Pro-AI super PAC Leading the Future has raised $125M+ in 2025, including from a16z and Greg Brockman, to try to shape the US midterms and federal AI regulation
Context & Ripple Effects
Leading the Future emerged in 2025 with more than $100 million in backing from a16z, Greg Brockman and others, explicitly modeled on crypto political-action efforts. The new fundraising total shows that initial coalition has become a durable vehicle for intervening in federal AI-policy debates.
The effort is already paired with a $10 million media campaign for a national AI policy, while a separate network was being assembled to support candidates favoring stronger rules. AI regulation is therefore becoming an organized electoral contest rather than solely a legislative or corporate-policy discussion.
First-order effects
- Leading the Future gains substantially greater capacity to fund political messaging and support candidates aligned with its federal AI-policy goals ahead of the midterms.
- a16z and Brockman become more visibly associated with a political vehicle intended to influence the regulatory environment around AI.
Second-order effects
- Groups favoring tighter AI rules face pressure to raise comparable resources and sharpen their own candidate-support and messaging operations; a planned counter-PAC network signals that response was already underway.
- Federal lawmakers and candidates are likely to encounter more coordinated AI-policy advocacy, increasing the political value of positions on national rules versus state-by-state approaches.
Third-order effects
- If fundraising persists on both sides, AI governance could become a standing campaign-finance arena, with policy outcomes shaped partly by organized capital as well as technical and public-interest arguments.
- The contest favors a more state-mediated AI sector: companies and investors will have stronger incentives to treat political organization as part of regulatory strategy, though fundraising alone does not determine legislation.
The trend: AI regulation is moving from a primarily corporate and policy debate into a well-funded electoral influence contest centered on federal rulemaking.