One week before the midterms, the AI industry’s political money is split into two camps that fund opposite sides of the same races. CNBC tallied independent expenditures filed with the FEC through 20 October. Groups that want faster development and a single national rulebook have put about $8 million into general-election House and Senate contests. Their rivals, who want firmer safeguards and a bigger role for state lawmakers, have put in about $6.9 million.
Florida’s 25th District shows the collision. During the primary, Think Big, the Democratic arm of the Leading the Future network, spent $310,000 backing Democrat Jared Moskowitz. On the other side, the super PAC Defending Our Values, which favors tighter guardrails and state authority, spent almost $857,000 on Republican Scott Singer and another $740,000 to block one of his primary opponents. Moskowitz and Singer now meet in November.
The split was never the plan. Leading the Future launched in August 2025 with over $100 million pledged by backers that include Andreessen Horowitz, Greg Brockman of OpenAI and his wife Anna, and Joe Lonsdale, who co-founded Palantir. The template was crypto. Fairshake and its allied PACs spent over $130 million in the 2024 cycle, and CoinDesk counted 53 wins in 58 races for their candidates. Sacha Haworth, who runs the Tech Oversight Project, a watchdog that wants tougher rules for Big Tech, says the AI industry set out to “bully lawmakers into submission.”
The opposition found its own bankroll. Anthropic gave Public First Action $20 million in February, then $20 million again in July. Anthropic says the funds are earmarked for policy work and educating the public, and cannot be used to elect candidates, though super PACs tied to that group, funded separately, have spent millions on similar priorities.
The sharpest test was the Democratic primary in New York’s 12th. Think Big poured $8.3 million into defeating Alex Bores, the state Assemblymember who authored a major state AI safety law. Jobs and Democracy, a PAC backed by Anthropic, spent about $15 million for him. Micah Lasher beat him, 39% to 35%. Those two groups’ combined $23.3 million made up about 40% of all primary spending by the two camps.
Since then the cash has thinned. The camps have spent roughly $78.5 million on federal candidates this cycle, and about 74% of it went to primaries. The faster-AI network reported around $26 million in primaries against $8 million so far in the general election. The safeguards side went from $32.1 million to $6.9 million. Fewer competitive races explain part of that. Public mood explains more. In a CNBC survey of registered voters, 52% said companies should pause advanced AI until Congress passes rules, while 32% favored pressing ahead. Nearly two in three, 63%, would oppose a data center built 10 miles or less from where they live.
Donors are reading the numbers. The Brockmans put $25 million into Leading the Future and then dropped plans for a second $25 million, The New York Times reported. Semafor reported that after OpenAI employees objected to the group’s tactics, a senior OpenAI strategy executive admitted internally to “reputational hits.” Meta’s political groups returned $25 million this summer, shrinking a planned $65 million state-level push to about $40 million. Sam Altman told Politico: “Something’s clearly not working.”
Bruce Freed, who leads the nonpartisan watchdog Center for Political Accountability, told CNBC the primary spending probably achieved what donors wanted, so cutting back now costs them little.
Whoever wins in November, the industry heads into the next Congress divided, with its biggest checkbooks closing and the polling against it. Any company counting on one federal AI rulebook should expect the argument to play out in public, between factions of its own industry.
Reported by CNBC on 27 October 2026.
