A political action committee called Think Big spent over $8 million trying to keep Alex Bores from winning a seat in Congress.
Bores, who backed artificial intelligence regulation as a state lawmaker in New York, became the first major target of pro-A.I. interest groups, which are spending tens of millions of dollars to influence the 2026 midterm election.
Federal Election Commission records reviewed by Scripps News show Think Big receives most of its money from a new super PAC named Leading the Future.
The group is funded by $125 million from donors including Greg Brockman, president of ChatGPT owner OpenAI, as well as Marc Andreessen and Benjamin Horowitz. Andreessen and Horowitz are among the largest investors in A.I. companies, leading the push to construct more data centers.
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“This is a really small group of people that wants to make a very big splash in the election,” said Saurav Ghosh, director of federal campaign finance reform at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. “It is absolutely working, and it is absolutely going to pay off once the new Congress takes office.”
FEC reports show millions of dollars linked to Leading the Future have already bought television ads, text messages and direct mailers in 36 House and Senate races.
The spending has benefited a mix of Democrats and Republicans from all over the nation, with clusters in Georgia, New York and Texas, where data center development is concentrated.
“Whether it's a Democrat or a Republican, if they're willing to, whether it is build a data center or deregulate AI, in that jurisdiction, I think that's the main driver behind the spending,” Ghosh said.
A statement on Leading the Future's website says it is “focused on advancing a positive, forward-looking agenda for AI innovation in Washington, D.C. and across the states.”
A second A.I.-aligned super PAC, Public First Action, has raised $80 million. Half of the donations have come from Anthropic, developer of the Claude chatbot. Public First Action says it supports candidates who agree with their vision of more government oversight of A.I.
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“We have just never seen the kind of spending on this scale and size and scope,” said Tiffany Muller, president of End Citizens United. “These AI companies, they are reckoning with the fact that spending millions of in elections is worth it.”
Alex Bores lost his race and blamed A.I. “oligarchs.”
FEC filings show tens of millions of dollars donated by A.I. interests available to spend between now and Election Day.
