How much is Anthropic paying for the advice of the UK’s former prime minister? A lot less than Microsoft.
Rishi Sunak, who led the country from 2022 to 2024, last year took on senior advisor roles with Anthropic, Microsoft, and Goldman Sachs.
As he still serves as a member of Parliament, the payments are detailed in a public register of MPs’ financial interests. The most recent register, published Monday, shows Sunak earned more than £2.2 million, or over $2.9 million, from the three jobs.
Sunak, who started his career as a Goldman analyst before completing an MBA at Stanford, donated these earnings to charity. He and his wife Akshata Murthy set up The Richmond Project, which works to improve people’s numeracy skills.
The couple is jointly worth about $750 million, according to The Sunday Times Rich List, with much of that wealth coming from Murthy, whose father founded Indian tech firm Infosys.
Anthropic hired Sunak as a senior advisor last October, paying him with equity in the AI firm. The register shows the shares were worth £373,000, or $495,000, when his one-year contract began.
Working an estimated 70 hours a year, that translates to about $7,000 an hour.
Also last October, Sunak started advising Microsoft. The tech giant paid him £741,735 a year, or almost $1 million. For an estimated 96 hours of work, per the register, that works out to about $10,200 an hour.
Sunak’s role with Goldman is the most lucrative. He was paid nearly £1.1 million a year, or about $1.5 million.
The register shows the role involves an estimated 175 hours of work a year, suggesting he earns about $8,300 an hour.
Alongside his work in tech, Sunak writes a column for The Sunday Times. He also donates this money to charity, but it pales in comparison to the income from his other jobs. The register shows he earns £28,500 a quarter for five hours of work a week — about $580 an hour.
Sunak’s office did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
