It was a busy summer for AI lobbyists. Anthropic, OpenAI, and Nvidia each had their highest-spending lobbying quarter between July and September, federal disclosures show.
Nvidia spent the most of the group at $2.2 million, followed by Anthropic’s $2.1 million and OpenAI’s $1.5 million. Compared to other Big Tech companies with long-established presences in Washington, the sums aren’t out of the ordinary. Microsoft, for example, has spent at least $2 million a quarter going back to 2021, and Google regularly spends over $3 million, including this quarter. But it’s a clear signal that the three AI firms recognize how important shaping policy has become.
Anthropic included a detailed list of bills, executive orders, and other topics it lobbied Congress and the White House about in the third quarter. Among them were AI-related provisions in the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), export control provisions in the AI Overwatch Act, Trump’s executive order renaming AI “Super Intelligence,” and the Ratepayer Protection Act, which aims to put energy costs for data centers on their developers.
AI companies are becoming increasingly active in policymaking
OpenAI’s lobbying looks like a response to some of the fallout from the Hugging Face attack, though the disclosures only list high-level topics. In addition to engaging on issues like copyright, OpenAI lobbied Congress, the White House, the Small Business Administration, and the Commerce and State Departments over cybersecurity evaluations for frontier models, AI safety oversight frameworks, and antitrust protections for information sharing. Nvidia lobbied Congress, as well as several different federal agencies and White House offices, on issues including 6G networks, “responsible AI design,” competition policy, quantum computing, and export control policy.
Apple also had a record-breaking quarter, spending $3.1 million and engaging on issues including intellectual property, tariffs, kids online safety, competition, and domestic semiconductor manufacturing. It engaged on bills that seek to put the onus on app stores to verify users’ ages, for example. It’s the first quarter in which Apple has reported spending more than $3 million on lobbying.
The disclosures show that leading AI companies are becoming increasingly active in policymaking, in a quarter that marks a lead-up to the midterm elections. OpenAI didn’t even spend $1 million on lobbying in a single quarter until this year, and didn’t 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. And this quarter is the first in which Nvidia has spent more than $2 million. With issues like data center development and AI safety on many voters’ minds, AI lobbyists’ work will likely only increase no matter whichever party has control next year.