Matt Clifford

Matt Clifford is Chair of the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA), a UK agency funding breakthrough R&D, and Co-founder and Chair of Entrepreneurs First, a leading incubator of technology startups.

ARIA’s mandate is to make high-risk bets in pursuit of scientific and technological breakthroughs, loosely modelled on the US’s DARPA.

Clifford co-founded Entrepreneurs First in 2011 with Alice Bentinck. EF identifies exceptional individuals and supports them to find and build technology companies from scratch. Companies built at EF are now worth over $16 billion.

In 2024, the UK Government asked Clifford to create the AI Opportunities Action Plan, the UK’s national AI strategy. The Prime Minister published the plan and appointed Clifford as his Adviser on AI, a role he held until summer 2025. In 2023, he led the preparations and negotiations for the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park as the Prime Minister’s Representative, and designed the UK Frontier AI Taskforce, now the UK AI Safety Institute.

Clifford was awarded a CBE for services to AI in 2024. He was named to the TIME100 AI list. He holds degrees from the University of Cambridge and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was a Kennedy Scholar.