AI's Super PACs Open Their Wallets for the Midterms

The argument over how to regulate artificial intelligence has moved out of think tanks and hearing rooms and into campaign advertising, and the sums are no longer modest. Groups tied to the largest AI companies have now steered more than $185 million into the 2026 midterm races, according to reporting by NPR on June 22. The spending divides along a line that mirrors the industry's own quarrel about safety and speed.

On one side is Leading the Future, a super PAC funded largely by the venture firm Andreessen Horowitz and by OpenAI president Greg Brockman. It has raised more than $75 million and spent over $20 million across races in Texas, Georgia, Illinois and Montana. Its stated aim is to oppose policies that, in its words, "stifle innovation" or help China pull ahead, and to push for one national set of rules rather than a patchwork of state laws.

On the other side sits Public First Action, to which Anthropic has committed $20 million. Affiliated groups, among them ones called Jobs and Democracy and Defending Our Values, have spent roughly $16.6 million so far in North Carolina, Texas and Utah. Their pitch is close to the inverse: resist federal efforts to freeze state-level AI rules unless Washington puts adequate safeguards in their place.

The sharpest flashpoint is in New York. AI-aligned groups poured around $20 million into a Democratic House primary there, CNBC reported on June 23, much of it aimed at Alex Bores, a state assemblymember who wrote one of the country's first frontier-model safety laws. When an industry spends eight figures to shape a single primary, it is fair to ask what it expects in return.

None of this is happening in a vacuum. Washington has so far left most of the hard rules to the states, and a wave of state legislation this year, from frontier-model audits to chatbot disclosure requirements, is exactly what these groups are fighting over. A national standard would be simpler for companies to comply with. It could also be weaker, and the people writing the cheques know which version they prefer.

The honest reading is that both sides have a point. Fifty conflicting state regimes would be a genuine mess for anyone building these systems. A single federal rule written to industry's liking, with no floor underneath it, would be a different kind of problem. What is new, and a little uncomfortable, is watching that policy fight settled less by argument than by ad budgets. The votes that follow this autumn will show how much $185 million actually buys.