AI Super PACs Spent Over $70 Million on the Midterms: Who Won

Leading the Future, the AI super PAC network funded by Andreessen Horowitz's co-founders and OpenAI's Greg Brockman, lost its biggest general-election bet on 3 November when its candidate fell in South Carolina's Senate race. The surprise is what the filings show about the rest of the money: this was not the AI industry against everyone else. AI money sat on both sides, and the side that wants more regulation spent more.

For Indian readers this is more than American politics. The money comes from people and companies behind tools many of us use, including ChatGPT and Claude. Their fight is over who writes the rules for those tools.

Pro-regulation AI super PACs outspent the industry's network

AI super PACs spent $72.28 million on independent expenditures, according to Transformer's election tracker as of 6 November. Of that, $44.39 million came from what it calls "pro-safety" groups and $27.89 million from "pro-innovation" ones. A separate count by Tech Influence Watch, published before the vote, put the total at $79 million across 68 seats.

Side	Group	Spent
Pro-innovation	Think Big (Democrats)	$18.67M
Pro-innovation	American Mission (Republicans)	$6.71M
Pro-innovation	Building the Future	$2.51M
Pro-safety	Jobs and Democracy (Democrats)	$18.49M
Pro-safety	Defending Our Values (Republicans)	$7.91M
Pro-safety	Tomorrow Together	$6.12M
Pro-safety	Guardrails Alliance	$5.01M
Pro-safety	You Can Push Back	$4.39M
Pro-safety	Dream NYC	$2.48M

Source: Transformer's PAC pages, data as of 6 November 2026, 12:53 UTC. Independent expenditures only.

The $4.8 million bet on South Carolina lost

Leading the Future's largest general-election bet was about $4.8 million for Republican Darline Graham, by Fortune's count, through two linked PACs. She lost to Democrat Annie Andrews, who called her "Data Center Darline", The Next Web reported. Other trackers count that spending differently, from just over $2 million to $4.1 million, likely because they cover different periods.

The group disputes the framing. "We're proud that many of the pro-innovation champions we supported this cycle won on Tuesday," spokesperson Jesse Hunt told Semafor. Brad Carson, who leads the rival Public First groups, called the result "a crushing blow to the AI industry's anti-regulatory efforts to buy a Congress that would look the other way", in WIRED.

Few races turned on AI money

Most candidates backed by either side followed the national wave, with Democrats winning and Republicans losing. "It's difficult to separate the impact of AI-related spending from the broader Democratic wave," TechCrunch concluded, and Time reported that "neither side's cash proved decisive".

Much of the money never reached a close contest. As of 29 October, only 5% of both networks' direct spending had gone to contested general-election races, The Intercept found. The costliest fight came earlier, in New York's June primary, where Leading the Future spent about $8 million against Alex Bores. He lost to Micah Lasher, who is himself listed as a co-sponsor of the state's RAISE Act, the AI safety law Bores led.

The "$100 million" war chest was mostly pledges

Leading the Future launched with $100 million in pledges, but its FEC filing shows $75.98 million actually raised by the flagship PAC up to 14 October. Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz gave $25 million each, and Greg and Anna Brockman $12.5 million each, per Transformer's FEC-based table.

Donors grew cooler during the year. Brockman pulled out of a second planned $25 million gift in June, calling it "a distraction", the San Francisco Standard reported. The Campaign Legal Center has also filed a complaint about how the network routed spending; that is an allegation, not a finding, and the FEC lacks a quorum to act on it.

Anthropic's money came with a restriction

Anthropic gave $20 million in February to Public First Action, a nonprofit rather than a super PAC, and Transformer's tracker shows $40 million across two gifts. The company "restricted its donation from being used to influence federal elections", a spokesperson told Transformer in April, speaking about the first gift. Employees gave separately, including $3.15 million to Public First, by the tracker's count, and chief executive Dario Amodei gave $1 million, The Intercept reported.

A note on our own position: BestAI drafts news with AI assistance, and the tool we use is Anthropic's Claude. Weigh this section with that in mind. We found no 2026 spending total or results for Meta's state-level PACs, so we make no claim about them.

What it means for you

• Nothing changes in your apps yet. We found no price or product change tied to this spending as of 6 November.
• Voters are wary, not obsessed. In the exit poll, 56% called AI and data centres a crucial or major factor, the lowest of five issues, and 43% said neither party handles AI better.
• Expect this money again. Leading the Future still held just over $20 million, according to WIRED, and says "2028 will show who actually cares about passing a national regulatory framework".

For what the result means for the rules themselves, see our story on Trump's AI order. India's own rules are a separate story, covered in our India AI regulation guide. The next test comes when the new Congress sits in early January and both camps start lobbying it.

Sources: FEC filings for Leading the Future; Transformer's election tracker; Anthropic's announcement; The Next Web; WIRED; TechCrunch; Semafor; The Intercept; Citation Needed; Time; NBC's exit poll.

How we reported this: we read the FEC filing, Transformer's PAC pages and the coverage above on 6 November 2026. FEC data for Leading the Future runs to 14 October, so final totals will be higher. Fortune's figures reached us through a Yahoo copy. The "$4.8 million" and "$79 million" are other outlets' counts, not ours.

Cover image: file photo of the US Capitol dome with the American flag flying. David Maiolo, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.