Anthropic Nearly Tripled Its Lobbying Bill to $3.53 Million in Six Months
Technology, synthetic intelligence, and prediction market corporations spent document sums lobbying Washington in the primary half of 2026. New federal disclosures filed this month present the size of the push.
Anthropic almost tripled its federal lobbying, outpacing rival OpenAI by greater than $1 million.
Anthropic Outspends OpenAI on Federal Lobbying
The Financial Times reported that Anthropic almost tripled its lobbying expenditure to $3.53 million. The agency added the Treasury Department to its checklist of lobbied businesses for the primary time this quarter.
OpenAI almost doubled its own spend to a document $2.22 million. Federal guidelines on new mannequin releases now sit at the top of the trade agenda. Companies additionally need affect over knowledge heart building, energy provide, and extra.
“The lobbying offensive has been as a lot about deterring regulation as making the case for an affirmative authorities industrial coverage that helps the trade,” Amba Kak, co-executive director of AI Now Institute, said.
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Issue One Counts 324 Lobbyists Across Six Companies
Overall, Issue One counted $41 million in mixed spending from January to June. That covers 11 main know-how, social media, and AI corporations and their commerce associations.
The whole works out to greater than $226,000 per day. The determine rose 8% from $38 million in the identical interval of 2025.
Six of these corporations retained 324 lobbyists throughout the second quarter alone. The group covers Alphabet, Anthropic, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and OpenAI. That equals roughly one lobbyist for each 1.5 members of Congress.
Meta led second-quarter spending at almost $6 million. Alphabet adopted with $5.3 million, Microsoft with about $3 million, and Nvidia with $1.25 million.
Anthropic reported $1.97 million in lobbying spending for the quarter, its highest because it started lobbying in March 2024. OpenAI spent $1.2 million over the identical three months. Notably, 4 years in the past, Anthropic, Nvidia, and OpenAI had no federal lobbyists.
The spending isn’t restricted to tech and AI corporations. Prediction market operators have additionally stepped up their efforts in Washington.
BeInCrypto reported that Kalshi spent $990,000 on lobbying in the primary half of 2026. Including exterior companies, its whole reached almost $1.8 million. Polymarket retains a smaller footprint.
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