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The AI industry has already shown an appetite for dirty lobbying tactics, but things look set to get even worse.

On Monday, Andreessen Horowitz, OpenAI’s Greg Brockman, Perplexity, and investors Ron Conway and Joe Lonsdale launched Leading the Future, a new network of super PACs and 501c(4)s to “organize political support and elect pro-innovation candidates at scale.”

Leading the Future is launching with more than $100m in funding, enough to make it one of the biggest spenders in congressional elections. The aim is clear: throw obscene amounts of money at politicians to discourage AI regulation.

The network will “support candidates aligned with the pro-AI agenda … and oppose those that do not,” the announcement reads, with plans to operate in both primary contests and general elections. Statements accompanying the launch talk of needing to kill policies that “make it impossible to build” or “enable China to gain global AI superiority” — claims that will doubtless be weaponized against any and all AI regulation.

Leading the Future is, according to the Wall Street Journal, modeled on Fairshake — a super-PAC network that pushed a pro-crypto agenda in the 2024 elections. Josh Vlasto, one of the founders of Leading the Future, was Fairshake’s spokesman and media strategist.

Fairshake, which alongside affiliated super PACs spent about $135m last year, has a simple strategy. “If you are pro-crypto, we will help you, and if you are anti we will tear you apart,” a person familiar with its approach told the New Yorker.

In last year’s elections, Fairshake pumped millions of dollars into campaigns opposing politicians that the group deemed unfriendly. Many ads avoided mentioning crypto, in one instance simply calling a candidate a “liar” and a “bully” and falsely suggesting they had taken money from the pharma and oil industries. An employee at Coinbase, a major donor to Fairshake, told the New Yorker that “it wasn’t really about explaining how crypto works, or anything like that. It’s about hitting politicians where they are most sensitive—reelection.”

The figure behind much of Coinbase’s political work at the time was Chris Lehane, now head of global affairs at OpenAI. Lehane was “involved in initial conversations earlier in the year about the need to help shape [AI] industry-friendly policies,” the WSJ reported.

Lehane previously ran Airbnb’s policy team, where he adopted a similar approach to pressure politicians into doing his bidding. Someone who worked with him at the time put it simply: “The goal was intimidation, to let everyone know that if they fuck with us they’ll regret it.”

Fairshake has shown that such spending gets results: it won almost all the races it spent on last year, and likely convinced many other politicians to go easy on crypto lest they draw Fairshake’s wrath. In turn, America now has an exceedingly pro-crypto Congress, which has already started passing bills to help the industry.

Leading the Future’s partners already have a grim track record. As Transformer reported last year, Andreessen Horowitz masterminded a campaign to kill SB 1047 last year that was full of misleading and false claims. Democratic power-broker Conway, who owns stakes in OpenAI and Anthropic, was also involved. And Zac Moffatt, who runs Leading the Future alongside Vlasto, has previously worked on misleading ad campaigns for Meta in its battle with TikTok.

The new organization’s launch comes as AI companies gear up for another series of state-level political fights, most notably in California and New York (both of which LTF has said it’ll begin operating in this year). Alongside funding LTF, Andreessen Horowitz is backing the American Innovators Network, a group which reportedly plans to invest “north of six figures” to oppose AI regulation in New York.

OpenAI, meanwhile, is hiring lobbyists in California in an effort to stifle new regulation there, and there are already signs of the Fairshake playbook, insinuating without evidence that one AI safety group was secretly funnelling money through another.

In August of last year Rick Claypool of Public Citizen, a non-profit which advocates for campaign finance reform, published a report analyzing the crypto industry’s attempt to buy political favor.

“Crypto did not invent the corporate political influence strategy of rewarding candidates who agree to do an industry’s bidding while threatening those who resist corporate power,” Claypool wrote. “But no industry has ever before so wholeheartedly embraced raising as much directly from corporations and openly using that political war chest as a looming threat (or reward) to discipline lawmakers toward adopting an industry’s preferred policies.” Claypool later told the New York Times that “other sectors are going to try to duplicate this strategy.”

AI leaders seem to have taken that as a challenge.

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House Democrats establish AI working group as industry bolsters DC presence

December 9, 2025

•

In The News

Emily Wilkins

CNBC

House Democrats are forming a commission on artificial intelligence to position themselves as leaders on the issue as AI companies train their focus — and campaign contributions — on Washington, D.C.

The House Democratic Commission on AI and the Innovation Economy, set to begin meeting this month, will work with AI companies, stakeholders and congressional committees that oversee aspects of the sector to help develop policy expertise.

The commission is a response to the growing presence of AI policy and AI companies around Washington.

AI companies are ramping up lobbying, opening offices close to the Capitol and launching campaigns through a super PAC with at least $100 million to spend on the midterm elections in 2026.

There has been a growing debate over AI, specifically related to an increasing number of individual state laws that could conflict with a federal standard.

OpenAI, Andreessen Horowitz and Google are lobbying to block state laws that regulate AI. Democrats have largely opposed that push.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., in a statement shared with CNBC about the working group, said Democrats are “ready, willing and able to lean into those issues so we can uplift the health, safety and economic well-being of the American people.”

