Anthropic employees donate $3M to support AI safety regulations

Employees from three major Bay Area artificial intelligence companies donated more than $3 million to a political action committee supporting AI regulation, according to new campaign finance records.

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Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei was the top donor to Public First in the last quarter, giving the pro-AI safety super PAC a $1 million donation to fund candidates who share his company’s vision for safe AI development. Amodei was joined by five other Anthropic employees, who donated more than $2 million combined, plus a Google DeepMind engineer and a member of OpenAI’s technical staff, who donated $250,000 and $5,000, respectively.

Amodei has given smaller amounts directly to political campaigns over the past few years, including while he was at OpenAI. But his May 4 donation appears to be the largest personal stake he’s offered, according to Politico, a notable personal commitment to AI regulation from the chief executive of one of the world’s largest and most valuable AI companies. 

Anthropic did not respond to a request for comment. 

The stakes are high for the two San Francisco tech rivals. Both OpenAI and Anthropic filed last month for what are expected to be some of the most highly valued public offerings in market history. Both companies have recently released even more powerful versions of their flagship AI models, including Anthropic’s Fable 5, which was once deemed too powerful for public use. And both companies have gone back and forth with the federal government on whose vision for an AI-powered future would be the most prudent.

Though the two companies are fundamentally pro-AI, they differ significantly on the government’s role in how the tech should be developed, deployed and managed.

Amodei recently released his vision for domestic regulation, which includes strengthening the government’s power to block the release of dangerously powerful or risky AI models and calling for independent analyses of AI developers. In May, Amodei even met with Pope Leo IX ahead of the pontiff’s release of his first encyclical, a doctrine-guiding Catholic document, addressing the dangers of unchecked AI development.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has advocated for a lighter-touch approach. He recently published an op-ed in the Financial Times calling for a U.S.-led international forum on AI that would limit technological access to countries that agree to comply with standard regulations and routine auditing, envisioning the body to be similar to that of global forums on atomic energy at the height of the Cold War. 

Just as the companies battle for contracts, value and talent, they’re also increasingly battling for influence and Capitol Hill allies to see their competing visions through.

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The two companies duked it out in New York’s 12th Congressional District primary, in the race to replace the retiring Rep. Jerry Nadler, spending a combined $26 million. Anthropic went all in on New York Assemblymember Alex Bores, a former Palantir data scientist and vocal advocate for AI regulation who pitched an eight-point AI regulation framework as a priority for his campaign. 

OpenAI and Palantir, which partially funded Leading the Future PAC, spent $7 million against Bores. The PAC funded ads painting Bores as a “hypocrite” for his previous Palantir employment and for running a campaign fueled by “dark money.” Bores ultimately lost the race by less than 5,000 votes to New York Assemblymember Micah Lasher.

If Bores’ defeat was an indicator of how seriously the nation’s biggest AI companies will be monitoring future races where AI is a campaign centerpiece, then voters can expect a lot more money flowing into the next election.

“This is the first congressional race in the country where the dividing line is: can the public stand up to the powerful and protect people from threats like AI, or will the most powerful billionaires in this country win again?” Bores wrote in a campaign memo days before his defeat.

Work at Anthropic or OpenAI and want to talk? Contact tech reporter Matthew Brown securely at [email protected] or on Signal at matthewbrownsfgate.11.