A new political action committee backed by Silicon Valley's AI elite just dropped $125 million into the 2026 midterms, making it one of the most well-funded industry lobbying efforts in recent memory. Leading the Future, which launched last summer with backing from OpenAI, Andreessen Horowitz, and Palantir founders, is deploying its war chest to elect candidates who'll champion a single federal AI framework instead of the state-by-state patchwork currently taking shape. With $70 million still on hand and races already targeted, the group is betting big that Washington can be convinced to preempt state regulators before it's too late.
Silicon Valley just wrote a $125 million check to reshape how America regulates artificial intelligence. Leading the Future, a bipartisan super PAC formed in summer 2025, disclosed the massive fundraising haul ahead of its first official campaign finance filing, according to CNBC. The group still has $70 million in the bank and has already started spending in competitive 2026 midterm races.
The donor list reads like a who's who of AI power players. Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital firm that's poured billions into AI startups, contributed alongside OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, legendary angel investor Ron Conway of SV Angel, and AI search startup Perplexity. It's a rare show of unity from competitors who typically battle over talent and market share but now see an existential threat in fragmented regulation.
The urgency comes from watching states move faster than Congress. New York recently passed comprehensive AI legislation covering everything from algorithmic accountability to deepfake disclosure. California, Massachusetts, and Colorado are advancing their own bills. Industry leaders warn this creates an impossible compliance maze - imagine building AI systems that have to navigate 50 different state rulebooks, each with conflicting requirements for transparency, testing, and liability.
