OpenAI, Nvidia, Anthropic Set Lobbying Records — SkimNews
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- Anthropic, OpenAI, and Nvidia each logged their highest-spending lobbying quarter on record between July and September, spending a combined ~$6 million on issues including cybersecurity and child safety.
- Nvidia led the trio at $2.2 million, followed by Anthropic at $2.1 million and OpenAI at $1.5 million — figures that still trail Google's regular $3M+ quarterly spend and Microsoft's $2M+ since 2021.
- Disclosures show behind-the-scenes engagement running parallel to a late-September White House lunch where AI CEOs met Trump and agreed to a "morally binding" AI safety accord, just before Trump named his AI czar and task force.
- Anthropic's lobbying list cited KOSA, the AI Overwatch Act's export controls, Trump's executive order renaming AI "Super Intelligence," and the Ratepayer Protection Act, which aims to shift data center energy costs onto developers.
- OpenAI lobbied Congress, the White House, the SBA, and the Commerce and State Departments on cybersecurity evaluations for frontier models, AI safety oversight, and antitrust protections — topics the article ties to fallout from the Hugging Face attack.
- Apple also set a record at $3.1 million, its first quarter above $3M, lobbying on age-verification bills for app stores, tariffs, and domestic semiconductor manufacturing.
- The surge marks a steep ramp-up: OpenAI didn't spend more than $1 million in any single quarter until 2025, and Anthropic's prior quarterly high was just over $1 million in 2024.
Why it matters: With Democrats expected to win back some congressional control post-midterms, AI companies filed their highest lobbying disclosures yet to influence the specific bills — KOSA, the Ratepayer Protection Act, export controls — moving through Congress and the White House. The Q3 timing, filed just before Trump named his AI czar, shows the industry trying to shape rules from the inside before the political window narrows.
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