AI Political Groups Spent $78.5M on 2026 Races, CNBC Finds

AI-focused political groups have spent roughly $78.5 million on 2026 federal candidates, and nearly three-quarters of it was gone before the general election started, according to a CNBC analysis of Federal Election Commission filings through Oct. 20.

The money splits into two camps. Groups aligned with Leading the Future, which pushes faster AI development and lighter, more uniform federal rules, reported about $26 million in primary independent expenditures and about $8 million in general-election congressional races. Safeguards-focused groups, which want stronger protections and more room for states to regulate, spent about $32.1 million in primaries and $6.9 million in the general.

Leading the Future's named donors include Andreessen Horowitz, OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman, Joe Lonsdale, Ron Conway and Perplexity. Opposite them, Anthropic committed $20 million to Public First Action in February and another $20 million in July. The company's claim is that the funds are restricted to policy and public education and cannot be paid out as election ads.

The networks have gone at each other directly. CNBC reports that Leading the Future, Public First Action and Innovation Council Action backed rival candidates in at least six primary races. Think Big, an affiliate of Leading the Future, spent $310,000 supporting Democrat Jared Moskowitz in Florida's 25th Congressional District during the primary.

"Leading the future is driven by three billionaires who are close to Donald Trump" with a "particular view of how AI regulation should go and want to kind of buy it off," Brad Carson, head of Public First Action, told CNBC. "We believe it should be more democratically accountable."

The story lands into a stretch where lawmakers from both parties have been telling reporters that AI CEOs are becoming a political liability in Washington, one of 264 regulation-themed items we have tracked in the last 90 days.