Anthropic, OpenAI and Nvidia each posted their biggest lobbying quarter from July through September, according to federal disclosures. The filings show the three AI companies are spending heavily to shape policy in Washington, and they are doing it at a faster clip than ever before.
How much did Anthropic, OpenAI and Nvidia spend on lobbying?
Nvidia spent the most of the group, at $2.2 million. Anthropic spent $2.1 million and OpenAI spent $1.5 million. Those figures are not out of line with the big tech companies that have been lobbying in the capital for years. Microsoft has spent at least $2 million a quarter going back to 2021, and Google regularly spends more than $3 million, including this quarter. Still, the numbers send a clear signal that the AI firms see policy as central to their future.
The spending landed during a busy stretch in Washington. Tech CEOs attended a White House lunch with Trump in late September, where they agreed to a "morally binding" AI safety accord. The disclosures suggest that even more conversations were happening behind the scenes during that same period, just before Trump named his AI czar and task force.
Why are AI companies ramping up lobbying in Washington?
The political backdrop may raise the stakes further. Democrats are expected to win back at least some control of Congress after this year's midterm elections. AI companies may find it even more important to engage with lawmakers who see cracking down on the industry as a winning issue.
What did Anthropic lobby Congress and the White House about?
Anthropic's filing includes a detailed list of the bills, executive orders and other topics it raised with Congress and the White House during the third quarter. Among them were AI-related provisions in the Kids Online Safety Act, export control provisions in the AI Overwatch Act, Trump's executive order renaming AI "Super Intelligence," and the Ratepayer Protection Act. That last measure aims to put energy costs for data centers on their developers.
OpenAI's lobbying reached a wide set of players, including Congress, the White House, the Small Business Administration, and the Commerce and State departments. The company engaged on copyright, along with cybersecurity evaluations for frontier models, AI safety oversight frameworks and antitrust protections for information sharing. The lobbying appears to be a response to some of the fallout from the Hugging Face attack, though the disclosures list only high-level topics and do not detail specific positions.
Nvidia lobbied Congress, several federal agencies and White House offices on a range of issues. Those included 6G networks, "responsible AI design," competition policy, quantum computing and export control policy.
Apple also had a record quarter. The company spent $3.1 million on issues including intellectual property, tariffs, kids online safety, competition and domestic semiconductor manufacturing. It weighed in on bills that seek to put the onus on app stores to verify users' ages. It is the first quarter in which Apple has reported spending more than $3 million on lobbying.
The longer trend shows just how fast the spending has climbed. OpenAI did not spend $1 million on lobbying in a single quarter until this year, and it did not spend more than half a million until the end of 2024. The most Anthropic spent in a single quarter last year was just over $1 million. This quarter marks the first time Nvidia has spent more than $2 million.
Data center development and AI safety are on the minds of many voters, and those issues are likely to keep drawing attention in the months ahead. The lobbying work is expected to grow no matter which party controls Congress next year.
Este artículo fue escrito con la asistencia de IA.
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