exciting and promising company in the world.”
He was the latest senior figure to pass through the revolving door between Westminster and Silicon Valley. In October, former Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak took an advisory role with Anthropic, one of OpenAI’s main rivals, and Microsoft, which has invested heavily in both AI startups. Liam Booth-Smith, Sunak’s chief of staff who sits in the House of Lords, also took a senior role at Anthropic this summer after signing a memorandum of understanding with the UK government.
He follows former Liberal Democrat deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, who spent seven years leading public affairs for Mark Zuckerberg at Meta, which runs Instagram and Facebook. Clegg is now an AI investor who last week predicted that “we’ll move from staring at the Internet to living in the Internet”. He made millions of dollars in Meta. Some reports say as much as $100 million. He would not confirm this, but said he was paid “very well”.
Meanwhile, Tony Blair, who was Prime Minister for a decade until 2007, is becoming increasingly influential on technology policy, successfully lobbying to introduce a digital ID in the UK through his Tony Blair Institute (TBI).
TBI is partially funded by the foundation of Oracle founder and chief executive Larry Ellison. Kirsty Innes, a former TBI policy expert, recently became a special advisor to Kendall.
The Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Select Committee is monitoring the revolving door situation. Alex Sobel MP, a member of Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights which is investigating AI, said: “I am deeply concerned that tech companies could use their enormous purchasing power to weaken much-needed regulation by hiring people who have served at the highest levels of previous governments.”
A tech company insider said jobs at the biggest US AI companies could be a good fit for frontline politicians because they require risk-taking as well as comfort. Another advantage is that technical leaders do not demand superior management skills. Meanwhile, their value is rising, as AI companies increasingly target their products at government customers as well as businesses and consumers. Osborne’s task appears to be to get his foot in the door of governments to help OpenAI inject its technology into the bloodstream of public systems. It already has government-level arrangements with Argentina, Australia, Germany, Norway, the United Arab Emirates, South Korea, the UK, Greece, Estonia and Kazakhstan, but it wants more.
Selling state-level AI is competitive. Palantir, which hosted Starmer at its Washington base in February and signed a strategic partnership with the Ministry of Defense in September, is rolling out its systems to health trusts, police forces and local councils in the UK. The company’s UK communications is being led by a former head of strategic communications at Downing Street.
The UK is an important place for AI companies to gain influence: regulations on AI development are looser than those in the EU, its universities foster significant innovations, and the UK also has one of the most respected AI safety institutes in the world.
The revolving door also swings in the other direction, sending people in the tech industry into positions of public influence. The UK government last month appointed Raya Hadsell, vice president of research at Google DeepMind, as an “AI ambassador”, along with Tom Blomfield, founder of online bank Monzo. Blomfield is also a partner in San Francisco startup incubator Y Combinator, which was led by OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman.
Civil servants from the Government Digital Service set up a consultancy called Public Digital, which has since won millions of pounds worth of public contracts. One of its partners, Emily Middleton, took last year Role of a Senior Director General In digital service of government.
