The artificial intelligence industry has turned a New York primary into a proxy battle, pouring millions into a single legislative race and signaling how far AI companies are willing to go to shape the politicians who may one day regulate them.
According to Yahoo News, a political action committee affiliated with OpenAI has spent more than $7 million to defeat Alex Bores, a New York Democrat. In response, a PAC affiliated with Anthropic has put up $10 million to boost the same candidate.
The spending lands amid a broader contest. According to PBS, the AI industry is flexing its political power in New York alongside other high-profile dynamics in Tuesday's primaries, the same slate of races drawing attention for figures such as Mamdani.
What stands out is that two of the most prominent names in AI appear to be on opposite sides of the same candidate. One industry-aligned PAC is spending heavily to sink Bores, while another is spending even more to lift him, a split that suggests the AI sector is not a unified bloc but a set of rival interests with competing visions for how the technology should be governed.
The sums involved are striking for a state-level primary, where campaigns rarely attract that kind of outside money. They show that AI firms now see direct political spending, not just lobbying, as a tool for influencing the rules that will govern their products.
Why it matters: when companies building a powerful new technology start spending eight figures to pick winners and losers in local elections, the fight over who writes the rules for AI is no longer confined to Washington or Silicon Valley.