Microsoft recruits Rishi Sunak as senior adviser

Microsoft has recruited Rishi Sunak, with the former prime minister told he must not lobby the Government on the firm’s behalf.

Mr Sunak has joined the American tech giant as a part-time senior adviser, to give company leaders “high-level strategic perspectives on macro-economic and geopolitical trends and how they intersect with innovation, regulation and digital transformation”, and to speak at events.

He will not be advising on UK policy matters, according to an Acoba (Advisory Committee on Business Appointments) report, and will donate his salary to his and his wife Akshata Murty’s numeracy skills charity The Richmond Project.

Mr Sunak was prime minister between October 2022 and July 2024.

It was thought last year 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, Mr Sunak vowed to spend more time “in the greatest place on Earth”, referring to his Richmond and Northallerton constituency, and added: “If anyone needs me, I will be in Yorkshire.”

Acoba, the business appointments watchdog, has said Mr Sunak should not provide advice to or on behalf of Seattle-based Microsoft on Government work or its contracts until later next year.

He 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 No 10.

The time which Mr Sunak has spent on opposition benches – more than a year – “will have helped to diminish the salience and currency of the information” he had access to, the Cabinet Office told Acoba.

Mr Sunak was urged to “look hard” at competition rules by Microsoft president Brad Smith in 2023, when the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) blocked the firm from taking over Call of Duty maker Activision Blizzard.

Mr Smith said the move had shaken “confidence” in the UK, and Mr Sunak’s official spokesman replied at the time that “those sorts of claims are not borne out by the facts”.

Microsoft later completed a deal, with CMA clearance.

Mr 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.