The A.I. and crypto industries entered this year with nearly $250 million combined to spend on politics, and a battle plan to shape the regulatory landscape in their favor.
And candidates know it.
They are filling out industry questionnaires and writing social media posts or peppering their websites with telling phrases that echo corporate talking points — the kind of buzzwords that industry insiders can instantly recognize as signs of support.
Talk up innovation. Praise the blockchain. Hail the need for “clear” rules and regulation.
In some ways, it is an old Washington story of power, money and influence, unfolding in new ways, with new players and on new platforms.
The language can be quite niche.
Yet another Democratic House candidate in Illinois uses the very first issue on her website — listed above “lower costs & better jobs” — to point to her belief in “blockchain-based assets” (the crypto industry has spent $1.7 million opposing one of her rivals). A Republican House contender in Texas has put an “Ensuring America’s A.I. Dominance” section on his issues page, right after “Safeguard Our Constitution” (the A.I. industry spent nearly $750,000 to help him win the Republican nomination last week and avoid a runoff).
Good-government advocates are aghast at what they denounce as a public prostration for cash.
“It used to be that campaign websites would tell voters what candidates believe,” said Tiffany Muller, the president of End Citizens United, a liberal group that aims to limit the influence of money in politics. “Now they are a signaling apparatus to the wealthy special interests.”
She called it a distortion of democracy.
“These industry-aligned super PACs are now having a huge role in deciding who can run, who can compete and who can win,” Ms. Muller said, “and what they’re expecting on the back side is a return on investment.”
The candidates say they are simply communicating to voters about the crucial technologies of tomorrow.
Mr. Jackson, who went to prison after pleading guilty more than a decade ago to spending $750,000 in campaign money on personal items, said in a statement that he supported A.I. because “underserved communities must not miss another major economic shift. We’ve been left behind too many times.” Ms. Bean declined to comment.
A spokesman for Ms. Steinmann, Mike Thom, defended the prominence of A.I. and crypto on her site, calling them “two of the most consequential industries for the future.” He added, “Any campaign that IS NOT talking about these issues is not attuned with voters and the future American economy.”
‘A Deal With the Devil’
The A.I. and crypto industries are locked in pivotal fights over regulation in Washington and beyond, with billions of dollars at stake.
And they have not been shy about their intent to use their enormous political war chests to elect more allies.
The biggest pro-A.I. super PAC, Leading the Future, is funded chiefly by $25 million from the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and $12.5 million each from Greg Brockman, a co-founder of OpenAI, and his wife, Anna. The Brockmans and Marc Andreessen are among the biggest donors to President Trump’s super PAC, as well. The group uses different spinoff super PACs for Republicans (American Mission) and Democrats (Think Big).
“As more candidates step forward to champion this balanced, pro-innovation approach, Leading the Future will stand alongside them as a committed supporter,” Josh Vlasto and Zac Moffatt, the Democratic and Republican strategists who run Leading the Future, said in a statement.
The A.I. industry’s efforts are modeled, in part, on what the crypto industry did in 2024, when it spent lavishly in primaries and the general election for both parties. In some races, the crypto industry sought to punish candidates seen as skeptics, like Katie Porter in a California Senate race. In others, its super PACs spent heavily to send new allies to Capitol Hill.
The industries even have one key overlapping strategist: Mr. Vlasto is both a top strategist for Leading the Future and a spokesman for the crypto industry’s main super PAC, Fairshake, which started the year with $193 million.
In Texas, Fairshake has aimed to make an example of Representative Al Green, a Democrat who sits on the House Financial Services Committee and has opposed crypto priorities. An affiliated super PAC spent $1.5 million to try to elect his Democratic primary opponent, Representative Christian Menefee, who just won a neighboring seat in a special election but is running against Mr. Green because Texas redrew its congressional map last year.
Mr. Green finished behind Mr. Menefee, but with both men under 50 percent of the vote, the race will go to a runoff election in May.
Mr. Menefee has an issues page devoted to “Innovation and Emerging Technology” about both crypto and A.I. policy. “Technologies like blockchain offer the potential to increase trust, transparency, and efficiency,” it reads.
