Anthropic Allies vs a16z: AI Super PACs Have Spent $53M

The Verge reported on 19 October 2026 that Democrats, who polls predict will flip at least one chamber of Congress, are weighing how hard to press AI companies if they take over committee agendas. Federal Election Commission filings show how much money the industry’s two rival super PAC networks have already put into the midterms.

By our arithmetic from those filings, the super PACs funded by Leading the Future, whose money comes from a16z and from OpenAI’s Greg Brockman and Anna Brockman, and by Public First, which Politico places in an Anthropic-aligned network, have made $53.3 million in independent expenditures this cycle. The split is close: $28.1 million against $25.2 million. The cash left is not.

Business Pill · CONCENTRATION

A short explainer on concentration: when a few big pieces make most of a total. It teaches the general idea only and says nothing about any committee in this story.

What the Filings Show

Leading the Future itself reports no independent expenditures. It raised $75,981,640 through 30 September and gave $47,000,000 to other committees, its FEC summary shows. Two super PACs, Think Big and American Mission, each report $22,500,000 received from Leading the Future.

Think Big reports $17,224,117.88 in independent expenditures and American Mission $10,853,994.82, both through 31 August. Together that is $28.1 million, our arithmetic.

On the other side, Public First raised $4,910,605 through 30 September and gave $4,340,000 to other committees. Jobs and Democracy PAC and Defending Our Values PAC, both of which list contributions from Public First and from Public First Action Inc., report independent expenditures through 30 September of $17,875,336.49 and $7,365,832.10, or $25.2 million combined, our arithmetic.

What Was Posted on X

The Verge’s own post of the report, 19 October 2026: Lauren Feiner on how Democrats are weighing oversight of AI companies if they win committee control. We read the full article; the FEC totals above are our tally, not The Verge’s.

Tomorrow Together’s post of 17 October 2026 quoting its co-founder Rob Flaherty: “The top funder on the Republican side is Elon Musk, number two is @pmarca.” That is Flaherty’s claim; the FEC rows we read cover the AI super PACs in this piece, not all Republican donors, so we have not checked it.

Leading the Future’s post of 4 August 2026 on a national AI framework, crediting Representatives Jay Obernolte and Lori Trahan for working across party lines. It is the committee’s own statement of its position.

AdImpact Politics, whose spending estimates the Wesleyan Media Project uses for the ads it identifies, shared The New York Times’ 16 October report under the headline “$137 Million in A.I.-Generated Ads Flood the Midterms”, quoting that more than 80 percent of the ads were produced by Republican campaigns or Republican-aligned political action committees. The Update above gives Wesleyan’s own figures: 81 percent of the ads and 88 percent of the spending.

Who Funds Each Side

Leading the Future lists $75,100,000 in individual contributions. The itemized receipts show $50 million from A16Z Capital Management LLC in two $25 million entries, with memo lines attributing $12.5 million of each entry to Marc Andreessen and to Ben Horowitz, $25 million each in total. Greg Brockman, whose listed employer is OpenAI, and Anna Brockman gave $12.5 million each, and a contributor listed as Perplex AI Inc. gave $100,000. By our arithmetic, a16z and the Brockmans account for 99.9% of the total.

Think Big also lists $500,000 from venture capitalist Ronald Conway, and American Mission $250,000 from Lonsdale Enterprises. The Verge reports that Conway now regrets funding Leading the Future, citing Politico.

Public First’s own itemized receipts list six Anthropic employees giving $3,154,900, about 64% of its receipts by our arithmetic, led by $1,000,000 from chief executive Dario Amodei, which Politico reported in July. Politico wrote that the donation cemented the bond between Anthropic and “a network of spending groups set up to boost candidates who support rules on AI.”

The bigger donor to the network is Public First Action Inc., which the filings list as giving $15,398,985.04 to Jobs and Democracy PAC, $7,935,067.63 to Defending Our Values PAC and $1,000,000 to Public First, $24.3 million in all, our arithmetic. Anthropic said in July it had given Public First Action $40 million and that the money “cannot be used to influence the election of any candidate for federal, state, or local office.”

The Cash Left

Leading the Future reports $23,853,821.37 cash on hand at 30 September. Think Big reports $2,261,051.48 and American Mission $10,530,905.82 at 31 August, so the network held $36.6 million at its latest reports, our arithmetic.

Public First reports $478,561.93 at 30 September, Jobs and Democracy PAC $670,389.69 and Defending Our Values PAC $632,870.80, or $1.8 million together. The Verge, citing filings as of June, put Leading the Future’s spending at nearly $45 million with $31 million left; the September report shows $52,127,818.63 disbursed.

The money is not all moving one way. The Daily Beast, citing The New York Times, reports that Meta has pulled back $25 million of the $65 million it pledged to back AI-friendly candidates, and that Greg Brockman has reportedly canceled a planned $25 million donation to Leading the Future. We did not read the Times report.

The Democratic Side

The Verge reports that a new super PAC, Tomorrow Together, launched by former Harris campaign deputy manager Rob Flaherty and Karthik Ganapathy, began a $4 million ad campaign last week in battleground House races. Its first FEC report, covering 1 July to 30 September, shows $100,127 raised and $42,500 in independent expenditures; the ad campaign The Verge describes began after that period.

Flaherty told The Verge: “For a long time, Democrats were afraid to talk about it, either for a mix of not understanding it, or being afraid of the money that was going to be poured in by the AI industry,” adding: “At a certain point, voters speak louder than money.” Democratic strategist Jesse Lehrich called AI “a hundred percent ready for the taking.”

