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Groups tied to the artificial intelligence industry are flooding money into the midterms in hopes of shaping future AI regulation.
Around the country, groups associated with AI and tech are trying to influence elections from Senate races to local offices, even as Americans register increasing discomfort with the technology's ramifications for jobs, energy bills and society. AI-focused super PACs have already spent $43.3 million on congressional races this cycle, according to OpenSecrets, a nonprofit that tracks campaign spending.
The campaign blitz comes against a backdrop of bipartisan consensus that Congress needs to set more rules governing AI and the powerful companies developing it. Yet efforts to advance federal legislation have so far stalled.
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The massive spending and heated rhetoric reveal a great deal about the contours of Silicon Valley's political fault lines and competing visions of what the future should look like.
"This type of spending really helps shape who is at the table and what perspectives they are bringing into those conversations when new legislation is crafted," said Michael Beckel, director of money in politics reform at Issue One, a bipartisan nonprofit that seeks to reduce the influence of money in politics.
"It's rewriting the playbook for how industries are trying to exert their influence in Washington and in states across the country," he said.
The proxy war in Central Park
An early test of how this strategy could pay off will come Tuesday in a congressional primary in New York City that has drawn more than $15 million in AI-backed spending both for and against Alex Bores, a former Palantir employee who is pushing to more strictly rein in the industry.
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Bores, 35, is a New York state assemblyman who co-sponsored the state's Responsible AI Safety and Education Act, legislation that requires AI companies to report safety incidents and publish information on their safeguards.
In October 2025, he entered the Democratic primary race to replace retiring Rep. Jerry Nadler in New York's 12th Congressional District. It spans the heart of Manhattan, north from 14th Street to the top of Central Park, and has the highest per-capita income in the country.
The primary race — which will likely determine who replaces Nadler in the Democratic stronghold — has become a major battle in the proxy war over federal AI regulation.
After Bores entered the race, super PACs tied to investors in ChatGPT maker OpenAI unleashed a torrent of spending aimed at torpedoing his campaign. An early anti-Bores ad argued laws like New York's RAISE Act would create a "chaotic patchwork of state rules that would crush innovation."
Rival Anthropic, an AI company founded by OpenAI defectors that has called for more regulation, is backing super PACs countering the OpenAI-aligned groups' assault on Bores with millions of dollars of their own.
Groups linked to the two companies have collectively spent more than $15 million on pro- and anti-Bores messaging, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
The torrent of ads, mailers and texts appears to have primarily served to raise Bores' profile in a crowded field ahead of the June 23 primary.
Corporate rivals fund opposing super PACs
The Bores contest is the most visible arena in which the AI sector's intramural rivalries are spilling into politics.
In their quest to win the AI race, OpenAI and Anthropic compete for everything from funding and staff to customers. They're both planning massive initial public offerings later this year. And they are locked in an ideological feud over how AI should be built, commercialized and governed, which shapes their respective views on the role of regulation.
On one side of the political fight is Leading the Future, mainly funded by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, which is an OpenAI investor, and OpenAI's president and co-founder, Greg Brockman. Its stated mission is to "oppose policies that stifle innovation, enable China to gain global AI superiority, or make it harder to bring AI's benefits into the world, and those who support that agenda." It argues for a national approach to setting AI standards and safeguards.
Leading the Future has raised more than $75 million. It's already spent $23.5 million on dozens of races from Texas and Georgia to Illinois and Montana through a network of super PACs, including Think Big and American Mission, according to OpenSecrets' tally of federal filings. The group has also funded a PAC supporting Republican Byron Donalds' campaign for governor of Florida, a hotspot in the state-level fight over AI regulation.
On the other side is Public First, positioned in direct opposition to Leading the Future. In February, Anthropic announced it was contributing $20 million to a related nonprofit, Public First Action, that "opposes federal efforts to freeze state progress without adequate federal safeguards." Anthropic said the company didn't want to "sit on the sidelines" while AI policies are developed and warned that "vast resources have flowed to political organizations" that oppose greater AI regulation.
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Public First-affiliated PACs, including Jobs and Democracy and Defending Our Values, have spent $16.6 million so far on congressional races in states including North Carolina, Texas and Utah, according to OpenSecrets.
The political antagonism "really mirrors the corporate competition between OpenAI and Anthropic" and their differing approaches to AI development and safety, said Molly White, an independent researcher and tech industry critic.
AI spending is also about sending a message
OpenAI investors and Anthropic aren't the only AI interests betting that spending on campaigns will reap political rewards. Facebook owner Meta is funding super PACs aimed at shaping AI policy in Texas and California, and both Google and Meta are backing another super PAC focused on California state legislative races.
