AI Labs' Record $7.5M Bet: Lobbying Explodes Before Midterms
Photo: the US Capitol at dusk. Between July and September, the three companies whose technology is upending the American economy spent more on federal lobbying than ever before — and eleven days before the midterms, nobody in Washington is pretending the two things are unrelated. (Martin Falbisoner, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons) AI Labs' Record $7.5M Bet: Lobbying Explodes Before Midterms By Daniel Rao | October 23, 2026 Anthropic spent $23,000 a day this summer persuading the federal government. OpenAI spent $16,600 a day. Nvidia spent more than either of them — and every single dollar of it bought the same thing: a hearing in a capital that is about to decide what rules artificial intelligence lives under. Federal disclosures filed this month show that Anthropic, OpenAI and Nvidia each posted their highest-spending lobbying quarter ever between July and September, The Verge reported on October 22. Nvidia spent $2.2 million. Anthropic spent $2.1 million. OpenAI spen...