Anthropic Brings In a Political Heavyweight

Anthropic made a quiet but significant move last week. The company appointed Chris Liddell, former Microsoft CFO and Trump White House Deputy Chief of Staff, to its board of directors. The announcement came just days after Anthropic closed its $30 billion funding round at a $380 billion valuation, and it says everything about where the AI industry is heading next.The fight over artificial intelligence is no longer just about model performance or enterprise contracts. It is becoming a political contest, fought in Washington committee rooms and regulatory agencies. Anthropic is betting that Liddell's unique combination of corporate finance experience and government connections will give it an edge in that fight.Chris Liddell is not a typical Silicon Valley hire. A New Zealand native who became a U.S. citizen, he spent three decades climbing the corporate ladder before entering government service. He was CFO at International Paper, then Microsoft, then General Motors. At Microsoft, he oversaw finance during the company's transition to cloud computing under Steve Ballmer.Then came the Trump administration. Liddell served as White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Coordination from 2017 to 2021, which put him at the center of the administration's economic and regulatory agenda.Liddell brings enterprise credibility that most AI startups lack. Microsoft's transformation into a cloud giant happened largely on his watch as CFO. He understands how large organizations buy technology, how procurement processes work, and what CFOs at Fortune 500 companies need to see before writing checks.