A look at the nasty fight between Anthropic-backed super PAC Public First and OpenAI-backed Leading the Future to sway midterms, especially Democratic primaries
One super PAC is allied with Anthropic. The other is tied to OpenAI. They're both spending millions to influence this year's elections.
Context & Ripple Effects
Related coverage traces Public First from Anthropic’s $20M contribution and an initially stated focus on AI-policy education to a broader fundraising push and New Jersey advertising urging AI regulation. It also describes a separate effort to build a counterweight to OpenAI-linked Leading the Future.
The current contest turns AI-policy differences into an electoral fight, with both aligned PACs directing significant spending toward midterms and Democratic primaries. That makes candidate selection—not just lobbying—a venue for competition between the companies’ preferred policy approaches.
First-order effects
- Public First and Leading the Future gain a direct channel to shape which candidates receive support in key Democratic contests, elevating AI regulation and transparency as campaign issues.
- Anthropic and OpenAI become more visibly associated with competing political operations, increasing scrutiny of how their policy positions and election activity intersect.
Second-order effects
- Candidates seeking support may face stronger incentives to state positions on AI safeguards, transparency, and the role of regulation, while rival campaigns must respond to PAC-funded messaging.
- The fight can raise the political cost for other AI companies of remaining neutral: industry peers may be pressed to articulate policy preferences or support alternative advocacy coalitions.
Third-order effects
- If company-aligned PACs remain central to AI politics, AI governance could be shaped increasingly through primary-election incentives alongside conventional rulemaking and legislative advocacy.
- The split suggests that “the AI industry” may not sustain a single policy agenda; competition among leading developers could produce more organized, adversarial coalitions around regulation.
The trend: AI companies are moving from broad policy advocacy toward durable electoral infrastructure to influence the regulatory environment in which they will compete.