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Competing super PACs backed by the AI industry, flush with tens of millions of dollars, are already pouring money into the 2026 midterms, starting with the year’s first primaries in Texas and North Carolina.
There’s just one thing missing from their ads so far: any reference to artificial intelligence.
The groups are seeking to shape how AI models and companies are regulated nationwide, a debate that big players in AI see as existential for the future of the industry, the United States and the world. But instead of the actual policy reason they are taking sides in these primaries, the groups are leaning into red meat or progressive messaging on other hot-button issues.
It’s a tactic also used by groups in other areas. But the early AI-backed spending on ads about Immigration and Customs Enforcement, President Donald Trump, health care and more is especially notable because of the dramatic scale of change AI titans expect their product to bring to the American workforce and society.
The forces behind the super PACs are also funding large nonprofits that could spend big to shift public opinion on AI moving forward. For now, though, their big issue is not figuring in their big political campaigns.
So far, two rival umbrella organizations have dominated the AI spending in congressional races. Leading the Future — which has received significant funding from OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman and his wife, Anna Brockman, as well as venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Benjamin Horowitz — is one major super PAC pushing a national framework for AI and criticizing the prospect of different state regulations governing the industry.
Leading the Future had $39 million banked away at the end of last year and is wading into races via a pair of connected groups, one associated with each party: Think Big, which backs Democrats, and American Mission, which supports Republicans.
Public First, another super PAC, is seeking to counter Leading the Future and its network. The group has received at least $20 million from the AI company Anthropic and has called for more significant regulation on AI. It also has two affiliated super PACs: Jobs and Democracy PAC backing Democrats and Defending Our Values backing Republicans.
Brad Carson, the former congressman and Defense Department official who helps lead Public First, told NBC News in a statement that while the public recognizes the importance of the issue, “we know AI isn’t the first thing on every voter’s mind when they go to the polls.”
“They’re worried about cost of living, about corruption, about whether the economy is working for regular people or just for tech billionaires. We believe those concerns are inseparable from AI,” added Carson, who served two terms in the House as a Democrat from Oklahoma. “We support candidates who understand what’s coming and who will fight for working families as these technologies roll out. AI is an issue right now, and you want leaders in place who’ve done the thinking on what the impact is going to look like.”
A slice of New York City has emerged as the earliest big battleground for the two sides. The Democratic House primary aimed at succeeding retiring Rep. Jerry Nadler is extremely crowded, but the AI groups are focused on one candidate: state legislator Alex Bores, a proponent of AI safety regulation in New York and a former data scientist at Palantir Technologies who says he quit that job over his frustration with the company’s work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Think Big, one of the Leading the Future affiliates, has spent more than $1.5 million attacking Bores, including by hammering him for Palantir’s work for ICE — even though Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale has supported the group and Bores has said he left the company due to his opposition to that work.
“It’s black and white: Alex Bores’ tech company works for ICE,” a narrator says in a new Think Big digital ad in the race.
Jobs and Democracy PAC, the Public First affiliate, framed those attacks as cynical and profit-motivated in its own ads.
“Right-wing billionaires think they can buy this congressional seat, the same ones who bankroll hate, fund lies and prop up ICE raids on our community. Their target: Assemblyman Alex Bores, because he’s the only one who stood up to them before,” says the narrator in a recent Jobs and Democracy PAC ad.
Think Big is also spending more than a million dollars each in support of two former Illinois members of Congress, Jesse Jackson Jr. and Melissa Bean, in their comeback bids. Ads in both those races tout Jackson and Bean’s accomplishments in Congress, including voting for the Affordable Care Act — long before the AI debate entered the halls of Congress. Both Illinois Democrats are scrapping in competitive primaries for open, deep blue, Chicagoland seats where the March primary will serve as the de-facto general election.
Then there’s Rep. Valerie Foushee’s bid for re-election in North Carolina’s Research Triangle, where Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam is attacking the incumbent from her left. Foushee is a member of the Bipartisan House Task Force on Artificial Intelligence, and there’s a major AI-related fight brewing in the district over a push for a new data center.
The incumbent has called for regulations around data centers to mitigate any energy or environmental impacts in the past, and she addressed the data center debate in a social media video this week, saying that while she doesn’t personally support the new data center, she trusts local officials to “make the right choice.” Allam has blasted the proposal, calling for a moratorium on data centers and attacking Foushee because an AI-linked group is spending on her behalf.
Indeed, Public First is the only major AI group spending in this district, looking to boost Foushee with more than $1.6 million flooding into the race in its final weeks.
But while the data center debate is playing out in local politics, it’s absent from the pro-Foushee ad, which instead frames the incumbent as a progressive fighter on issues like immigration raids and holding Trump accountable. The AI spending has prompted a small counter from Justice Democrats, a progressive group supporting Allam, which dropped a new digital ad this week criticizing the incumbent for receiving support from the AI industry.
The two sides are also boosting preferred candidates in other, less prominent races.
Lead the Future’s Republican group is spending $500,000 each on generic, biographical ads boosting Republican candidates Laurie Buckhout in a North Carolina swing district and Chris Gober — who was a legal adviser to Elon Musk’s political group in 2024 — in an open, safely Republican Texas district.
The Public First network is also spending to boost two Republicans who are heavy favorites to win their primary elections in Texas without wading into AI in their ads: Army veteran Alex Mealer and Air Force veteran Carlos De La Cruz.
The decision to de-emphasize the central issue motivating these groups is not a new strategy. Groups with political aims on Israel, cryptocurrency, the environment and more have long chosen to wage their political battles using other issues more salient to a primary or general electorate, separating the political goals of winning elections from the policy goals they hope the winner will support in office.
Jesse Hunt, a spokesman with Leading the Future, told NBC News that the group is supporting and assessing candidates “who we believe are the most pro-innovation candidates when it comes to AI,” adding that it uses both a candidate questionnaire, as well as a review of public statements or relevant records, to help guide them. He added that the debate over AI is “still in its infancy” and he expects it to evolve over this and future election cycles.
“The administration has been clear where they stand on this issue, but other members of Congress are starting to formulate their positions, what they want to see from these companies, how it stands to benefit their constituents, their states, and how it stands to benefit the U.S. economy,” he said.
Hunt said the public conversation around AI policy “will see it mature over time as people become more knowledgeable.” He added: “Through that process, you’re going to see a greater conversation about the likely ways it will enhance a lot of people’s lives.”
