# Lone Star Rising PAC 4M Donor Block Q3 2026 Four people gave **$1,000,000.00 each** to [[Lone Star Rising PAC]], the super PAC spending against [[Ken Paxton]] in [[TX-Sen-2026]], between August 20 and September 29, 2026. All four became public at the same moment: on the committee's third-quarter Form 3X, file **2027513**, received **October 15, 2026**. Together they are **41.8%** of the $9,578,650.00 the committee raised in the quarter. ## Terms | Contributor | Amount | Receipt date | Listed occupation / employer | FEC line | |---|---|---|---|---| | **[[Reed Hastings]]** | $1,000,000.00 | 2026-08-20 | Chairman, Netflix | SA11AI | | **[[Susan Sarofim]]** | $1,000,000.00 | 2026-09-21 | Philanthropist, Houston TX | SA11AI | | **[[Chris Larsen]]** | $1,000,000.00 | 2026-09-25 | CEO, Ripple | SA11AI | | **Rory Gates** | $1,000,000.00 | 2026-09-29 | Analyst, Afghan War Commission | SA11AI | | Item | Detail | |---|---| | Recipient | **Lone Star Rising PAC**, FEC **C00918268**, Fort Worth TX, registered 2025-09-02 | | Treasurer | **Alexander Clark** | | Disclosed | Form 3X (`F3XN`), file **2027513**, received **2026-10-15**, covering 2026-07-01 to 2026-09-30 | | Line | **11(a)(i)** — itemised individual contributions, not transfers or other receipts | | Why it's tracked | Four individual contributions of $1,000,000 or more | Each contribution is an original, first-time disclosure: the dates fall inside the report's own coverage period, so no earlier report could have carried them, and none is a memo entry restating money counted elsewhere in the document. ## Who they are - **[[Reed Hastings]]** co-founded Netflix and is its chairman. He has also sat on the board of [[Anthropic]] since May 2025. This is the second Anthropic-connected seven-figure political contribution this site has traced in 2026, after [[Dario Amodei]]'s $1,000,000.00 to [[Public First]] — and unlike that one, it has nothing to do with AI policy. - **[[Chris Larsen]]** co-founded [[Ripple]] and is the crypto industry's most prominent Democratic megadonor; he gave more than $11.8 million to support Kamala Harris in 2024. He gave this committee a further $250,000.00 on 2026-08-24, putting his cycle total at $1,750,000.00 on the filing's own running column. - **[[Susan Sarofim]]** of Houston is the one Texas resident in the group. She had already given $200,000.00 in August, for a cycle total of $1,400,000.00. - **Rory Gates** is listed on the filing as a Washington DC analyst at the Afghan War Commission. Nothing further about him is established here, and this site does not identify him beyond what the filing says. ## Why it matters - **Three of the four largest donors to the anti-Paxton effort are not Texans.** Two are California technology executives and one is in Washington; the Houston philanthropist is the exception. In a race where the pro-Paxton side's single largest funder is also a transplant, the most expensive Senate contest of the cycle is being paid for largely from outside the state. - **It puts a second Anthropic board member in the political-money record.** The AI-safety side of the industry has been visible in AI-policy giving; this is the same people turning up in an ordinary partisan Senate race, which is a different and less-covered fact. - **The money is dwarfed anyway.** [[Texas PAC]] alone has itemised $131,529,652.10 of independent expenditure in this race. Four million dollars is the visible top of a committee whose entire quarter was $13.8 million of advertising, against a Republican programme an order of magnitude larger. - **It surfaced on the busiest filing day of the cycle.** October 15 was the quarterly deadline, when any single disclosure is hardest to see; the national coverage that day went to the $158 million behind Paxton. ## Open questions - Whether any of the four gives again in the final three weeks, when only 24- and 48-hour notices would show it before the election. - Whether other **[[Anthropic]]**-affiliated contributors appear at or above $1,000,000.00. - What the committee did with its **$7,766,070.81** of closing cash. ## Sources - FEC Form 3X, file **2027513** — `https://docquery.fec.gov/dcdev/posted/2027513.fec` - [See Q3 campaign finance reports in Texas' US Senate race — Community Impact](https://communityimpact.com/central-austin/election/see-how-much-money-candidates-outside-groups-have-raised-in-texas-us-senate-race/) — independently reports the committee at "$9.6 million in the third quarter" and names Larsen and Sarofim among its top donors - [Meet the megadonors behind the pro-James Talarico super PAC — Texas Tribune](https://www.texastribune.org/2026/05/14/texas-james-talarico-super-pac-donors-lone-star-rising-dark-money-democratic-billionaires/) - [Reed Hastings joins Anthropic's board — Sherwood News](https://www.sherwood.news/tech/reed-hastings-joins-anthropics-board) ## See also - [[Lone Star Rising PAC]] · [[TX-Sen-2026]] · [[James Talarico]] · [[Ken Paxton]] - [[Reed Hastings]] · [[Chris Larsen]] · [[Susan Sarofim]] · [[Anthropic]] · [[Ripple]] - [[Dario Amodei]] · [[Public First]] · [[Texas PAC]] · [[Lone Star Liberty PAC]] - [[Super PACs]] · [[Independent Expenditure]] · [[Deals Hub]]