Who's lobbying, how much they're spending, and what they want
Updated May 2026
AI is the fastest-growing lobbying category in Washington. Public Citizen's February 2026 report "Generative Influence" documented 3,570 federal lobbyists reporting AI work in 2025, a 170 percent increase since 2022. By House lobbying records, 6,110 lobbyists were engaged on AI advocacy by the end of 2025, a 265 percent increase in three years. More lobbyists were active on AI issues than on defense or energy. No labor unions appear in the top 30.
Combined federal lobbying spend by top technology and AI companies exceeded $100 million in 2025. The full technology sector spent $314 million on federal lobbying in the first nine months of 2025 alone. The eight largest tech and AI companies combined spent $36 million in H1 2025, averaging $320,000 per day Congress was in session. In Q1 2026 alone, six major companies (Alphabet, Anthropic, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI) hired a combined 307 lobbyists, slightly more than one lobbyist for every two members of Congress.
Public Citizen and allied groups documented at least $1.1 billion in combined Big Tech political spending during the 2024 election cycle and through 2025, encompassing direct lobbying, campaign contributions, and super PAC spending. This dwarfs the combined political spending of the entire organized labor movement. The asymmetry is structural: the industry can outspend labor on lobbying because it is spending a fraction of the revenue labor is trying to regulate.
The growth trajectory is accelerating. Federal lobbying set new records in both 2024 and 2025, with lobbying firms collectively taking in $5 billion in 2025. In California alone, the most active AI regulation state with 24 AI-related laws enacted across 2024 and 2025, tech giants are accelerating election spending specifically to shape which legislators write those laws. AI lobbyists are now present in every US statehouse, per NBC New York's investigation. The infrastructure being built is a permanent political operation designed to outlast any individual bill cycle.
Federal lobbying spend, key personnel, and policy goals for each major player.
The single largest corporate spender on AI lobbying. In Q1 2026, Meta spent nearly $7.1 million. It employs 86 lobbyists total (55 reporting AI-specific work), roughly one for every six members of Congress. 85 percent are former government employees, including 30 lobbyists across seven external firms. Meta also dropped $65 million into super PACs to boost tech-friendly state candidates in the 2026 cycle.
Substantial lobbying operation with 48 AI-specific lobbyists. Amazon's lobbying receives less public attention than the frontier lab companies despite its scale.
Roughly $46,000 per day in Q1 2026. Google benefits from AI regulation that raises the cost of entry for competitors but opposes regulation that touches its data practices. Search, Gmail, YouTube, Maps, and Android all generate training data, making its monopoly data position the moat it defends.
Substantial lobbying operation that receives less public attention than the frontier lab companies.
Deployed 63 lobbyists on AI issues, the most of any pure technology company. Microsoft's play is infrastructure: selling Azure cloud compute that every AI company needs.
Increased lobbying spend roughly sevenfold from 2024 to 2025. Nvidia sells the chips every AI model runs on.
Lobbying trajectory tells the story of an industry gearing up for political war. Spend went from $260,000 in 2023 to $1.76 million in 2024 (a nearly sevenfold increase) to $2.99 million in 2025 to $1 million in Q1 2026 alone, an 82 percent increase over Q1 2025, roughly $11,000 per day. The team is built entirely from former senior Hill staffers, a bipartisan access strategy that ensures whichever party controls Congress, OpenAI has a former insider in the room.
DLA Piper, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld
A 333 percent increase from Q1 2025, outspending OpenAI for the first time. Positions itself as the "safety-first" lab while also putting $20 million into a super PAC.
The lobbying firms translating Silicon Valley's money into Washington access, and the trade associations coordinating state and federal strategy.
Executive Director of the Technology CEO Council. Former Commerce Department official under George W. Bush. Clients include Andreessen Horowitz, IBM, and ElevenLabs. Describes his career as "explaining Washington to Silicon Valley and Silicon Valley to Washington."
Heads DLA Piper's AI policy practice. Founding director of the Senate AI Caucus. Previously worked for Senator Martin Heinrich.
Additional major firms with significant AI lobbying revenue in 2025.
Members: OpenAI, Anthropic, Amazon, Meta, Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Comcast.
Engaged on 808 bills across all 50 states, DC, and Puerto Rico in 2025. Self-reported win rate of 87 percent, meaning the industry's stated position prevailed on nearly nine out of ten state bills it touched. Assets tripled from $5 million (end of 2021) to $15 million (end of 2024).
