The chair of Andy Burnham’s new AI Taskforce gave a secret private briefing to the Big Tech clients of an advisory firm linked to No 10’s top business adviser, openDemocracy can reveal.
Ollie Ilott was the speaker at a breakfast roundtable hosted by Hakluyt & Company in April last year, when he was head of the UK’s AI Security Institute, a well-regarded research agency operating at the forefront of a highly competitive and commercially sensitive field.
The government failed to declare that the meeting took place and says it holds no records from it whatsoever, leaving the public with no way of knowing what attendees – including tech giants Microsoft and the Ellison Institute of Technology – were told about AI policy. openDemocracy learned about the roundtable and its guest list through disclosures made in response to Freedom of Information requests.
Months after the meeting, Ilott returned to the Hakluyt offices to meet with its investment arm, which was established by the company’s former managing partner Varun Chandra, who joined No 10 as business adviser in July 2024. Chandra, who is also the UK’s US trade envoy and was one of few senior aides to keep his job when Burnham took office, retains an interest in Hakluyt.
While Ilott’s insights would already have been invaluable to Hakluyt’s clients, he was this week promoted to become the most senior official working on AI policy in Burnham’s government – making him an even more highly valued contact going forward.
Founded by MI6 operatives in 1995, Hakluyt & Company has for decades operated largely in secret from its opulent Mayfair townhouse and a growing number of outposts around the globe. Through its unrivalled connections to senior public officials like Ilott, it provides clients – some of the biggest companies in the world – with high-grade intelligence at great cost, advising executives on issues with huge financial implications, which often involve a political element, such as mergers and acquisitions, regulatory issues or expanding into a new geographical market.
Hakluyt exists in a regulatory blind spot; as a corporate intelligence and advisory firm, rather than a lobbyist, it is not required to declare its clients publicly. Hakluyt maintains that it does not carry out political lobbying or work with political parties, despite its staff regularly meeting with top civil servants and reports that it worked with Labour before the last general election.
Now, documents obtained by openDemocracy offer a rare insight into how the firm courted a rapidly rising star in the civil service, and won special, undeclared access for its elite clientele to one of the most influential officials working on AI safety policy anywhere in the world.
'A fantastic discussion'
Ilott’s relationship with Hakluyt appears to have begun in October 2024, when Whitehall supremo Olly Robbins, then a partner at the company, invited him to have “breakfast or dinner with some senior clients” – an invitation that Ilott said he’d be “very happy” to accept.
Robbins had joined Hakluyt the year before, having previously held high-ranking positions across the civil service, including as the UK’s deputy national security adviser and the chief Brexit negotiator.
While there is no suggestion of wrongdoing by Robbins, the interaction reveals how elite advisory and lobbying firms leverage ‘revolving door’ hires from the civil service, who arrive with government contacts and operational knowledge.
As Hakluyt writes on its website: "Few other business models depend on human relationships as much as ours: this, above all, is what makes us different."
Hakluyt now counts a few dozen former elite public servants – from former cabinet secretaries to intelligence chiefs, and prime ministerial advisors – on its staff and advisory board. Within the relatively small world of Whitehall and Westminster politics, the prestige and influence of figures like this is hard to overstate.
Before the meeting could be finalised, Robbins left Hakluyt to return to the civil service, taking up a position as head of the Foreign Office in January 2025. He was dismissed in a high-profile row earlier this year over his alleged role in the hiring of Peter Mandelson, a known friend of Jeffrey Epstein, as US ambassador.
At the start of 2025, another Hakluyt executive picked up the email thread with Ilott.
“Apologies for the delay in coming back to you,” the company’s staffer wrote. “As I’m sure you’ve seen, Olly has been appointed as the new [redacted] which is fantastic news, and we’re very happy for him!”
Arrangements were then made for Ilott to attend a breakfast roundtable event at Hakluyt’s Mayfair townhouse at 8:30am on 10 April – dress code: “business attire.
A partially redacted attendee list, which was sent to Ilott ahead of time and released to openDemocracy under the FOI Act, offers a rare insight into Hakluyt’s usually closely guarded client list.
