Ads funded by AI industry are flooding the 2026 election. They’re about everything except AI.
Ads funded by AI industry are flooding the 2026 election. They’re about everything except AI.
Publish Date: 2026-02-27 12:37:00
Source Domain: www.nbcnews.com
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…