Billionaire crypto investor Chris Larsen, who has spent millions on local and state races in California this year, launched a super PAC called You Can Push Back that's spent nearly $2 million backing Bores in New York.
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Silicon Valley has long injected money into politics, but in previous cycles that came primarily through individual donations from executives and via corporate PACs, said Katie Harbath, founder of the tech consulting firm Anchor Change, who spent a decade working on public policy at Facebook.
The AI-connected groups' more aggressive political involvement is "a real experiment this time to see if that sort of money can really sway any of these races in the way that these companies want it to," she said.
To White, the AI industry's willingness to flex its financial muscle is about more than one candidate's victory or loss.
"If Alex Bores is elected, one fairly junior congressperson is not likely to have an enormous impact on the ultimate AI regulation that might be passed in the next couple of years," she said.
"But I do think that one of the major focuses of these super PACs is really about sending a message to other candidates who might be thinking about coming out in support of stricter AI regulation or coming out in opposition," White continued. "Whichever PAC is on the winning side will use those victories as sort of a threat towards other candidates."
Congress remains stalled on AI regulation — for now
The concentration of wealth and power in a handful of giant AI companies has spawned critics across the political divide and at the federal, state and local levels.
While the industry is responsible for the lion's share of stock market gains in recent years and a sizable portion of the growth in U.S. gross domestic product, concerns are mounting over the effects of AI on jobs, the environmental and economic costs of massive data centers and the safety of powerful AI models.
But in Congress, momentum on AI legislation — along with nearly everything else — remains stalled. Despite bipartisan support to do something about the technology, lawmakers are still hashing out how to even take up the issue.
"So far, the key battle lines have been whether to spend much time on federal AI legislation at all," said Adam Kovacevich, the founder and CEO of center-left tech industry policy group Chamber of Progress.
Kovacevich says there is interest in the idea of federal standards governing AI development and deployment, but "there seems to be little energy being spent on actually writing those standards before this year's midterm elections."
"Almost everyone in Washington agrees AI is transformative and requires some kind of policy response," said Nicole Alvarez, a senior tech policy analyst at the Center for American Progress, which advocates for progressive ideas.
"The real fight," Alvarez said, "is what governance looks like."
An ongoing fight
The AI industry is contributing even more money in hopes that when regulation eventually comes, it can play a big role in shaping it.
On top of the tens of millions of dollars AI-linked groups have spent so far in this election cycle, AI firms are investing heavily in lobbying — which means the spigot of dollars will keep flowing after the new Congress is sworn in in January.
In 2025, OpenAI, Meta, Google parent Alphabet, and AI chipmaker Nvidia spent a combined $50.9 million lobbying members of Congress, according to a review of federal reports by Issue One.
Those numbers are likely to rise this year. Anthropic more than quadrupled its lobbying spending to $1.56 million in the first quarter from a year ago, while OpenAI nearly doubled its outlays to $1.02 million, according to Issue One's analysis.
"As companies continue to see a return on investment for those types of expenditures, they are likely to continue to spend more and more and more," said Issue One's Beckel.
The outcome of this summer's primaries and the fall's general election will have a big impact on the shape any legislation takes.
Even if Republicans maintain control of Congress, the de facto 60-vote threshold in the Senate to pass most legislation means that AI regulation will almost certainly require bipartisan compromise.
Lawmakers will also have to contend with a growing share of the public who feel queasy about AI.
"If our goal as a country is to advance AI development and deployment and achieve leadership in this space," Alvarez said, "then we cannot exclude the public from the conversation."
"Undermining their trust is going to lead to them being hesitant to accept this technology in their everyday lives," she said.
Transcript
SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
AI companies are spending a lot of money right now on a lot of different things, and that includes politics. Groups tied to the artificial intelligence industry are spending tens of millions of dollars to influence elections around the country, from Senate races to local offices. So in a sense, this year's midterms have become a proxy battle over how AI should be regulated. Congress is coming around to the idea that there should be some rules for the technology, even if all efforts to advance legislation so far have stalled. NPR's Shannon Bond and Eric McDaniel are here with more. Hey to both of you.
ERIC MCDANIEL, BYLINE: Hello.
SHANNON BOND, BYLINE: Hey, Scott.
DETROW: Shannon, I'm going to start with you. Just how much money are we talking about here?
BOND: Well, AI-focused super PACs have already spent over $43 million on congressional races this year. That's according to OpenSecrets, a nonprofit that tracks campaign spending. And then there's spending in local races in places like California and Texas where there is a lot of interest in state laws about AI. So lots of money.
