Leading the Future spends roughly $30 million in primaries

The midterms are drawing money not only from the tech and crypto industries as a whole, but from blocs that disagree on what those industries should be asking Washington for. Anthropic has put money behind state-level AI regulation and public support for that approach, while Leading the Future has become the tip of the spear for investors and firms, like Perplexity, that want Trump and Congress to enact federal rules that would supersede state legislation. The roughly $30 million Leading the Future has deployed across nearly 40 primaries, on behalf of both Democrats and Republicans, is unusual less for its size than for its split loyalties, and its 38-1 record is the number both sides will be judged against.

The messaging itself is a clue to how unsettled voters are on the topic: strategists involved acknowledge that an AI-focused pitch would be ineffective at moving voters, so campaigns have been tailored one by one instead. That suggests the money here is being used to build durable allies in Congress and in key state offices rather than to run a national referendum on AI.

The stakes look conditional on how much of this spending actually moves primary results, and on which level of government ends up writing the rules. If the federal-supersession camp keeps winning, AI regulation may increasingly be settled in Washington, leaving state-level efforts such as the one Anthropic has supported as a parallel track rather than the main event.