Pro-AI Super PAC Network Leading the Future Ends Midterms With Few Toss-Up Wins

The network launched in August 2025 with roughly $100 million from backers including Andreessen Horowitz, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale and OpenAI's Greg Brockman, promising to "oppose policies that stifle innovation." It is built from 501(c)(4) groups and federal and state super PACs: American Mission gives mainly to Republicans and Think Big mainly to Democrats. The design drew comparisons with Fairshake, the crypto industry network that dominated election spending in 2024.

The result matters because the industry's political operation rested on the idea that money could deter lawmakers from backing AI safety rules or limits on data centres. Wired's tally suggests most of the network's money went to candidates who were already likely to win, while the bets that could have shown real influence largely failed. Leading the Future did not respond to Wired's requests for comment.

Spending Front-Loaded on Primaries

The network spent about $26 million in independent expenditures during the primaries, much of it against Alex Bores, a former Palantir engineer and New York state lawmaker who ran on an AI safety platform in New York's 12th congressional district. Public First, a pro-safety network with significant financial backing from Anthropic, spent $15 million supporting him. Bores finished second to Micah Lasher, who also campaigned on tech accountability and AI safety.

In the general election the network spent about $10 million in total, overwhelmingly in safe races, and it reported no donations in the second or third quarters. Wired linked the change of course to polling that showed broad distrust of Big Tech, and cited an NBC exit poll in which 56 percent of voters said AI and data centres played a "major" role in their vote.

Sacha Haworth, executive director of the Tech Oversight Project, told Wired that backing safe candidates was "an influence play" meant to win favour with incoming members of Congress.

Losses in Toss-Up Races

One of the network's largest bets was more than $2 million from American Mission for Darline Graham, the South Carolina incumbent seeking a full Senate term, whom her Democratic opponent Annie Andrews nicknamed "Data Center Darline" for her support of AI and data centre expansion. Graham lost with 46.5 percent in a state that last elected a Democrat to the Senate in 1998.

In North Carolina's 1st district, American Mission backed Republican Laurie Buckhout. Democrat Don Davis won. He had co-sponsored a bill to limit tax breaks for data centre development and was supported by the safety-aligned Guardrails Alliance. In Montana's 1st district, network-backed Republican Aaron Flint conceded to Democrat Sam Forstag, who has called for strict federal oversight of AI, although the Associated Press had not yet called the race. The network's one toss-up bet on a Democrat paid off: Florida representative Jared Moskowitz, funded through Think Big, won by 13,000 votes.

Brad Carson, co-founder of Public First Action, called the results "a crushing blow to the AI industry's anti-regulatory efforts to buy a Congress that would look the other way."

Industry Disputes the Mandate

Tech industry groups reject that reading. "Let's not confuse an anti-Trump wave with an anti-tech mandate," Adam Kovacevich, chief executive of the industry coalition Chamber of Progress, said in a statement on Wednesday. The group said AI and data centres ranked 19th among voters' top issues, and that Democratic candidates for governor who opposed data centre bans won at a higher rate than those who supported them. It did not cite sources for those figures, which differ sharply from the NBC exit poll result Wired cited.

With just over $20 million left, Leading the Future still has money to spend on lobbying the Democratic-controlled Congress that takes office in January.