(Christina Urso) Silicon Valley is dumping over $100 million into a network of political action committees (PACs) and various organizations to advocate against regulation of artificial intelligence.
The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and OpenAI President Greg Brockman are “among those helping launch and fund Leading the Future, a new super-PAC network focused on AI.” Other backers of the network include Palantir Technologies co-founder Joe Lonsdale and Ron Conway from Perplexity.
The new Pro-AI PAC network, “Leading the Future,” will use campaign donations and digital ads to promote candidates who advocate for favorable AI regulation, and to oppose candidates whose policies the network thinks will stifle the industry. The PACs are led by former staffers for Sen. Chuck Schumer, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and former Sen. Mitt Romney.
The network has taken inspiration from the pro-crypto super PAC network Fairshake, which helped President Trump secure his victory in 2024.
Leading the Future will focus on four key states (California, New York, Illinois, and Ohio) during the 2026 midterm elections. This comes after the Trump Administration announced a plan in July to make the US an AI “powerhouse” and to unleash the “fourth industrial revolution” and win the global AI race.
During the Trump Presidential campaign, Silicon Valley titans went from being vehemently anti-Trump to some of his biggest funders and defenders. The same oligarchs were front and center at his inauguration, a sign of the influence the industry would exert during his second administration.
Vice President JD Vance worked in venture capital for years at Mithril Capital, where he grew close to Peter Thiel. Elon Musk became a fixture on the campaign trail and then established DOGE.
David Sacks, another member of the so-called “PayPal Mafia,” a founder and partner at VC firm Craft Ventures, now serves as Trump’s artificial intelligence and crypto czar. Entrepreneur and venture capitalist Sriram Krishnan, who led product teams at Microsoft, Facebook, and Twitter before becoming a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, is now a senior White House policy advisor on AI.
Last but not least, Jacob Helberg, a senior advisor to Palantir Technologies CEO Alex Karp, is now the Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment.
On July 4, 2025, President Trump signed “The One Big Beautiful Bill” into law. This bill initially included a 10-year federal ban on state and local AI regulation, which was rejected. However, the bill did provide federal funding, grants, and tax incentives for companies investing in US-based AI infrastructure, which includes data centers, semiconductor manufacturing, and AI research.
Both Andreessen Horowitz and OpenAI were behind the push for the 10-year moratorium on states’ rights to regulate AI. Since this moratorium didn’t pass in the Big Beautiful Bill, some members of Congress are now trying to sneak this same provision into the National Defense Authorization Act. Buried in the NDAA is a provision that would ban states and local governments from regulating AI for 10 years.
Many of these venture capital firms work together and operate as a cartel, including Andreeseen Horowitz (a16z), Founders Fund, Oracle, Pronomos Capital, In-Q-Tel (CIA), Y Combinator, Sequoia, General Catalyst, Sanabil Investments, Vintage Investment Partners, Shield Capital, 8VC, Craft Ventures, Lux Capital, and Eric Schmidt’s White Stork, Schmidt Foundation, Innovation Endeavors, and America’s Frontier Fund.
These tech giants always invoke the specter of losing the “AI arms race” to China in their push for not regulating AI. The American public overwhelmingly supports regulating this disruptive, invasive, and potentially dangerous technology.
Christina Urso is an independent filmmaker and a correspondent for Headline USA. Follow her at https://x.com/NotRadix.