It reveals that, as well as Microsoft and the Ellison Institute, those invited included BT, the UAE’s state-owned wealth fund Mubadala, Silicon Valley private equity firms Warburg Pincus and Insight Partners, and an executive representing both the edutech platform Kahoot and energy cloud platform Kraken.
A representative from Calypso AI, a security software developer that Hakluyt invested in through its fund in 2023, was also on the invite list. Calypso AI was acquired by US tech giant F5 in September last year.
In response to an FOI request from openDemocracy, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology said: “We do not hold minutes, presentation materials or notes of the discussion. Additionally, we can confirm that Oliver Ilott undertook a speaking part during the event, however no speaking notes exist.”
The department initially refused to reveal which companies had been invited to the meeting, but eventually agreed to release the attendee list after we requested an internal review of its decision.
After the breakfast roundtable, the advisory firm offered to send Ilott a gift by way of a thank you, according to correspondence obtained by openDemocracy.
“Thank you so much again for your time today, and for sharing all your thoughts and views so generously. It was a fantastic discussion, and all our guests have said how much they enjoyed hearing from you, so thank you!” a Hakluyt staffer wrote to Ilott.
“Might I be able to get your address? Just so we can send a little something to say thank you.”
openDemocracy understands Ilott did not accept the gift.
Asked what they intended to send, Haklut declined to comment. A spokesperson told openDemocracy: “It is customary for government officials and businesses to meet to discuss mutually relevant issues, as happened in this instance.”
‘An informal meeting’
In September, five months after the breakfast meeting, Ilott met with Hakluyt again. By then, he had been promoted to interim director general of AI at the Department of Science, Innovation, and Technology, a position that was later made permanent.
While the government did declare this meeting – listing it as “stakeholder engagement” – it did not publish or record any details such as attendees, agenda, minutes or other notes.
“It was an informal meeting between Oliver Ilott and Hakluyt at Hakluyt Capital Limited’s address in London, and there were no papers or agenda created in relation to the meeting,” DSIT told openDemocracy in response to an FOI request.
In the days after this meeting, a Hakluyt staffer sent an email connecting Ilott to an organiser of the Reagan-Jackson Security Dialogue, an annual conference co-hosted by the US-based Ronald Reagan Society and the Henry Jackson Society (HJS) in the UK.
While the emails have been heavily redacted by DSIT, including to remove the senders’ identities, it is likely the organiser was a staffer at HJS, a national security think tank that strongly supports US foreign policy in the Middle East. Its executive director is Reform’s chief adviser on global affairs, having defected from the Conservatives last year.
HJS does not declare its funders, but is a registered charity that files accounts with the Charity Commission. These show it received donations worth £1.2m last year.
Despite the redactions, Ilott’s response sheds some light on the nature of the communications.
“Hello, [redacted] thanks very much for the introduction and for the kind words,” he wrote. “[Redacted], it’s great to be introduced. Sounds like you’re doing really interesting work. I’d be keen to help if I can.
“For the last two years, I’ve been running the AI Security Institute. We combine private sector AI expertise with Government knowledge of national security risks, producing insights into the potential malicious uses of today’s most powerful AI systems.”
“As [redacted says] I’ve recently stepped up to cover the opportunities side of AI, as well as the risks,” Ilott added.
The respondent said they “look forward to getting deeper on your work with the AI Security Institute and to being in touch soon about our events in London”. They followed up days later, inviting Ilott to the security summit, which they described as “a deeply substantive gathering of government officials / legislators from the UK and USA”.
DSIT told openDemocracy that Ilott did not attend the event.
A government spokesperson told openDemocracy: “Senior government officials routinely meet with stakeholders relevant to their work as part of their regular duties. As is always the case, these meetings are declared through the usual transparency processes.”
In fact, the April 2025 roundtable event was declared only after openDemocracy’s FOI requests, 11 months after it took place, and the declaration does not mention the presence of any of Hakluyt’s clients.
