# Leading the Future The AI industry's super-PAC network, launched August 2025 with $100M+ and explicitly modeled on crypto's [[Fairshake PAC]] — proof that the purchased-regulatory-certainty playbook is now a template. Funders include [[Andreessen Horowitz]], [[OpenAI]] president [[Greg Brockman]] (with Anna Brockman), and [[Joe Lonsdale]]; [[Perplexity]] and Ron Conway were reported at launch. Run by Zac Moffatt and Josh Vlasto (a former Fairshake adviser). Total raised exceeds $140M, with ~$70M cash entering 2026. ## Strategy Bipartisan and punitive: reward AI-friendly candidates in both parties, make an example of AI-regulation advocates. The proof-of-concept was New York's Alex Bores — co-author of the state RAISE Act — against whom the network spent ~$8M in the NY-12 Democratic primary; Bores lost to Micah Lasher. Affiliated PACs Think Big and American Mission have spent ~$23.5M across races in Texas, Illinois (including $1.4M for Jesse Jackson Jr. in IL-02), and Senate primaries in Louisiana, Montana, and Oklahoma. The spending operates in tandem with the administration's deregulatory push — the December 2025 state-preemption executive order and [[David Sacks]]'s federal preemption drafting — as the outside-money half of a coordinated squeeze on state AI law (see [[AI Action Plan]]). ## Counter-forces and controversies **Public First**, co-founded by former Reps. Brad Carson and Chris Stewart with at least $20M from [[Anthropic]], is the pro-regulation counter-PAC — an intra-industry split worth tracking. **It was not the only counter-vehicle in NY-12.** [[You Can Push Back]] (FEC C00946830) was registered on April 9, 2026, funded **100% by one man** — [[Ripple]] CEO [[Chris Larsen]], $3,000,000 on April 10 and $500,000 on April 21, with no other contributor of any size — and spent **$2,063,530.00** entirely supporting Bores before winding down. That reframes the race: not only industry against industry, but a lone principal against a network, and a crypto executive spending personally on **AI** policy rather than on crypto policy. It was invisible until September 29, 2026, when the committee filed the third amendment of its April report (file 2015529) after three FEC requests for additional information — five months after the primary. Sources: `docquery.fec.gov/dcdev/posted/2015529.fec` · `docquery.fec.gov/dcdev/posted/1974334.fec` A Campaign Legal Center FEC complaint alleges LtF-linked PACs routed payments through shell companies, and an April 2026 investigation tied the network to an AI-generated "news" site (The Wire By Acutus). Gallup polling shows ~80% of Americans favor AI safety even at the cost of slower development — the network is spending against public opinion, not with it. ## See Also - [[Fairshake PAC]] — the template · [[AI Political Spending Ecosystem]] — the full map - [[AI Action Plan]] · [[David Sacks]] · [[Andreessen Horowitz]] · [[OpenAI]] · [[Anthropic]] - [[AI Sector]] — sector context · [[2026 Midterms Hub]]