Anthropic Doubles Midterm Political Spending to $40M, Squaring Off Against a $75M a16z/Brockman-Backed Super PAC

Axios (corroborated by PYMNTS, eWeek)·medium signal

Anthropic announced July 22 it is adding $20M to Public First Action, doubling its total commitment to $40M ahead of the 2026 midterms; the first tranche went in February. Public First Action is tied to three allied super PACs backing both Republican and Democratic candidates who favor stronger AI oversight and transparency requirements, and is positioned directly against Leading the Future — funded by OpenAI president Greg Brockman, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz — which has raised more than $75M. Anthropic framed the increase as a response to increasingly capable models including its own, making this the clearest instance yet of two frontier labs funding opposing sides of the same regulatory fight.