DETROW: Tell me more about who, in particular, is getting involved and what their agenda is.
BOND: Well, when it comes to these congressional races, there are two networks of super PACs that account for most of the spending. One is Leading the Future. It's funded by OpenAI investors and OpenAI's president, Greg Brockman. And then there's Public First, which is funded in part by OpenAI's big rival, Anthropic, and it's positioned in direct opposition. And, Scott, the - you know, these - this divide here, it really maps onto the rivalries between these two companies. There are real differences in how they think AI should be built, commercialized and governed. And so we see Leading the Future highlighting risks of regulation to innovation, to the U.S. winning the AI race with China. It's arguing for a national approach versus what it would call - calls a patchwork of state rules. And then Public First is more aligned with Anthropic's more general position supporting more regulation, including at the state level. It's often taking the opposite side in some of these congressional races.
DETROW: Eric, are there some specific races where this dynamic is playing out?
MCDANIEL: Well, one great example is in New York, the heart of Manhattan - New York's 12. Lot of famous names in this race. Tomorrow is the Democratic primary there. It's a very wealthy, very blue seat. So the winner is all but certain to be the next representative from the district. And the race has drawn more than 25 million in AI-backed spending, both for and against a candidate named Alex Bores, including from the groups Shannon talked about. He's a New York state assemblyman, former Palantir employee, and he co-sponsored the state's big AI regulation law. He's currently in a dead heat with a man named Micah Lasher, and this is an early test for how these groups do in shaping not just industry rules but also who will go on to make them.
BOND: And I think that's a really important point. This is not just about whether Alex Bores wins this particular House seat. I spoke with Michael Beckel at Issue One, which is a bipartisan nonprofit that seeks to reduce the influence of money in politics. Here's what he said.
MICHAEL BECKEL: A lot of this spending is also telegraphing a message to other candidates across the country to fall in line with a particular vision or you might be next.
DETROW: This all makes me wonder what exactly Congress is doing right now when it comes to AI legislation.
MCDANIEL: Well, I talked to a number of folks for this story, and they all had basically the same assessment, which is rare. Here is one, Nicole Alvarez. She's a senior tech policy analyst at the Center for American Progress. It's a progressive advocacy organization, and here's what she told me.
NICOLE ALVAREZ: The debate has moved beyond whether AI needs governance. Almost everyone in Washington agrees, you know, AI is transformative and requires some kind of policy response. So I think the real fight is what that governance looks like. And it's whether we build durable federal protections or whether we prioritize preventing states from acting.
MCDANIEL: So what they're debating is whether the federal government should do something and whether states should be involved. That mirrors the split between the AI groups that Shannon was talking about earlier. And the policy watchers I interviewed said it's pretty clear big legislation isn't happening this year, though there is some movement today on some kids' safety provisions around AI. But any larger framework would almost certainly come after November's midterm elections. That's when we'll see what impact, if any, the AI election spending will have on Congress. And then we'll watch tens of millions of lobbying spending too.
DETROW: So given all of that, given the focus on this issue, given the momentum for some sort of legislation, given the money being spent, what are you both watching over the next six months on this front?
BOND: Yeah. I mean, I think we're really seeing here Silicon Valley testing out, much more muscularly than we've seen previously, just what its money can do in politics. So I'm curious what lessons they take from these primaries into the general elections in the fall and then on into 2028. And then also, Scott, you know, in this story - for this - reporting this story, we focused on spending in congressional races, but we're seeing AI and data centers are emerging as an issue in many, many local races. So I'm also going to be watching for how those play out and how much industry money some of those really contentious places - how much money that attracts.
MCDANIEL: And for me, there's, of course, a split between Democrats and Republicans. Democrats largely want the federal government to be more involved in regulating AI. They're also generally interested in allowing states to go further if they want to. Republicans are more interested in state preemption, although there are some state rights Republicans who aren't interested in seeing the federal government constrain what states can do either. But the more interesting split to me, Scott, is the fight between more business-minded folks in both parties and lawmakers with a kind of populist, big-tech-skeptical vibe. So there's going to be a clash between people from both parties who want to support something that's supposed to be this big economic engine and folks who want to make sure that that engine pulls along more than just a select few tech moguls to a better place.
DETROW: That is NPR's Eric McDaniel and Shannon Bond. Thanks to both of you.
MCDANIEL: Thank you.
BOND: Thanks.
(SOUNDBITE OF LOLA YOUNG SONG, "REVOLVE AROUND YOU")