Federal Election Commission filings show the AI industry’s flagship super PAC has raised $76 million from a handful of donors and moved $47 million of it to two affiliated committees. A watchdog complaint, still unresolved, alleges those affiliates routed nearly all of their own spending through newly formed LLCs that do not look like real vendors.
The committee is Leading the Future, formed in August 2025 and built to defend the artificial intelligence industry against state and federal regulation. According to its FEC committee summary, it had received $75,981,640 and disbursed $52,157,821 through October 14, 2026, leaving $23.8 million in the bank. A third-party tracker built on the same filings itemizes four donors: Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz of Andreessen Horowitz at $25 million each, and OpenAI president Greg Brockman and Anna Brockman at $12.5 million each.
The size of the war chest is not the story; large super PACs are common. The structure is. Records show the parent committee spends little on itself, passes most of its money down to two affiliates, and that those affiliates are now the subject of a May 2026 complaint filed with the FEC by the Campaign Legal Center. The complaint is an allegation. TIJ found no public record of an FEC finding on it.
The Money Trail: $75 Million In, $47 Million Passed Down
Leading the Future is an independent-expenditure-only committee, commonly called a super PAC, which may accept unlimited contributions but may not coordinate with candidates. Its FEC filings show an unusually concentrated donor base and an unusually thin operation:
- Receipts: $75.98 million from August 15, 2025 to October 14, 2026, of which $75.1 million, or 98.8 percent, came from individuals.
- Donor concentration: The tracker’s itemization shows $25 million each from Andreessen and Horowitz, and $12.5 million each from Greg and Anna Brockman. NBC News reported that those four donors gave $12.5 million apiece by the end of 2025, when the committee held $39 million.
- Operating costs: $1.66 million, or 3.2 percent of disbursements. Consulting payments in the filings include several to Prusik Partners LLC, a Nevada firm, in amounts of roughly $65,000 to $147,000.
- Transfers to affiliates: FEC disbursement records show repeated $5 million payments to each of two committees, Think Big and American Mission, on December 15, 2025, February 24, May 19 and June 8, 2026, plus a further $7 million to Think Big on September 14, according to the tracker. The filings also show $3 million to a Florida state-level committee, American Mission Florida, and a $500,000 donation to Build American AI, a nonprofit.
The practical effect is that the committee with the headline donors is not the one buying most of the advertising. The Hill reported that Think Big, which it described as the network’s Democratic-facing arm, ran the attack ads in a New York House primary.
The Complaint: Two LLCs and Nearly All the Spending
On May 5, 2026, the Campaign Legal Center asked the FEC to investigate Think Big and American Mission. In its published analysis, the group says Think Big reported paying 96.8 percent of its disbursements, more than $6.4 million, to Lantern Production Consultants LLC, and American Mission reported paying 94.4 percent, more than $4.1 million, to Summit Ridge Media Group LLC. According to the group, both LLCs were formed on the same day, weeks before the committees began spending heavily on ads.
The legal theory is a reporting one. Federal rules generally require committees to disclose not only the vendor they paid but, where a payee passes money along, the underlying vendors and the purpose. The complaint alleges that neither LLC appears to be a bona fide commercial vendor operating at arm’s length and that the structure may have concealed which firms actually produced and placed the ads. The group says the LLCs “appear to exist only on paper.” Those are the complainant’s characterizations, not findings.
Using a single production entity is not, on its face, a violation. The question for the FEC is whether the filings gave the public the information the law requires. TIJ has not obtained a response from the committees to the complaint, and the committees list a Henderson, Nevada address in their registration. Readers should treat the allegations as unproven.
Beyond the Ballot: A Nonprofit Arm and a Questionable News Site
The super PAC is one part of a wider apparatus. Axios reported in October 2025 that Build American AI was launched as a nonprofit offshoot of Leading the Future, planning “eight figures” of issue advertising promoting federal rather than state AI rules. As a nonprofit it is not required to disclose its donors, which is why the Axios report described it as a dark-money group. FEC records show the super PAC itself gave the group $500,000 on October 9, 2025, so at least one funding source is visible.
A separate April 2026 investigation, summarized by Tom’s Hardware, examined a news site called The Wire by Acutus. The report said the site published 94 articles through an automated pipeline, that a scan found about 69 percent fully machine-generated, and that automated requests for interviews went out under fake bylines. The investigation connected the site to a public-affairs firm, Novus Public Affairs, whose client list includes Targeted Victory, a firm led by Zac Moffatt, a co-founder of Leading the Future. The report did not allege that the site was funded by or part of the super PAC, and TIJ has seen no filing that does.
Where the Spending Went: One House Primary
The clearest test of the network’s money came in New York’s 12th Congressional District. According to The Hill, Leading the Future spent more than $8 million against Assemblyman Alex Bores, who had sponsored state AI-safety legislation. Pro-regulation groups spent more than $20 million supporting him, including more than $15 million from Jobs and Democracy PAC, which is tied to Public First Action. The Hill described the race as the second most expensive House primary on record. Bores lost: NOTUS reported that Micah Lasher, former Rep. Jerry Nadler’s chosen successor, won the nomination.
Public First Action is the industry’s counterweight, and it is not free of the same questions. Axios reported on June 30 that the 501(c)(4) said it had raised more than $80 million, with Anthropic contributing an initial $20 million. Like Build American AI, it is a nonprofit whose donors are not required to be disclosed. Disclosure: this article was prepared with the assistance of Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic, the largest reported funder of Public First Action. Every figure here is drawn from the cited public records and reports.
A Pattern, Not an Outlier
Leading the Future was modeled on the crypto industry’s Fairshake network. NBC News reported that Fairshake and aligned groups entered 2026 with nearly $194 million, about five times Leading the Future’s cash, after spending roughly $290 million in 2024. The template is consistent: a few large donors, a flagship committee, affiliated PACs that carry the ad buys, and a nonprofit that does not have to name its funders. TIJ examined a similar structure on the left in its report on the Sixteen Thirty Fund, and the same disclosure gap applies on both sides of this fight.
What Remains Unknown
Three questions remain open. First, whether the FEC will act on the complaint; no outcome has been reported. Second, who actually produced the ads purchased through the two LLCs, a fact that the committees’ next reports, including the post-general filing due after the November election, may or may not reveal. Third, how much of the nonprofit activity on both sides will ever be traceable to donors.
What the records already establish is narrower and verifiable: a committee with 98.8 percent of its money from individuals, four donors supplying nearly all of it, and $47 million routed to two affiliates whose vendor disclosures are now under challenge. The public can see the front of the pipeline. Whether it can see the end is the question the FEC has been asked to answer.