By Jeffrey Dastin
SAN FRANCISCO, Aug 4 (Reuters) – Anthropic on Tuesday named Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar its first chief global affairs officer, as the developer of artificial intelligence models called Claude navigates vast policy challenges and changing regulation around its technology.
Cuéllar will report to Anthropic President Daniela Amodei, a company spokesperson told Reuters. His job, based in the startup’s San Francisco headquarters, will include managing relationships with the U.S. government and the many countries where Anthropic is expanding globally.
Anthropic’s hire represents a choice for a consensus builder with wide-ranging government experience as well as AI expertise, the spokesperson said. A special assistant in former Democratic President Barack Obama’s White House, Cuéllar is tasked with finding common ground with U.S. President Donald Trump’s Republican administration, which at points blacklisted and ordered controls around Anthropic’s AI this year.
Cuéllar, who goes by Tino, has since January served on Anthropic’s Long-Term Benefit Trust that exists to make the startup deliver on its public benefit mission. Cuéllar is stepping down from that role to join the company, and the trust aims to find a successor to the independent four-person body.
His experience leading the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace until July included co-chairing a task force on U.S. national security and nuclear proliferation. Some AI industry leaders have looked to nuclear arms controls as inspiration for managing the technology’s risks.
A 2025 study co-led by Cuéllar also informed the passage of SB 53, a California law that protects AI whistleblowers, requires high-revenue developers to report on standards and incidents, and includes a maximum $1 million fine per violation. Anthropic endorsed the bill.
The company declined to make Cuéllar available for an interview. In a statement, the former California Supreme Court justice said policymakers were realizing that AI’s development and governance had reached an “inflection point.”
“The choices we make today will determine whether humanity can harness extraordinary possibilities to advance science and improve lives across the world or face enormous risk and growing inequality,” Cuéllar said.
Oren Cass, founder of the conservative think tank American Compass, told Reuters that the pragmatic and progressive Cuéllar would be “open-minded” to the Trump administration’s positions and eager to find the root of any disagreement.
“His approach will be one that provokes good deliberative policymaking with the administration,” said Cass, who called Cuéllar a friend since they met several years ago and started convening bipartisan lunch discussions.
Cuéllar takes up his Anthropic role at a time of growing concerns about AI-powered hacking and a turbulent relationship with the U.S. government. A high-profile standoff over military red lines led the Pentagon to blacklist its technology earlier this year, a designation that Anthropic is challenging in court.
More recently, the Trump administration handed down an export control directive that temporarily banned Anthropic from selling its top-shelf Mythos 5 and Fable 5 AI models to foreigners over national security concerns.
(Reporting by Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)
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