A super PAC billed as a "death star" for anti-AI candidates is flickering out two days before the midterms.
Leading the Future, launched in August 2025 with pledges of $100 million from tech figures including venture capitalist Marc Andreessen and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, has sharply curtailed its spending in the final stretch — and is losing donors.
The numbers are unambiguous. In October, the month PACs normally empty their accounts on closing ads, just $4.1 million flowed through its affiliated PACs, Think Big and American Mission, despite nearly $24 million in cash on hand, according to FEC filings. That money went largely to safe incumbents rather than the battleground races in Arizona, North Carolina and Montana where the network spent during the primaries. In total it has spent less than $10 million in the general election, against roughly $26 million in the primaries.
"They're trying to hide right now," said a prominent Democratic bundler from Silicon Valley, granted anonymity to discuss conversations among donors. "There's so much momentum against data centers. People are concerned about AI and jobs."
The comparison that stings
When Leading the Future launched, the obvious benchmark was Fairshake, the crypto industry PAC that spent nearly $196 million in 2024 and made candidates tremble. Fairshake has already spent more than $150 million this cycle. Leading the Future's network has spent $42 million — less than Elon Musk's self-funded America PAC (about $172 million), AIPAC (more than $100 million) and even the sports-betting industry's Win for America PAC (about $80 million).
A spokesperson downplayed the retreat, describing a long-term strategy to cultivate allies on Capitol Hill. "We are committed to a multi-cycle effort that ensures lawmakers who understand the stakes and are prepared to lead have a seat at the table during this critical moment," said Jesse Hunt.
The donors are leaving quietly
OpenAI President Greg Brockman, who gave the PAC $25 million last year, pulled out of a second planned $25 million donation in June, calling it "a distraction." Venture capitalist Ron Conway, one of its first backers, regrets his $500,000 contribution, according to an adviser familiar with his thinking.
At the same time the industry is at war with itself. Public First Action, funded largely by Anthropic, has spent about $28 million backing pro-regulation candidates. In New York's 12th District primary the two groups met head-on: $8 million against AI-safety advocate Alex Bores, $12 million for him. Bores lost — and the winner, Micah Lasher, now rejects industry support and calls for a national moratorium on data center construction.
Where it hurts candidates
Association with AI-aligned PACs has itself become a liability. In San Francisco's race to succeed Nancy Pelosi, Supervisor Connie Chan attacks frontrunner Scott Wiener for being "bankrolled by Big Tech and AI corporations" after Public First Action put $3.5 million into an outside PAC supporting him. Wiener points to his own record, including authoring the state law that directly targets frontier models.
Shaunna Thomas of the Guardrails Alliance, which has spent more than $1 million against Leading the Future-backed Rep. Jimmy Gomez, sums up the new arithmetic: "People are really looking for candidates to tell them what side they're on, and you're either on the side of big tech and big AI or on ours."
