Beginning in 2025, AI developers, venture firms, and allied principals organized a coordinated political effort in the United States to shape AI regulation, with the central objective of blocking or preempting state-level AI laws. The effort operated along three connected channels: electoral spending through pro-AI super PACs, coalition lobbying organized around a "Little Tech" identity, and company-level pressure for federal preemption of state regulation. By mid-2026 the campaign had drawn cross-ideological opposition from members of both parties, and a separate strand of political-economy proposals had emerged for the public to capture a stake in AI commercialization.
Electoral funding
The most prominent vehicle is Leading the Future, a pro-AI super PAC reported to have committed more than $100 million for the 2026 midterm elections (Washington Post, Aug 26, 2025). Its principal funders are Greg and Anna Brockman of OpenAI, the venture firm a16z, and other frontier-lab principals (The Information, Jan 23, 2026; TechCrunch, Jan 30, 2026). The New York Times reported that Silicon Valley figures had pledged more than $200 million across multiple pro-AI super PACs (NYT, Aug 26, 2025). The committee's stated position is opposition to state-level AI regulation.
Coverage of the Brockmans' donor activity includes The Information's January 23, 2026 report "How Greg and Anna Brockman Became MAGA Megadonors" and TechCrunch's January 30, 2026 report "OpenAI's Brockman and a16z funnel cash to pro-AI super PAC." Transformer's October 23, 2025 piece "How MAGA learned to love AI safety" covered the broader alignment of conservative politics with AI-safety positions.
The safety side of electoral funding drew its own analysis on July 13, 2026, when policy writer Anton Leicht argued that imminent post-IPO wealth among safety-minded AI-lab employees demands a pluralized ecosystem of AI-safety PACs rather than concentrated vehicles, citing backlash to concentrated spending in the NY-12 primary and against the Trahan–Obernolte "Great American AI Act" draft (Source: writing.antonleicht.me).
Coalition lobbying
The American Innovators Network (AIN) is a "Little Tech" coalition that includes a16z, Y Combinator, and more than 30 members, led by Jeremy Kudon. It explicitly targets state AI regulations. AIN overlaps with but is distinct from Leading the Future.
Ballard Partners, a Trump-connected lobbying firm with an expanded AI portfolio, has been described as part of the industry's formal-lobbying arm alongside AIN's coalition model (Source: washingtonpost.com).
Company-level preemption push
Bloomberg's August 21, 2025 report "OpenAI, Google, Meta Push to Block State AI Regulations in the US" described a coordinated effort against state AI laws including California SB 53, the New York RAISE Act, and the Colorado AI Act. EO 14365 (Trump, Dec 11, 2025) established an AI litigation task force and pursued federal preemption.
The industry's stated rationale is that state-level fragmentation would impede innovation and that a federal framework is preferable. Critics counter that the industry's preferred federal framework would amount to preemption without substantive federal requirements, producing a regulatory vacuum.
State and federal regulatory fights
Several specific contests have anchored the campaign:
- Colorado AI Act: xAI LLC v. Weiser (challenging the Colorado AI Act) — xAI filed a First Amendment and Commerce Clause suit; industry backing is implicit. The case is pending and the constitutional strategy remains untested.
- California SB 53: enacted despite heavy industry opposition. See FPF and Brookings — California SB 53 Compliance Analyses (Oct–Dec 2025).
- New York RAISE Act: pending.
- Federal AI moratorium: Congress rejected a proposed 10-year federal moratorium in July 2025. See Techno-Federalism: How Regulatory Fragmentation Shapes the U.S.-China AI Race.
Disclosed federal lobbying spending
Disclosed direct-lobbying spending has risen alongside the coalition effort. Q2 2026 disclosures filed by July 21, 2026 show Meta spent $5.99 million, Anthropic $1.97 million (up 26%), and OpenAI $1.2 million (up 18%) (Source: cnbc.com).
Federal lobbying disclosures for the first half of 2026, analyzed by Issue One on July 27, 2026, put eleven large technology and AI companies and their trade groups at a combined $41 million from January through June. Anthropic nearly tripled its spending year over year to $3.53 million, and OpenAI nearly doubled its own to a record $2.22 million. Alphabet, Anthropic, Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA and OpenAI together retained 324 lobbyists in the second quarter alone (Source: issueone.org).
