Nick Clegg is to add venture capitalist to his list of post-politics jobs, with the former British deputy prime minister and ex-senior executive at Meta taking on a new role at London-based Hiro Capital.
Clegg, who left his role as the Facebook-owner’s head of global affairs this year, is joining the European tech investment firm as a general partner.
Hiro Capital was founded in 2018, the same year he took up the role at Meta, and was heavily criticised for abandoning the People’s Vote campaign and the high-powered pro-remain group of former politicians lobbying to stop Brexit.
The firm, which invests in areas including video games, esports and artificial intelligence, is looking to raise a new fund worth more than €500m (£375m), according to the Financial Times.
“[Europe has a] very, very profound dilemma,” Clegg told attendees at a Financial Times conference. “We’re not only completely dependent on US tech … [but] when we have good people with good ideas, we export them to the US.”
Clegg said the idea of the new Hiro fund was to focus on sectors that Europe had “deep, deep sort of academic and research laboratory experience”. The fund will invest in companies in the UK working in robotics, longevity, gaming, space, defence and AI, the FT reported.
Hiro was co-founded by Ian Livingstone, the co-founder of Games Workshop and the Lara Croft-maker Eidos. The venture capitalist firm aims to announce its first investment from the fund in the first half of next year.
“Having an understanding of how government and regulators work is relevant to helping our portfolio flourish and building global leading companies from Europe,” said the Hiro co-founder Luke Alvarez, commenting on Clegg’s hiring.
Yann LeCun, who recently announced he was to leave his post as chief scientist of Meta AI at the end of the year, is also joining Hiro as an adviser to assess investments in AI companies.
“We are entering a new phase of AI – an era of systems which can understand the physical world, have persistent memory and which can reason and plan complex actions,” said LeCun. “Hiro … is exceptionally well placed to capitalise on this new wave of opportunity in Europe.”
As Liberal Democrats leader, Clegg managed to get his party into power through a coalition with David Cameron’s Conservatives in 2010.
Clegg resigned as leader five years later after taking the blame for Lib Dems 2015 election defeat, which he described as “immeasurably more crushing and unkind” than he had feared.
He lost his seat in the 2017 general election and subsequently said he “never had any desire to sit in an unreformed House of Lords”.
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Clegg’s switch to big business is a familiar one among politicians seeking their next gig outside Westminster.
Cameron, who was prime minister when Clegg was deputy, has had a series of jobs since he left No 10 in 2016, including lobbying the government on behalf of the now-collapsed financial firm Greensill.
Cameron has also worked in the tech sector for firms including the payments company First Data, the gene-sequencing company Illumina, and the AI business Afiniti.
Cameron made a surprise return to government two years ago when Rishi Sunak, the former prime minister, appointed him foreign secretary.
George Osborne, who was chancellor in Cameron’s government, has taken on a string of roles – from the editor of the Evening Standard and chair of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership to adviser at the fund manager BlackRock – before dropping his portfolio career to join the boutique investment bank Robey Warshaw. He missed out recently on becoming chair of HSBC.
In 2021, Chuka Umunna, the former high-profile Labour politician, was hired by the US bank JP Morgan to lead its European environmental, social and governance work after having held a similar position at the PR firm Edelman.
