Artificial intelligence developer Anthropic said on July 22 it would donate another $20 million to Public First Action, a lobbying organization that supports putting safeguards in place to protect against risks from the rapid rise of the powerful technology. It also made a $20 million contribution in February.
Leading the Future, a pro-AI super-PAC, has raised $140 million to spend on the 2026 U.S. elections. Its financial backers include the founders of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and OpenAI’s Greg Brockman.
Breakingsviews column on AI political spending
WASHINGTON, August 7 (Reuters Breakingviews) - It will be hard for artificial intelligence to model the cryptocurrency political playbook. Digital money advocates got a nice return on their $200 million of campaign spending during the last U.S. election cycle: Congress moved quickly on stablecoin legislation and is considering other favorable treatment for the industry. The difference for champions of machine learning trying to replicate the feat is the stiff opposition this time.
The most well-funded AI lobbying group has raised $140 million, mostly from executives from Sam Altman's OpenAI, software developer Palantir PLTR.O and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Resistance is led by Anthropic, whose chatbot Claude rivals OpenAI's ChatGPT and others. Voters are also far more skeptical about the rise of machines than they were of decentralized networks.
Stocked with cash from Andreessen Horowitz, among others, political action committee Fairshake helped get its virtual-token allies elected in 2024 while ousting proponents of more restrictive rules. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Sherrod Brown was among those run out of Washington by the crypto crowd, which won 53 of 58 congressional races it targeted in 2024 and a president who shills for the industry. Leading the Future is the primary pro-AI super-PAC, an organization allowed to raise and spend unlimited sums on elections. It will aim to match Fairshake's record, but the competition is stiffer.
Political liabilities for AI are mounting. Governors and other state officials won last year after pledging to hold down soaring utility bills they blamed on computing power demands. Two-thirds of Democrats and half of Republicans said in a June Reuters/Ipsos poll they would oppose data centers in their communities. A White House-promoted effort to pre-empt state-level regulation, which would risk creating a patchwork of rules, has been stripped from federal proposals after it became clear there was insufficient support from legislators.
Candidates pushing for tougher rules will have backup. About $80 million from the Anthropic-funded Public First Action and affiliated groups is devoted to "mitigating major AI risks." In 2024, there was no anti-crypto force with that kind of budget. Although an early AI test case failed when a pro-regulation candidate in New York lost in a primary race, the opposition will at worst blunt the effect of money deployed to elect laissez-faire nominees. There may be more than one winner in the hyper-scaling race, but election outcomes are binary.
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