Leading the Future, a pro-AI super PAC network, had spent $7.4 million on general election races as of 26 October while holding $34 million in cash, according to The Intercept’s analysis of Federal Election Commission records. The Intercept says the network was bankrolled by OpenAI’s president and investors in the company.
Puck, in its own review of FEC data, reports that AI-oriented PACs have spent just shy of $80 million on the 2026 elections, and that pro-regulation groups have outspent Leading the Future’s network $40 million to $36 million. That puts the pro-regulation side at 52.6% of the two camps’ combined spending, by our arithmetic.
Business Pill · Power Law
An evergreen Business Engineer explainer on power-law distributions. It teaches the general idea only and does not discuss AI PACs or the midterms.
The key insight: Leading the Future, which The Intercept says was bankrolled by OpenAI’s president and investors, had spent $7.4 million on general election races as of 26 October while holding $34 million in cash, and Puck reports pro-regulation PACs outspent its network $40 million to $36 million.
Puck reports that about three-quarters of AI PAC spending came before the primaries, and that Leading the Future has deployed only about $9 million between July and late October. The Intercept reports that the two main networks, Leading the Future and Public First, put $50.7 million into the primaries.
According to The Intercept, $21.3 million of that went on supporting or opposing a single candidate, Alex Bores, in New York’s 12th Congressional District Democratic primary. That race took 42.0% of the two networks’ primary spending, by our arithmetic. Bores lost to Micah Lasher in June.
The Intercept says “only 5 percent of their direct expenditures have gone to contested general election races”. It reports that Public First had spent $1.1 million on general election races as of the morning of 26 October, and that Guardrails Alliance had spent about $2 million and reported $1.2 million on hand as of 14 October.
2026 US election spending by AI-oriented PACs as of the last filing period, per Puck’s review of FEC data: pro-regulation groups $40 million, Leading the Future’s network $36 million. The pro-regulation side is 52.6% of the two camps’ combined spending, by our arithmetic.
Who Is Funding Each Side
Puck says that since its launch in 2025, Leading the Future has been armed with more than $100 million in funding from backers including Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz and Greg Brockman. The Intercept reports that Brockman and his wife, Anna, donated $25 million to the network last year, while Puck cites a September New York Times report that they “backed out of a $25 million contribution to Leading the Future”. The two reports describe the contribution differently.
On the other side, Puck reports that Anthropic has given tens of millions to Public First, “with apparent constraints preventing the use of that money in election spending”. The Intercept reports that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei gave $1 million to Public First and that Anthropic gave a nonprofit associated with Public First millions of dollars.
The $7.4 Million Against the $34 Million
Leading the Future’s $7.4 million in general election spending is about 22% of the $34 million it held in cash, by our arithmetic. The two are different measures, money spent to date against cash still available, so the gap shows how much the network has held back rather than a share of a total.
The Intercept reports that “Only 31 percent of that total has gone toward competitive races”, as rated by FiftyPlusOne. It also reports that Leading the Future gave a $500,000 donation on 9 October to a pro-data center nonprofit called Build American AI.
Why It Matters for Markets
Bloomberg reported on 30 October that AI policy fears are gripping stock and bond traders with the midterms days away, a line we added to our Magnificent 7 coverage. On 30 October we also reported that the UK competition watchdog opened a probe into Meta’s terms for using publishers’ content in AI.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told Politico earlier this month, as Puck reports, “Somethingโs clearly not working” and “I donโt think spending money on politics is whatโs going to make people feel better about it”.
The Structural Read
As we read The Intercept’s figures, the two main networks put $50.7 million into the primaries and $21.3 million of it, 42.0% by our arithmetic, into one New York race, then largely held back from contested general election races.
As we read Puck’s FEC review, the pro-regulation side accounts for 52.6% of the $76 million the two camps spent, by our arithmetic, against a total for all AI-oriented PACs of just shy of $80 million.
As we read Puck’s report, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told Politico that spending money on politics is not what will make people feel better about AI, while The Intercept quotes Public Citizen’s Rick Claypool saying the companies underestimated public opposition to the data center buildout.
Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, to Politico, as reported by Puck, October 2026
“I donโt think spending money on politics is whatโs going to make people feel better about it”
Three Implications
FOR THE AI INDUSTRY The Intercept reports Leading the Future gave $500,000 on 9 October to a pro-data center nonprofit called Build American AI.
FOR CANDIDATES The Intercept cites a Data for Progress poll, commissioned by Guardrails, finding about three-quarters of voters less likely to support a candidate backed by an AI super PAC.
FOR POLICY Our prior coverage reports Bloomberg’s line that AI policy fears are gripping stock and bond traders with the midterms days away.
The framework says the AI Supercycle “describes the intersection of three powerful forces: geopolitics, cultural transformation, and economic change.”
As we read it, the midterm spending figures show the cultural side of that intersection reaching electoral politics. The framework was published in June 2026 and does not discuss the 2026 midterms or these PACs.
What Is Not Established
The totals come from two publications’ readings of FEC data at different cut-off dates, so they do not add up exactly. Puck’s $40 million and $36 million figures cover the last filing period. Leading the Future did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comment. The Campaign Legal Center has filed a complaint about the network’s use of Delaware companies to pay vendors, which the network has previously defended as legal, according to The Intercept.
This Week In The AI Supercycle
Execution Fault Lines, Concentrated Demand, and Geopolitical Firewalls
This week’s issue: the AI build is not short of demand for its parts. It is short of cheap money, and its end revenue rests on a narrow base of large, often venture-funded buyers.
Leading the Future had spent $7.4 million on general election races as of 26 October while holding $34 million in cash, The Intercept reports, and pro-regulation PACs outspent its network $40 million to $36 million, according to Puck.
A note on sourcing. Spending figures come from The Intercept’s and Puck’s readings of Federal Election Commission data published on 29 October 2026; we did not re-total the FEC filings ourselves. Figures labelled our arithmetic are our own calculations.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