The trade-association channel remained active alongside direct spending. The Information Technology Industry Council renewed its call for a federal AI framework preempting state regulation on July 27, 2026, timed to the first anniversary of the Trump administration's AI action plan (Source: insideaipolicy.com), and the Business Software Alliance asked the General Services Administration for nine changes to its proposed AI contract clause, including on scoping, open-source components, and "unbiased AI" language, ahead of the comment deadline (Source: insideaipolicy.com).
Emerging cross-ideological opposition
Opposition to the preemption framing has come from members of both parties:
- Sen. Warren (D) — critique of OpenAI's systemic risk.
- Sen. Hawley (R) — investigation of Meta's chatbot.
- Sen. Grassley (R) — letter to CISA regarding ChatGPT.
- Sen. Blackburn (R) — op-ed (Jan 27, 2026), "AI Is a Powerful Tool That Needs Limits."
- Sen. Klobuchar (D) — federal algorithmic-pricing antitrust proposal (Feb 2025).
The fight over whether a given federal proposal is a substantive guardrail or a preemption vehicle surfaced concretely in the case of Rep. Lori Trahan (D-MA). As of June 2, 2026, Trahan published an op-ed defending a proposed federal AI framework that would set guardrails around powerful new frontier models, citing Anthropic's Mythos Preview as an example of the model class at issue. In response, Americans for Responsible Innovation (ARI) ran ads in her district arguing the measure was a stalking horse for Republican efforts to preempt state AI-safety laws (Source: insideaipolicy.com). On June 4, 2026, Trahan and Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-CA) unveiled a joint discussion draft pairing mandatory frontier-model risk disclosure to third-party auditors with a three-year preemption of state laws affecting AI development, while preserving state authority over deployment and use — drawing the development-versus-deployment line the ARI ads had contested.
Opposition has also entered candidate platforms. Mallory McMorrow (D), a Michigan Senate candidate, rolled out a detailed AI agenda in late May 2026 (per a June 4 profile): a May 27 workforce plan creating an AI Workforce Reinvestment Fund funded by companies that automate away jobs, plus a "token tax"; and May 28 safety positions including human-in-the-loop requirements, stronger chip export controls, and third-party or government pre-deployment frontier-model reviews. Her platform echoes that of New York's Alex Bores, who has drawn over $4 million in opposition spending from Leading the Future, the a16z- and Brockman-backed super PAC — an instance of super-PAC money flowing against named candidates running on AI-safety platforms (Source: transformernews.ai).
Political-economy proposals
A separate strand concerns mechanisms for the public to capture upside from AI commercialization, distinct from the lobbying and preemption vectors above. As of June 2, 2026, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) proposed creating a federal sovereign wealth fund tied to the stock performance of frontier AI developers, framed against a backdrop of several developers moving toward public listings. The proposal drew mixed reactions among AI-policy watchers; no bill text or enactment existed as of that date. It was described as an early instance of AI-specific industrial-policy and public-stake thinking entering mainstream legislative debate (Source: insideaipolicy.com).
Sanders sharpened the position in a June 1, 2026 New York Times op-ed titled "A.I. Belongs to the People, Not to Billionaires," arguing the federal government should hold roughly 50% of the stock of America's largest AI companies so that "all Americans should have a stake" in the technology — a more aggressive partial-nationalization framing than a passive sovereign-wealth fund. Coverage characterized it as a call to "nationalize AI stock" (Sources: nytimes.com; broadbandbreakfast.com).
Outcomes to date
As of mid-2026 the campaign's record was mixed. The proposed federal AI moratorium failed in July 2025, and California SB 53 was enacted despite industry opposition. xAI LLC v. Weiser (challenging the Colorado AI Act) remained pending, leaving the constitutional preemption strategy untested. The electoral impact of Leading the Future was undetermined, with the 2026 midterms identified as the first test.
Relationships
- consolidates: Leading the Future (super PAC), American Innovators Network (AIN), Greg Brockman.
- depends-on: Techno-Federalism: How Regulatory Fragmentation Shapes the U.S.-China AI Race, AI Compliance Industry / Regulatory Fragmentation, (Source: washingtonpost.com).
- related: California SB 53 — Transparency in Frontier AI Act → California SB 53 — Transparency in Frontier AI Act, New York RAISE Act (S. 8828), Colorado AI Act (SB 24-205) and SB 25B-004 (Date Amendment), Executive Order 14365 — Ensuring a National Policy Framework for AI, xAI LLC v. Weiser (challenging the Colorado AI Act), The OpenAI Files, OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Meta AI.