Former PM Rishi Sunak has been hired by tech giant Microsoft. The ex-Tory leader, who remains an MP in parliament, has joined the Seattle-based tech firm as a paid part-time senior adviser and will give the company «high-level strategic perspectives on macro-economic and geopolitical trends» as well as how these «intersect with innovation, regulation, and digital transformation».
He will be donating his salary to his and his wife, Akshata Murty’s, numeracy skills charity, The Richmond Project. Acoba, the watchdog that assesses external jobs for MPs, has said Sunak will not be advising on UK policy matters.
The Advisory Committee on Business Appointments has in the past been accused of being toothless and unable to prevent MPs from taking employment that could cause a conflict of interest or allow former parliamentarians to use contacts made in government for personal use. Sunak was prime minister between October 2022 and July 2024. It was thought he could be eyeing a job in Silicon Valley, California, after his general election defeat.
But in his final prime minister’s questions appearance as Conservative leader, Sunak vowed to spend more time «in the greatest place on Earth», referring to his Richmond and Northallerton constituency.
Acoba has warned Sunak that he shouldn’t provide advice to or on behalf of Microsoft on government work or its contracts until later next year. The former chancellor has also been asked not to lobby the government or make use of his Whitehall contacts during that time, and to limit his work to «providing advice on strategy, macro-economic, and geopolitical matters that do not conflict» with his activities in Number 10. The Cabinet Office told the watchdog that Sunak’s year on the Tory backbenches «will have helped to diminish the salience and currency of the information» he had access to.
Sunak has also taken on a role at San Francisco-based Anthropic, which developed the Claude artificial intelligence (AI) models. He has also become a senior adviser to Goldman Sachs since leaving office, where he previously worked between 2001 and 2004.
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