The artificial intelligence industry was poised to act as a kingmaker in the midterm elections.
Super PAC networks bankrolled with millions of dollars from Anthropic and OpenAI executives spent heavily in competitive primaries earlier this year, including a high-profile race in New York City. They were touted as the looming successor to another single-issue group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, as AIPAC moved its spending underground.
Yet as public outrage over data centers and AI’s threat to jobs soared, artificial intelligence super PACs dramatically throttled back spending on congressional races compared to the primaries. The biggest AI super PAC network has spent only modestly ahead of next week’s general election — and mostly in safe seats.
An Intercept analysis of AI spending in the 2026 midterms, based on Federal Election Commission records and independent race ratings, shows that only 5 percent of their direct expenditures have gone to contested general election races. The industry’s avoidance of the contested races that could determine control of the next Congress suggest that the PACs have realized how the public has soured on the tech, campaign finance and industry observers told The Intercept.
“Essentially these companies underestimated how much the public despises the data center buildout, and the inescapability of AI systems that no one asked for that say they will automate jobs and maybe kill us all,” said Rick Claypool, a research director for the president’s office at Public Citizen, a nonprofit campaign finance watchdog.
Although there is still time for a last-minute flurry of spending, the story of AI’s role in the 2026 midterm elections may turn out to be the story of a single race — a primary in New York — that forced the industry to step away from the limelight.
Claypool’s group released an analysis earlier this year of “corporate supremacist” super PACs, a new breed of campaign committees modeled on a crypto super PAC called Fairshake that spent tens of millions on the 2024 elections.
The model was to amass a massive war chest and use it to punish candidates who opposed the company’s preferred government regulations, while throwing cash at allies or potential allies from both parties.
The first big AI super PAC to launch in August 2025 was Leading the Future, which was bankrolled by the president of OpenAI and its investors. A rival super PAC network, Public First, launched months later with the goal of countering Leading the Future’s influence. Its donors include Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who gave $1 million. Anthropic has also given a nonprofit associated with Public First millions of dollars, while stipulating that the money cannot be used on elections. Public First says that it supports tighter regulations than its rival.
The two networks plowed $50.7 million into the primaries, campaign finance records show. Most of that money was spent on primary races where the outcome was in doubt, driven by an eye-popping $21.3 million the networks spent on supporting or opposing a single congressional candidate, Alex Bores, in the Democratic primary for New York’s 12th Congressional District.
Bores, a New York State Assembly member, attracted the ire of those in the industry who favor a laissez-faire approach by authoring an AI regulation bill in the state legislature.
Leading the Future succeeded in defeating Bores, who lost to his State Assembly colleague Micah Lasher in June. But the group drew intense blowback in the process. Many observers suggested Leading the Future’s spending had boosted Bores rather than hurt him, because it gave him a chance to position himself as a foe of the AI industry — while also benefiting from a PAC aligned with the Public First network.
“Down to the wire, they were sweating,” Bores told The Intercept, referring to Leading the Future. “I think people who have been in politics for a while will realize that their spending really served to elevate the issue of AI.”
Leading the Future did not respond to a request for comment.
After wading into contested primary elections, the two leading AI super PAC networks have held back from spending on competitive general elections — even though they have plenty of money in the bank.
Until a few days ago, Public First had spent nothing on general election races. Leading the Future has spent only $7.4 million on general election races as of October 26, according to the FEC data, despite having $34 million in cash on hand across its network as of its most recent report.
Only 31 percent of that total has gone toward competitive races, as measured by the independent analytics website FiftyPlusOne. The only reason Leading the Future has spent money on competitive general election races at all is because it’s backing U.S. Sen. Darline Graham, R-S.C., who filled the seat of her late brother Lindsey Graham and is now facing an unexpectedly fierce challenge from a Democrat to win a full term in ruby-red South Carolina.
“They are not going to have an impact on the balance of power in Congress,” said Shaunna Thomas, one of the founders of Guardrails Alliance, another new super PAC set up to counter Leading the Future’s influence. “They are spending money on candidates who they think will protect their ability to control if and how they are regulated.”
Public First has only recently started spending a relatively small sum on a handful of general election races. The spending had amounted to $1.1 million as of the morning of October 26, according to processed FEC data.
Asked for comment on how its strategy has changed since the primaries, a Public First spokesperson said that it was still trying to support “strong advocates for AI regulation.”
“Public First was founded as a counterweight to Leading the Future, and that fight looks very different today. Leading the Future is going dark. Its biggest backers are walking away,” said Anthony Rivera-Rodriguez, the spokesperson.
