WASHINGTON — The White House is threatening some of Silicon Valley’s richest and most powerful players over their efforts to spearhead a $100 million midterm strategy to back candidates of both parties who support a national framework for artificial intelligence regulations.
In August, the group of donors launched a super PAC called Leading the Future. It did not consult with the White House before doing so, according to a White House official.
What is especially frustrating to White House officials is that it plans to back AI-friendly candidates from both political parties — which could potentially help Democrats win back control of Congress — and one of the leaders of the new super PAC is a former top staffer to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.
“Any group run by Schumer acolytes will not have the blessing of the president or his team,” a White House official familiar with Trump's thinking on the matter told NBC News. “Any donors or supporters of this group should think twice about getting on the wrong side of Trump world.”
“We are carefully monitoring who is involved,” the official added.
Some of the initial Leading the Future donors apparently now under the White House's watchful eye include private equity giant Andreesseen Horowitz, whose billionaire co-founder, Marc Andreesseen, is a close Trump adviser; Greg Brockman, co-founder of OpenAI; Joe Lonsdale, co-founder of Palantir and a vocal Trump supporter; and Ron Conway, founder of SV Angel and a 2024 supporter of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
None returned a request from NBC News seeking comment either directly or through their companies.
Because it only recently launched, the group has not yet had to file campaign finance reports, making it unclear how much each initial donor is giving to the effort.
One of the group’s top officials is Josh Vlasto, Schumer’s former press secretary, who during the 2024 election cycle helped advise Fairshake, a tech-led $130 million effort to elect candidates who support cryptocurrency. The AI-focused political effort is modeled after that 2024 effort.
Vlasto did not return a request seeking comment.
The group’s other top official is Zac Moffatt, founder and CEO of Republican consulting firm Targeted Victory. He also did not return a request seeking comment.
When the group launched in August, it made clear that it planned a bipartisan effort with the only underlying goal of politically backing candidates who support uniform federal AI regulations, rather than state-by-state sets of laws.
“With more than $100 million in initial funding already committed, LTF is the first comprehensive, bipartisan effort by the AI industry to organize political support and elect pro-innovation candidates at scale,” read a news release announcing the Leading the Future super PAC.
There have been fights over whether or not to ban states from implementing their own AI regulations, which recently played out as Congress was debating the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill. The bill, which was a priority for Trump, initially included a 10-year ban on states passing their own AI regulations, but that controversial provision was stripped before final passage.
Democrats need to flip just three Republican seats to take over the majority in the U.S. House, which would give them significantly more power to slow Trump’s agenda and investigate both the president and his allies.
“AI has no better ally than President Trump, so it’s inexplicable why any company would put money into the midterms behind a Schumer-operative who is working against President Trump to elect Democrats,” said a second person familiar with the White House’s thinking. “It’s a slap in the face, and the White House has definitely taken notice.”
Since taking office in January, Trump has taken several actions supported by the industry, including in July releasing his AI action plan and signing three executive orders that, among other things, created a new AI export program, prevented use of “woke AI” in the federal government and fast-tracked the expansion of data centers, a major priority for the industry.
Data centers are needed to run artificial intelligence programs, but require huge amounts of energy, which has led to increased utility bills and morphing the fight into an increasingly contentious political issue.
The Trump-friendly AI policies do come against the backdrop of some groups concerned that AI technology is developing too quickly.
Earlier this week, AI researchers, former military leaders and other public figures, including Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, and former Trump administration official Steve Bannon, signed a statement raising concern about computer superintelligence, a not-yet-reached stage of AI they believed could pose an existential threat to humans.
The statement called for a “prohibition on the development of superintelligence” until there is scientific consensus and “strong public buy-in.”