Leading the Future described its own position in an X post on 4 August: “Leading the Future supports a balanced, bipartisan conversation about AI and a thoughtful national regulatory framework.”

Where the Pressure Is Showing

The Verge reports that top Democrats on key committees have already signaled they would press the industry on tax credits tied to data centers and on recent hacking incidents, and that committee control would let them call chief executives to testify and demand documents.

On 19 October, Reuters reported that Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer urged the Federal Communications Commission not to approve a Club for Growth petition to allow AI-generated political robocalls before the 3 November election. “There is absolutely no excuse to relax these standards and allow special interests to flood our cellphone lines with deepfakes or dark-money-funded AI voices,” Schumer said.

Local fights are part of the same picture; see our report on AI’s local limits for Loudoun County’s data-center pause and the projects stalled by local votes.

Update, 19 October: Ads Made With AI Have Drawn More Than $137 Million, Wesleyan Counts

A separate tally measures something different from the PAC money above. In its 15 October release, the Wesleyan Media Project said it now counts 220 political ads “generated–at least in part–by using AI tools”, on which more than $137 million has been spent, and called that “almost certainly an undercount given that it is difficult to detect uses of AI.” The spending figures are AdImpact estimates.

“For comparison, we identified less than $50,000 in spending on AI-generated ads in the 2024 cycle,” said Erika Franklin Fowler, the project’s co-director. “Much of the AI use is not disclosed through any type of disclaimer.” The release says 81 percent of the ads were sponsored by Republican candidates or groups and 12 percent by Democrats, that Republican-affiliated sponsors account for 88 percent of the spending, and that the ads have run in 34 states, 27 percent of them with a disclaimer.

The two numbers are not comparable: the $137 million counts ads made with AI tools, whoever paid for them, while the $53.3 million in this piece counts independent expenditures by super PACs funded from the AI industry. As we read it, the industry is now in the midterms twice, as a funder of political spending and as a tool inside the ads themselves.

Update, 20 October: The State View From New York

A USA TODAY Network review of state records, published 20 October, says a recently amended state law requires disclosures on campaign ads that use “materially deceptive media” unless the ads are considered satire or parody. Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman’s campaign, which posted AI-made ads depicting Governor Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, has called them “obviously satire”, according to the report.

When the network asked in August for the number of AI-related complaints, the state Division of Election Law Enforcement’s response “in part asserted AI was not a category DELE uses to classify complaint types,” the report says. A second request in September drew a denial from the Public Campaign Finance Board, which said the records are “being compiled for law enforcement purposes,” which the report says means at least one complaint has been filed, and the Board of Elections shared a complaint received in May claiming an ad depicting Hochul and Mamdani used undisclosed AI.

The report cites a Beacon Research poll in which 57% of New York voters said they had seen political content in the past year they knew or suspected was made with AI, and 84% said it is unacceptable for a campaign to use AI to create realistic video or audio of an opponent saying or doing something they never did. At the 13 October debate, Hochul said she planned to revisit a bill that would ban campaigns from using AI in their ads within 90 days of an election, the report says.

As we read it, the Wesleyan tally above counts the AI-made ads themselves; the New York records describe the enforcement side, where the first response said AI was not a complaint category and the second, a month later, pointed to at least one complaint under review, with Election Day on 3 November.

The Structural Read

As we read it, the donor lists differ in shape: two sources, a16z and the Brockmans, put $75 million into Leading the Future, while the Public First network’s largest listed donor is Public First Action Inc., at $24.3 million.

As we read it, The Verge’s report adds a third side: Democrats weighing committee oversight of AI companies, and a new Democratic super PAC, Tomorrow Together, whose first report shows $100,127 raised.

As we read it, the filings measure money, not results: they do not show which candidates won or how the spending split between the parties.

Three Implications

SPENDING IS CLOSE Independent expenditures stand at $28.1 million for the Leading the Future network and $25.2 million for the Public First network, by our arithmetic from FEC filings.

CASH IS FAR APART At their latest reports the Leading the Future network held $36.6 million and the Public First network $1.8 million, our arithmetic.

OVERSIGHT IS THE DEMOCRATIC PITCH The Verge reports that top Democrats on key committees have signaled they would press AI companies on data-center tax credits and hacking incidents, with committee control letting them call chief executives to testify.

The Business Engineer Lens

This story maps onto the Business Engineer framework Inside Anthropic’s Permission Layer.

The framework puts it this way: “The governance layer sits at the intersection of capability, regulation, national security, access control, and geopolitical alignment.”

As we read it, the FEC filings show money from both sides of the AI industry flowing into the elections that shape that layer: $75 million from a16z and the Brockmans into Leading the Future, and Public First Action and Anthropic employees behind the Public First network. The framework was published in June 2026 and does not discuss these committees.

What Is Not Established

The coverage periods differ: Think Big and American Mission report through 31 August, the other committees through 30 September, so the totals are not a single-date snapshot. Independent expenditures are not all of the committees’ spending; operating costs and contributions to other committees are counted separately.

The FEC filings do not show who funds Public First Action, and Anthropic says its own $40 million there cannot be used for elections. The filings do not show how the money was split between Democrats and Republicans, and “Anthropic-aligned” is Politico’s description, not the committees’.

The Bottom Line

By our arithmetic from FEC filings, the a16z- and Brockman-funded Leading the Future network and the Public First network have made $53.3 million in independent expenditures, $28.1 million and $25.2 million. At their latest reports the first held $36.6 million in cash and the second $1.8 million.