It was only a few days after announcing his first run for Congress, and Assemblyman Alex Bores was already gathering big money from donors.
At a Midtown Manhattan restaurant, Mr. Bores was a co-host of a fund-raiser that attracted a room full of software engineers and experts in artificial intelligence, many of whom support an A.I.-related bill passed by the New York State Legislature in June that was sponsored by Mr. Bores.
The event on Oct. 30 netted nearly $250,000 in political contributions, according to four people familiar with the matter. The money did not go to Mr. Bores — it went to the re-election campaign of Gov. Kathy Hochul, who has until Dec. 31 to decide whether to sign, modify or veto Mr. Bores’s bill.
It was unusual for a young second-term assemblyman to host such an event for the governor, and even more atypical that Mr. Bores would have a bill before the governor, according to Blair Horner, the senior policy adviser at the New York Public Interest Research Group.
“There are no real restrictions on those who want to make donations who have business before the governor,” Mr. Horner said. “New York’s system has improved, but it’s still the Wild West in terms of fund-raising.”
The campaign windfall to Ms. Hochul signals the importance of the A.I. bill, as lawmakers around the country grapple with what type of guardrails might be needed for a rapidly advancing technology. It also underscores the willingness of stakeholders to spend heavily to influence potential legislation.
“The tech sector is increasingly the biggest economic growth sector here, so it only stands to reason that you would only see this dynamic at play in politics as well,” said Julie Samuels, the president of TECH:NYC, an industry association.
In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill in September that forces the most advanced A.I. companies to report safety protocols and the greatest risks their technologies pose.
These fights in state capitals have taken on an increased importance in the absence of federal standards around the safe development of the most advanced artificial intelligence models. At the same time, the Trump administration and some congressional Republicans have sought to prohibit states from regulating the technology.
The bill in New York, known as the Responsible Artificial Intelligence Safety and Education (RAISE) Act, would require larger firms developing A.I. models to formulate and publicize safety plans for their most advanced products.
If it becomes law, the legislation, sponsored in the State Senate by Senator Andrew Gounardes, would force companies to disclose “major security incidents” such as when the models steal or engage “in behavior other than at the request of a user.”
A.I. companies and their financial backers took sides. Bloomberg Industry reported over the summer that large several venture capital firms were spending about $40,000 a month to shape or kill the legislation. Ms. Samuels said her group had concerns about the bill’s current language, and she has conveyed them to Ms. Hochul.
The hope, Ms. Samuels added, is that changes to the RAISE Act’s transparency provisions can be more closely aligned with the rules recently adopted in California, so there can be a single framework of compliance in two of America’s largest states.
Money has also flowed to and against Mr. Bores’s nascent campaign to replace Representative Jerrold Nadler, the former House Judiciary chairman who is not seeking re-election. In the first 15 hours following the announcement of his campaign launch, Mr. Bores disclosed raising about $1.2 million, nearly twice as much as his closest competitors. It’s unclear where the bulk of the money came from; disclosures for this period won’t be released until next year.
His foes have taken note. A bipartisan super PAC, funded so far with about $100 million from the founders of Open AI and Andreessen Horowitz, a venture capital firm, among others, has targeted Mr. Bores and said it would spend at least $10 million against him.
The New York Times reported last week that a group of people who work in and around the A.I. industry and fear what will happen if it is unregulated are hoping to raise at least $50 million to act as a counterweight and back candidates, including Mr. Bores.
Ms. Hochul has met with a number of the sector’s leading figures and secured about $340 million in state funds for “Empire A.I.,” a public-private partnership aimed at making New York a key player in artificial intelligence research. She has also said there needs to be a balance between innovation and safety when it comes to these new technologies.
Her efforts to place New York at the center of this growing field comes as she gears up for a primary fight against Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado and a likely general election battle against Representative Elise Stefanik, a pro-Trump Republican. The governor has raised about $4 million for her re-election in the first half of 2025, according to state disclosures, and has about $17.5 million cash on hand.
“Governor Hochul evaluates all legislation based on the merits and makes determinations solely on what is best for New Yorkers,” Kara Cumoletti, a spokeswoman for Ms. Hochul, said in a statement.
The battles over A.I. regulation have also opened a spigot of campaign cash for local politicians like Mr. Bores, 34, who joined the State Assembly in 2023 after working for several technology firms including Palantir, which does extensive work for the federal government.
Mr. Bores said in an interview that Ms. Hochul has a “tough re-election coming up” and he chose to help raise money for her because she is one of the “most forward-looking governors on A.I. in the country.”
“There is a lot of money being spent against any A.I. regulations in general, and it’s being done to overcome tremendous popular support for these provisions,” Mr. Bores said. “It’s not surprising that, of the people who support some regulation, some of them might also be interested in supporting candidates willing to stand up against big tech.”
Mr. Bores has cultivated a similar network of donors. Many are part of the effective altruism movement, which is made up of activists who are among other things concerned about the safety of A.I. The ideology rose to prominence largely through the efforts of Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange who was sentenced to 25 years in prison after stealing billions of dollars from customers.
Many of the donors invited to the Hochul fund-raiser were proponents of effective altruism and had expressed concerns about the proliferation of unregulated A.I.
“This is one of the few cases where the call is coming from inside the building,” Nate Soares, an A.I. researcher who was a co-author of a New York Times best-selling book about the subject. He was invited to the Hochul fund-raiser and has given to candidates from both parties whose views of A.I. align with his, including $1,000 to Ms. Hochul.
“A lot of people are donating money to politicians who are opposed by these $200 million PACs. A lot them are people who work in the industry or used to, and think this is really dangerous,” he added. “You have a lot of people saying that Big Oil is doing bad stuff, but you don’t usually have people at oil companies saying, ‘This stuff is scary.’”
Mr. Bores’s co-host of Ms. Hochul’s fund-raiser was Jack O’Donnell, a longtime lobbyist whose clients include the Secure AI Project, a San Francisco advocacy group run by a proponent of effective altruism who used to work with Mr. Bankman-Fried. The organization supports the RAISE Act and is pushing to pass similar bills around the country.
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Both Mr. O’Donnell and Mr. Bores solicited donations as well for the campaign committees controlled by the State Assembly Democrats and State Democrats. Several of the people who had been invited to the Hochul fund-raiser gave a combined $55,000 to these committees in the run-up to the bill’s passage.
“This is an ecosystem of people who really are engaged in the industry and believe in it but also are frightened by it,” Mr. O’Donnell said.
Theodore Schleifer contributed reporting.
Benjamin Oreskes is a reporter covering New York State politics and government for The Times.
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