Two AI labs spent $27 million trying to shape a New York congressional primary, and neither got what they paid for.
Alex Bores, a New York state Assemblyman and former tech industry employee, lost Tuesday's Democratic primary for New York's 12th Congressional District to Micah Lasher, who will succeed Rep. Jerry Nadler. Bores had co-authored the RAISE Act, which imposed safety requirements on frontier AI companies and was signed into state law. That legislation made him a target of Leading the Future, a $100 million pro-AI super PAC backed by OpenAI, which campaigned heavily to remove him from the race. Anthropic took the opposite position and supported Bores, turning a single Manhattan district primary into a direct proxy battle between two of the most prominent labs in the industry.
The result matters because it stress-tests the theory that tech money reliably buys political outcomes. OpenAI spent to oust a candidate whose signature legislation had already passed into law - a strategic misfire regardless of how the vote landed. And Anthropic backed a candidate who still lost, leaving neither lab with a clear win to point to.
Both companies just demonstrated they are willing to fund Washington-style political combat - which, given where AI regulation is headed, probably will not be the last $27 million either of them spends on it.