The Hook
In 2025, a super PAC called "Leading the Future" reported raising $125 million entering the 2026 midterm election cycle, with approximately $70 million in cash available. Its stated objective: federal preemption — one national AI standard that overrides state law. Its first named electoral target: a sitting state legislator who co-sponsored an AI safety bill.
The Question
When the companies most likely to be regulated by state AI laws fund a political operation whose explicit goal is to prevent state AI regulation, what is the regulatory strategy?
The Paper Trail
The FEC disclosures for Leading the Future show reported donors including Andreessen Horowitz, OpenAI president Greg Brockman (approximately $12.5 million personally; his wife Anna gave a separate $12.5 million, a $25 million household total), Palantir's Joe Lonsdale, SV Angel's Ron Conway, and Perplexity. The PAC's leaders have publicly framed state AI laws, including New York's RAISE Act, as "the same threat" — a "patchwork" of state rules that impedes innovation.
The federal legislative context: a 10-year moratorium on state AI enforcement was written into the 2025 reconciliation bill, then stripped by the Senate 99-to-1 on July 1, 2025 — with only Senator Tillis voting to keep it. In December 2025, a White House executive order directed agencies to challenge "state-law obstruction" of AI deployment. The preemption push is active in multiple venues simultaneously.
The Synthesis
The strategy is visible in the filings: use federal venues — where the industry's lobbying infrastructure is most developed — to prevent the state venues where AI regulation is most likely to pass. The 99-to-1 Senate vote is the clearest available evidence of how the strategy is perceived by the legislators being lobbied.