Big Tech is spending
$125 million to shape
who writes AI policy.
AI Money Watch is a public accountability tracker for Leading the Future — the super PAC bankrolled by the AI industry’s biggest investors. We follow their independent expenditures filing by filing, and we show you who they’re spending to elect and who they’re spending to defeat.
Every independent expenditure Leading the Future reports to the FEC — the ad buys, mailers, and digital spend deployed in our focus races, linked to the candidate it’s aimed at, for or against.
The people who write AI policy over the next decade are being chosen right now. When an industry spends seven figures to defeat a single candidate, voters deserve to see it — before the primary, not after.
We don’t endorse candidates. We don’t guess at intent. Every dollar on this site comes from a public FEC filing, and every correction we make to the raw data is logged as an editor override.
A super PAC, not a campaign.
Leading the Future (LTF) is an independent expenditure-only committee seeded by a16z-linked investors and other Silicon Valley donors. By law, it cannot coordinate with candidates — but it can raise and spend unlimited money to support or oppose them.
That money doesn’t go to a candidate’s campaign account. It buys TV, mail, and digital ads that run on the candidate’s behalf or against them. The amounts on this site are what LTF told the FEC it spent, race by race.
How we count.
- Source. Independent expenditures reported to the FEC by Leading the Future (Form 24 and F3X disclosures). Pulled daily.
- Direction. Every filing declares whether the spending is for or againsta named candidate. We keep that label as-is — it’s what the super PAC itself told the FEC.
- Scope. We surface spending in our focus races for the 2026 cycle. Races can be added as LTF activity expands; the underlying data model tracks everything LTF files, focused or not.
- Corrections. When we edit a value — to fix a typo in a filing, or to merge a duplicate committee — the override is logged and flagged if the underlying FEC data changes underneath it.
A project of Demand Progress.
Demand Progress is a nonprofit that works to protect democracy, civil liberties, and the public interest in how powerful industries shape public policy. AI Money Watch is one of our accountability tools — built so voters, reporters, and organizers can see Big AI political spending in time to do something about it.