Into that gap have stepped new groups pushing for tougher AI regulation such as the Guardrails Alliance, which bills itself as a grassroots alternative to corporate-backed super PACs. It is funded in large part by Silicon Valley tech workers but has taken a more aggressive stance against “tech oligarchs.” Guardrails has spent about $2 million thus far and reported having $1.2 million on hand as of October 14.
About three-quarters of voters are less likely to support a candidate they know has received support from an AI super PAC, according to a Data for Progress poll of more than 3,000 likely voters in Iowa, Michigan, and Ohio commissioned by Guardrails. Voters were more concerned about spending from AI companies than from crypto companies or AIPAC.
Voters were more concerned about spending from AI companies than from crypto companies or AIPAC.
The dislike for data centers and AI cuts across party lines. In Michigan’s purple 7th Congressional District, Democratic candidate Will Lawrence has seized on data centers as one of his leading issues.
“The politics of this are terrible. Eighty percent of everybody is against it, whether you’re a Democrat, independent, or Republican,” he told supporters at a recent town hall.
Notably, neither of the super PAC networks has intervened in Lawrence’s race, despite it being one of the closest in the nation. (Lawrence’s campaign has pointed out that Elon Musk, who leads AI company xAI, has spent against Lawrence via his America PAC.)
There are emerging signs that the big AI super PAC networks are changing tactics in response to that public distaste. Public First’s dark-money affiliate donated $3 million since August to a preexisting super PAC supporting California state Sen. Scott Wiener, one of two Democrats vying to replace retiring Rep. Nancy Pelosi in California.
Leading the Future, meanwhile, gave a $500,000 donation on October 9 to a pro-data center nonprofit called Build American AI.
AI super PAC critics are also watching to see what Leading the Future will do, given its large war chest.
“I think they are going to continue to spend. I think they are going to try to do more and more spending that isn’t as easily tracked, because they are such political dead weight,” said Bores.
Delaware Corporations
When single-issue super PACs know their issue is unpopular, they use vague names, “pop-up” affiliates, and other dubious tactics to hide their activities from voters.
Add another one to the list: Leading the Future has routed more than $30 million of spending through newly minted Delaware corporations, blocking transparency during an election that has been defined by voter backlash against the industry.
Those apparent shell corporations have accounted for the lion’s share of the largest artificial intelligence super PAC network’s expenses during this year’s election.
The practice is a flagrant violation of Federal Election Commission guidelines that require campaign organizations to disclose which consultants, pollsters, and advertisers they are paying, a campaign watchdog alleged in a complaint filed in May.
There may be little recourse for observers worried about the lack of transparency for now, however. The FEC is short of the quorum that would allow it to take action on complaints such as the one filed by the Campaign Legal Center. (Leading the Future, which did not respond to a request for comment, has previously defended its tactics as legal in a statement to Wired.)
The Leading the Future network was funded in large part by an executive at or investors in OpenAI, one of the world’s largest AI companies. (In 2024, The Intercept sued OpenAI in federal court over the company’s use of copyrighted articles to train its chatbot ChatGPT. The case is ongoing.)
Company president Greg Brockman and his wife, Anna Brockman, donated $25 million to the network last year. When it came time to spend that money, the Leading the Future network leaned on two affiliate super PACs, one for Democratic candidates called Think Big and the other for Republican candidates called American Mission.
That is a typical tactic of the new breed of single-issue super PACs popularized by the crypto industry. Campaign finance reform advocates say it may help obscure the origin of campaign ads from voters but does not run afoul of any laws itself.
What those super PACs did next raised red flags for watchdogs, however. Since December, American Mission has reported spending $17.4 million through a Delaware-incorporated limited liability corporation called Summit Ridge Media Group, on services ranging from media placement to ad production to consulting.
Think Big has spent $21.3 million through a different Delaware corporation, Lantern Production Consultants, on a similarly wide range of expenses.
The grab bag of expenses is a giveaway that the super PACs are likely using the newly created corporations to hide their true vendors, according to Shanna Ports, a senior legal counsel at the Campaign Legal Center.
“There’s no way of knowing what is motivating this arrangement — but I know there is backlash to AI. It is possible that the vendors who are working with American Mission and Think Big don’t want to be identified in FEC reports,” Ports said.
Thomas, of the rival super PAC Guardrails Alliance, told The Intercept she thinks the network is obscuring its spending because a lax regulatory approach has become “politically toxic.”
“Their donors don’t want to be associated, their candidates don’t want their support, and their vendors don’t want to be associated,” Thomas said. “If you were public, you are running away. If you are not, you are interested in not being exposed.”
This story was supported by a grant from the Tarbell Center for AI Journalism.
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