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The age of the AI super PAC is here, and it has ballot boxes across the U.S. in its sites ahead of the midterms. If there’s a winning election formula the AI industry is looking to repeat, it is the crypto industry’s highly effective lobbying muscle in 2024.
The crypto-friendly super PAC Fairshake was the single largest corporate donor in the 2024 election cycle and supported over 50 candidates that were elected to public office. It has amassed another war chest for the 2026 elections. The Leading the Future super PAC formed last summer has financial backing from some of the Silicon Valley donors prominent in Fairshake, which was co-founded by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, also co-founders of the venture capital firm a16z, as well as OpenAI founder Greg Brockman, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, and AI startup Perplexity. Meta also launched a super PAC late last year focused on AI regulation.
Crypto continues to attract broader interest from a wider cross-section of Americans, but AI is seen as an issue that may rise to a much higher level among the public, especially in light of concerns about job losses. Senator Mark Warner, D-Va., recently told CNBC, “I am making a major bet as someone trying to get rehired now as a senator this will be an issue in 2026, and even much more so in 2028, the issue of our time.”