Mr. Green accused him of having “made a deal with the devil” because Mr. Menefee completed a crypto industry questionnaire in January (and received an “A” rating),
In an interview, Mr. Menefee said that he saw blockchain as a potential solution to record-keeping troubles he had seen in local government and that he was “not at all cognizant” of the crypto industry’s huge political war chest. He called himself a “local yokel.”
“When we saw the spending, we were just as surprised as anybody else,” he said.
In another race on Tuesday, the A.I. industry helped nominate a Republican who had indicated support.
Chris Gober, a lawyer running for the House who has worked for Elon Musk, includes a blurb about “AI dominance” on his website. One of the top A.I. super PACs has spent nearly $750,000 on his behalf. Mr. Gober dominated his primary, and is heavily favored to win in November.
A campaign spokesman, Bryan Piligra, said Mr. Gober “invests real time in meeting with constituents and industry stakeholders because he cares more about understanding complex issues than recycling talking points.”
The leading A.I. super PAC celebrated Mr. Gober’s victory, along with two others by Republicans, in a memo after the primaries. “Leading the Future is building the bench of AI Champions in Congress for decades to come,” it read.
‘Incredible Champions’ for an Industry
The idea of soliciting super PAC support by posting about seemingly obscure issues is not new.
Four years ago, the crypto financier Sam Bankman-Fried spent heavily on primary campaigns. He was later convicted of fraud and his cryptocurrency exchange went into bankruptcy. But at the time, he and his associates said they were directing their spending under the guise of supporting candidates who promised to prioritize pandemic preparedness.
Sure enough, many candidates began to publicly promote pandemic preparedness.
Among them was Jonathan Jackson, a brother of Jesse Jackson Jr., who was running for Congress and posted about the issue extensively just days before a super PAC funded by Mr. Bankman-Fried spent more than $500,000 on his behalf. Jonathan Jackson is now a member of Congress.
Colin McLaren, the head of government relations at the Solana Policy Institute, a nonprofit group aligned with the crypto industry, said the fact that “candidates want to develop a strong relationship with the industry” was simply “how politics has worked for quite some time.”
“We have this opportunity to use this as a door opener, but we’ve really built some incredible champions that, you know, aren’t just here for the money,” Mr. McLaren said in an interview. “They’re here because this technology matters, and because they’ve really had an awakening.”
A second A.I.-funded super PAC network has sprung up, called Public First, whose nonprofit group is backed by a rival A.I. start-up, Anthropic. Anthropic’s leadership has called for tougher regulation than much of the A.I. industry and warned of misuses of the technology.
The two A.I. groups have been at odds in a New York House race, and on Friday, the super PAC with links to Anthropic revealed that it was spending nearly $1 million opposing Mr. Jackson Jr. — essentially offsetting the super PAC with ties to OpenAI.
In another recent race, one of Public First’s affiliated super PACs spent $1.6 million to help Representative Valerie Foushee, Democrat of North Carolina, narrowly fend off a progressive primary challenger who had called for a moratorium on data centers.
Data centers and A.I. had become a point of contention in the race. The industry’s support followed Ms. Foushee’s appointment at the end of 2025 by Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader, as co-chair of a new House Democratic Commission on AI and the Innovation Economy.
It is a role that made her a significant player in future industry regulation battles.
A Costly Fight in Illinois
In Jesse Jackson Jr.’s race, the A.I. industry is spending on his behalf at the same time that the main pro-crypto super PAC is blanketing the district with attacks on one of his opponents, Robert Peters, a Democratic state senator who voted for state legislation that the crypto industry opposed.
One of the mailers accuses Mr. Peters of being a “fighter for corporate interests” and calls him a “corporate pawn,” even though the mailer is funded by the crypto industry.
In an interview, Mr. Peters said the attacks were outrageous, as were Mr. Jackson’s not-so-subtle solicitations. (On his website, Mr. Jackson writes that he supports “a framework to responsibly address reasonable regulation for cryptocurrency” and he filled out a crypto industry questionnaire on Christmas Eve last year.)
“The reason you do that is because you’re desperate enough to be bought by A.I. and crypto,” Mr. Peters said, adding that he hoped the fact that major Trump donors were funding the attacks on him in a Democratic primary would backfire. “If you’re willing to sell out to A.I., you’re willing to sell out to people who have a deep relationship with the Trump administration.”
Shane Goldmacher is a Times national political correspondent.
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