Rep. Ted Lieu of California, Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey and Rep. Valerie Foushee of North Carolina will lead the commission. Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California and Rep. Frank Pallone of Massachusetts, the top Democrats on committees that cover AI, will serve as ex-officio co-chairs. All House Democrats will be invited to participate.

Lieu drew a line between how Republicans and Democrats have handled AI issues.

He slammed the Trump administration for proposing to sell advanced chips to China, striking revenue-sharing agreements and posting deepfake videos. Trump announced Monday that he will allow Nvidia to send advanced H200 chips to “approved customers” in China and elsewhere.

“House Democrats reject this misguided approach, which risks leaving Americans vulnerable and our competitiveness weakened,” Liu said in a statement. “Instead, Democrats will meet the moment by working with all stakeholders to develop smart, durable solutions that strengthen innovation and protect the public.”

Gottheimer said the group also wants to find ways to keep the U.S. “ahead of the curve” when it comes to AI and work with the larger industry.

“We need to ensure Congress is educated on these new technologies, that we’re putting the right policies and guardrails in place to grow and protect Americans,” he said in a statement.

The House previously had a bipartisan task force on AI that issued a report in December 2024, which laid out recommendations for action at both the congressional and executive levels.

:{Issues:Cybersecurity and Technology}

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[### Little tech' lobby starts campaign against AI regulation bills

City & State New York

https://www.cityandstateny.com › policy › 2025/06 › lit...](https://www.cityandstateny.com/policy/2025/06/little-tech-lobby-starts-campaign-against-ai-regulation-bills/405804/)

Jun 4, 2025 — The American Innovators Network is warning about unintended consequences of the RAISE Act and other legislation regulating AI companies.

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[### Exclusive: "Little Tech" launches new policy coalition

Axios

https://www.axios.com › pro › tech-policy › 2025/04/02](https://www.axios.com/pro/tech-policy/2025/04/02/little-tech-launches-new-policy-coalition)

Apr 2, 2025 — The American Innovators Network — a coalition of AI startups and entrepreneurs looking to have a louder voice in Washington policy debates ...Read more

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[### American Innovators Network

American Innovators Network

https://americaninnovatorsnetwork.com](https://americaninnovatorsnetwork.com/)

Learn about our vision to protect open-source AI innovation, allow fair use of copyrighted material, and focus on punishing use cases, not underlying technology ...Read more

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[### AI embraces crypto's dirty politics

Transformer | Shakeel Hashim

https://www.transformernews.ai › ai-super-pac-leading-t...](https://www.transformernews.ai/p/ai-super-pac-leading-the-future-crypto)

Aug 26, 2025 — The AI industry has already shown an appetite for dirty lobbying tactics, but things look set to get even worse.Read more

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[### Cybersecurity & Tech InfoHive

https://theinfohive.com › datasecurity › post=meet-the-lit...](https://theinfohive.com/datasecurity/?post=meet-the-little-tech-lobbying-group)

Bonjour to American Innovators Network the new kid on the block lobbying on state AI regulations. The American Innovators Network is a coalition of early ...Read more

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[### Introducing the American Innovators Network. We're ...

Facebook · American Innovators Network

10+ reactions · 10 months ago](https://www.facebook.com/61570458237044/posts/introducing-the-american-innovators-network-were-committed-to-creating-a-platfor/122124509132681941/)

AIN is represented by Shaw Decremer Consulting LLC, a lobbying firm based in Illinois. Shaw Decremer, the principal of the firm, ...Read more

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[### AI Lobbying Soars in Washington, Among Big Firms and ...

Bloomberg Government News

https://news.bgov.com › bloomberg-government-news](https://news.bgov.com/bloomberg-government-news/ai-lobbying-soars-in-washington-among-big-firms-and-upstarts)

Registered lobbying firms raked in more than $90 million in the first three quarters of 2025 from AI-related issues, and the lobbyists ...

[### The Vision

American Innovators Network

https://americaninnovatorsnetwork.com › the-vision](https://americaninnovatorsnetwork.com/the-vision/)

The American Innovators Network exists to empower those who refuse to accept the status quo and instead choose to build, invent, and disrupt.Read more

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[### House Democrats establish AI working group as industry ... Congressman Ted Lieu (.gov)

https://lieu.house.gov › media-center › in-the-news › ho...](https://lieu.house.gov/media-center/in-the-news/house-democrats-establish-ai-working-group-industry-bolsters-dc-presence)

Dec 9, 2025 — AI companies are ramping up lobbying, opening offices close to the Capitol and launching campaigns through a super PAC with at least $100 ...Read more

[### AI is a Main Street movement. From rural towns to city ...

Instagram · americaninnovatorsnetwork

5 likes · 7 months ago](https://www.instagram.com/p/DKrzYzmMC_Y/)

From garage inventors to AI pioneers, American innovators are pushing boundaries every day. We're working to give them the freedom, funding, and ...Read more

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