WASHINGTON, Oct 21 - As OpenAI executives step up their public calls for United States (US) federal artificial intelligence (AI) safety rules, a political group the company’s president helped fund is spending millions to elect members of the US Congress who oppose restrictions on the technology.
Its safety practices have been in the spotlight in recent months, after the company said a swarm of its AI agents escaped containment and hacked into the AI platform Hugging Face.
OpenAI President Greg Brockman was among the group of six tech executives who later signed President Donald Trump’s voluntary AI safety agreement on behalf of their companies, agreeing to work with "independent auditors" and to ensure their AI tools do not "hack or access technical systems in unintended ways."
However, Leading the Future, a political group backed with a US$25 million (RM102 million) donation from Brockman and his wife Anna, opposes regulations that “unduly constrain or delay AI development” in the US. The group is spending millions to influence the outcome of at least 48 races for US House and Senate seats.
Industry profits versus regulation
Brockman’s backing prompted criticism from AI safety advocates, who say it raises questions about whether OpenAI executives genuinely want the US government to impose requirements on powerful AI systems.
Federal government requirements could hurt the industry's profits if they slow the release of new models or prompt the companies to change how their products perform to address security concerns. OpenAI and rival Anthropic are laying the groundwork for public offerings that are expected to rank among the largest ever.
“There are leaders in industry who want to pay lip service to regulation because they realise where public opinion is. But they are the same leaders who stood up a super PAC whose sole purpose was to oppose candidates who stand up for regulation," said Guardrails Alliance's Charlie Blaettler, whose political group was formed to counter Leading the Future.
In a blog post, OpenAI said that the Brockmans' donation was in a personal capacity, not on behalf of the company. Greg Brockman's personal spokesman declined to comment on his donations.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter) from 2025, he said that "being pro-AI does not mean being anti-regulation. It means being thoughtful."
Leading the Future’s spokesman Jesse Hunt did not address the donation in a statement, saying the group seeks "champions who can work together in Congress to advance a strong, responsible national regulatory AI framework."
In September, the New York Times reported that the Brockmans backed out of a pledge to donate another US$25 million to Leading the Future. Leading the Future declined to comment on the New York Times' reporting.
Federal law to pre-empt state AI laws
According to Federal Election Commission records, other contributors to Leading the Future include Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, who, along with their venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, gave a combined US$50 million (RM204 million) to the group. Andreessen Horowitz is an investor in OpenAI.
One of the candidates Leading the Future is backing is Republican Andy Barr, who is running to represent Kentucky in the Senate. In March, he told the Lexington Herald-Leader newspaper that he supports federal legislation that would block individual states from passing or enforcing their own regulations on AI, a concept known as preemption.
Build American AI, a nonprofit group affiliated with Leading the Future, has run social media ads calling on Congress to pass a national standard for AI, rather than allowing states to pass their own rules.
Leading the Future also sent funds to Republicans Julia Letlow, who is running for Senate in Louisiana, and Amanda McKinney, a candidate for Congress in Washington state. Both say on their campaign websites that they oppose "heavy-handed" regulation of the AI sector.
OpenAI rival Anthropic has given at least US$40 million (RM163.2 million) to Public First Action, a political action committee that is against federal pre-emption laws. Anthropic chief executive officer Dario Amodei has called federal pre-emption of state rules "too blunt".
