The UK Government’s leading AI advisor is stepping away from his role after six months of shaping the country’s policy, leaving many wondering how the country’s AI action plan will play out without its pivotal author.
Matt Clifford announced he will be stepping down as the Prime Minister’s AI adviser for “purely personal reasons” at the end of July, but with no obvious successor it is unclear what the future of his plans will be.
Confirming his departure online, Clifford praised Keir Starmer and Technology Minister Peter Kyle for their “enormous personal investment” in the AI agenda but said “there is so much more to do” on making AI work for the UK.
With a broad resume including the founding of investment firm Entrepreneurs First, Clifford first joined government in August 2023 to serve as then PM Rishi Sunak’s representative for the AI Safety Summit in the following November, and later returned to support Starmer in January 2025 with the release of his AI Opportunities Action Plan.
AI action plan, what next?
The plan has driven much of the government’s recent investment into AI, with Starmer touting the technology as a “golden opportunity” to reform the public sector and improve the UK’s economy.
Maria Luciana, an AI research associate at Cambridge, described Clifford as not “just involved” in the plan, but the “public face of UK AI globally”, and claimed his departure exposed “just how fragile the current architecture is” for the government’s AI ambitions.
While the government has not yet announced a successor to the role, a spokesperson told media it would be “building on [his] work to bolster AI expertise across government and cement the UK’s position as a world leader in AI.”
For now Clifford, who will be spending more time with a sick family member, was keen to express his "extremely ambitious" view about the work he will get done over the next five weeks.
Investments welcomed but clarity is needed
Notably, Clifford’s announcement comes just a week after his plan was allocated £2 billion in the government’s spending review to fund a “twentyfold expansion of the UK’s AI Research Resource capacity”, the AI Security Institute, and a ‘Tech Expert’ programme to improve AI education.
Up to £500 million of the funding will also be used to create a UK Sovereign AI Unit to “support the emergence of national AI champions” through public-private collaboration, investments, and joint ventures.
However, while the focus on ‘sovereign AI’ was praised as a positive step forward, some senior figures in the data centre industry have said a lack of clarity on what the government, and its EU counterparts, means by the term in practice has left the way forward uncertain.
Clifford’s plan for the UK Sovereign AI unit broadly described investment in AI research and start-ups, but whether this will include locally built models and data or GPU infrastructure based in the UK is less clear, and finding the power for an AI revolution is its own beast.
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