NBC New York documented TechNet opposing: a Wisconsin chatbot safety bill, a Nebraska bill addressing AI-generated child sexual abuse material, data center restrictions in Colorado and New Jersey, and a Rhode Island bill establishing the right to sue AI companies for harm. Named lobbyist Chris Gilrein testified against the New York AI Act in January 2026.
Hired the most AI lobbyists in 2025: 91 total. The largest business lobbying group in the country. Pushes for voluntary standards, no new regulatory agencies, and federal preemption.
Members: Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft. Advocates for federal preemption and published an "AI Accountability Framework" as an industry self-regulatory alternative.
File joint briefs and letters alongside ITI, all pushing the same core agenda: a federal floor that preempts state action rather than a ceiling that constrains industry.
The electoral infrastructure that determines who writes the laws in the first place.
Andreessen Horowitz contributed $50 million, the highest known political contributor in the 2026 cycle. The PAC holds $70 million cash for 2026 midterms and operates two arms: American Mission (Republican) and Think Big (Democratic). Affiliates have spent $5.1 million on federal races in the 2026 cycle, including spending against New York Assemblyman Alex Bores, who sponsored AI safety legislation and is now running for Congress.
The ads attacking or supporting candidates largely avoid mentioning AI, following the crypto industry's 2024 playbook of knocking out lawmakers who favor stronger protections without letting voters know that is the reason.
Backers: Coinbase, Andreessen Horowitz, Ripple Labs. Fairshake and aligned groups spent a combined $290 million during the 2024 election cycle. The AI-crypto overlap is structural: the same funders (Andreessen Horowitz, Greg Brockman of OpenAI, Joe Lonsdale of Palantir) power both Fairshake and Leading the Future, creating a unified political spending operation across both industries.
Separate super PAC funded by Meta to support tech-friendly state candidates and oppose state AI regulation.
Together, Leading the Future, Fairshake, and Meta's American Technology Excellence Project hold a combined war chest exceeding $300 million available to defeat pro-regulation candidates in 2026.
The strategy these PACs share is deliberately invisible to voters. Ads run against pro-regulation candidates typically focus on unrelated issues: crime, immigration, taxes, local controversies. The AI industry funding behind them appears only in FEC filings that most voters never see. The 2024 crypto PAC playbook proved this works: Fairshake successfully defeated multiple members of Congress who supported crypto regulation, and in most races, voters were unaware that crypto industry money was the driving force. Leading the Future is applying the identical playbook to AI.
The Jobs and Democracy PAC, a pro-regulation counterweight, has launched ad buys supporting candidates like Bores, but its resources are a fraction of the industry side.
The unified system behind the spending.
Across all this spending, the industry's primary objective is federal preemption: a single national framework that eliminates state-level protections on AI bias, surveillance, hiring, and safety. The mechanism is coordinated across multiple channels.
Proposes state-level offices tasked with identifying and removing regulatory barriers, framing regulation itself as the problem.
Directed federal agencies to identify, challenge, and preempt state AI laws within 90 days.
The House proposal for a 10-year ban on state AI regulation (which failed 99-1 in the Senate) and the March 2026 White House National Policy Framework calling for preemption, regulatory sandboxes, and no new federal regulator are all expressions of the same strategy.
When the industry says "regulatory clarity," they mean one standard weak enough to constrain their operations and strong enough to prevent states from doing anything more.
If federal preemption fails, get the biggest states to pass harmonized industry-friendly laws that create a de facto national standard without Congress acting at all. This is OpenAI's Chris Lehane strategy, targeting California, New York, and Illinois.
California's experience illustrates how this plays out. SB 1047, which would have required safety auditing and kill switches for frontier AI models, was vetoed by Governor Newsom in 2024 after intense industry lobbying. OpenAI's lobbying spend increased 44 percent in the first half of 2025, driven partly by the California fight. The replacement bill, SB 53, was weaker, and Anthropic publicly backed it: kill the strong bill, support the weak one, take credit for being pro-safety.
The lobbying spend funds the legislative push. The trade associations coordinate the state-level opposition. The super PACs remove lawmakers who resist. The money flows in one direction, and the unified goal is a regulatory environment that protects the industry's ability to deploy AI without constraint.
Understanding this as a coordinated system rather than a collection of individual actors is the essential insight for anyone walking into a room where these interests are represented. The lobbyist across the table is not freelancing. They are executing a strategy backed by over a billion dollars in political infrastructure.