Former White House AI policy advisor joins Anthropic as head of frontier compute strategy

Sihao Huang, a former senior policy advisor for AI at the White House, has joined Anthropic as head of frontier compute technology.

In his own announcement on the social media platform X, Huang wrote that in his new position, he will collaborate with Anthropic Co-founder and Chief Compute Officer Tom Brown on expanding the company's infrastructure, building out industry coalition, and planning for rapid AI progress.

"I am immensely grateful to have served in the White House to help carry out President Trump's vision on AI," Huang said. "The decisions we made are a big part of why American AI is leading today, and why an unprecedented industrial buildout is underway across the country."

Huang's LinkedIn profile shows that he served in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy for 10 months, from September 2025 to June 2026. Before that, Huang co-founded Aphelion Orbitals, an aerospace company specializing in nanosatellite products.

The AI expert said he remains optimistic that the U.S. can lead AI development in a way that improves people's lives and advances AI safety while considering the risks of concentrated power. He also stated that frontier and open-weight models can continue to coexist amid innovation and diffusion.

"Navigating the AI exponential will require the entire country to come together," Huang wrote. "In my new role, I'm excited to work closer to the technology that will increasingly shape major policy choices, and to help build the bridges needed to get those calls right."

Huang's statement gives a nod to ongoing debates surrounding the call to slow down frontier AI development to strengthen safety and risk management. This narrative was amplified by former Anthropic and OpenAI researcher Jacob Coxon, who publicly warned that AI could end humanity by 2030 if there are no serious actions taken to curb self-improving, superintelligent AI.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei also recently published an essay calling on AI labs to pace frontier development. OpenAI's Sam Altman, Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis and SpaceXAI’s Elon Musk also signaled support for the direction.

However, U.S. President Donald Trump dismissed such concerns, stating that the only guardrails AI needs are a "strong and smart president." Trump's top AI advisor, David Sacks, also criticized the AI doomsday warnings as a "doomer psyop."