a16z, OpenAI's Greg Brockman, and others launch Leading the Future, a pro-AI super PAC network with $100M+ in funding, hoping to emulate crypto PAC Fairshake
Leading the Future’s launch brought a16z, Greg Brockman and other backers into organized electoral advocacy around AI policy, explicitly using crypto PAC Fairshake as a reference point. Subsequent coverage showed the effort surpassing $125 million in 2025, while later filings identified $25 million from Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz as a major source of its cash position.
The network became a fault line within the AI ecosystem rather than a single-industry campaign vehicle: OpenAI said Brockman’s backing was personal, and OpenAI employees later supported a rival PAC seeking stricter AI rules.
First-order effects
Leading the Future gains a large initial funding base to build a pro-AI political-operation network, giving its backers a vehicle to influence candidates and the federal AI-regulation debate.
a16z and Brockman become publicly associated with a coordinated policy agenda; OpenAI’s later statement that it made no super-PAC contributions separates the company from Brockman’s activity.
Second-order effects
Candidates and policymakers face a better-funded pro-AI advocacy channel, increasing pressure on other AI firms, investors and civil-society groups to clarify or organize their own regulatory positions.
The later emergence of a stricter-rules counterpart shows that AI-policy politics can split even closely connected industry constituencies, shifting the debate from broad support for AI toward competition over what rules should govern it.
Third-order effects
If durable, AI development will be shaped not only by labs, investors and regulators but by standing electoral organizations that can reward or challenge policy positions across election cycles.
The pattern points toward more state-mediated AI governance, with the practical terms of regulation increasingly contested through political fundraising as well as technical and legislative processes.
The trend: AI policy is becoming a sustained electoral-finance arena in which competing industry and worker-aligned groups seek to shape the regulatory environment around frontier systems.
The battle has always been whether we can think clearly about the future and act on that thinking before the money comes in and makes the public interest irrelevant. This is what happened in social media. Not for the better.
Over the past years, the broader AI community has increasingly adopted crypto-like mores (memes, shitposts, hypeapalooza), so this is a logical next step.
Huge amounts of money are being spent lobbying to deregulate AI. This is because AI companies & VCs know the public overwhelmingly supports AI regulation. Politicians must resist the money and side with the public. https://www.wsj.com/... [image]
i don't think everyone who takes agi risk seriously should entirely lament this 1 - for agi gov to stick it seems likely it would have to be international coordination in some way 2 - “avoiding a patchwork of state laws” seems good doens't sound entirely reckless imo
NEW: Silicon Valley is putting more than $100 million into a network of PACs and organizations to advocate against strict artificial-intelligence regulations. It's the first AI political network set to make waves in 2026 midterms. W/ @AmrithRamkumar https://www.wsj.com/...
imagine spending money on literally anything else that directly helps people instead of an unproven intermediate technology that maybe someday might effect the same change but enriches a certain group of people nonetheless even if it fails. couldn't be silicon valley! [embedded…
“Silicon Valley is putting more than $100 million into a network of political-action committees and organizations to advocate against strict artificial-intelligence regulations, a signal that tech executives will be active in next year's midterm elections.” [embedded post]
A Silicon Valley network of super-PACs has raised $100 million to “advocate against strict artificial-intelligence regulations.” — amazing how AI — despite not yet living up to its technical promises — is beginning to dominate US politics and the economy — www.wsj.com/politic…