THE ESSENTIALS IN 30 SECONDS

  • Bloomberg reports that Public First says it spent more than $63 million and that 10 of the 17 congressional candidates it backed won, according to FourWeekMBA and Techmeme.
  • A FourWeekMBA analysis of FEC filings found 97.5% of the Public First network's scored general-election spending went to races that ended its way, versus 52.6% for Leading the Future.
  • Leading the Future's largest general-election bet, about $4.8 million for Darline Graham in South Carolina's Senate race, failed, TNW reports.

The first full accountings of AI-related political spending in the 2026 US midterms point in the same direction: groups pushing for stronger AI safeguards fared better than the industry-backed network that launched last year with a reported war chest of about $100 million. The figures, however, come from different trackers and do not line up neatly.

What the tallies show

According to Bloomberg, as relayed by FourWeekMBA and Techmeme, Public First, a network partly funded by Anthropic, says it spent more than $63 million in the midterms, and 10 of the 17 congressional candidates it supported won. That $63 million is the group's own figure and FourWeekMBA notes it has not been checked against filings.

FourWeekMBA ran its own count using Federal Election Commission independent-expenditure reports filed through October 30 and AP race calls. By its arithmetic, $10.28 million of the Public First network's $10.54 million in scored general-election spending went to races that ended in its favour, or 97.5%. For the Leading the Future network, the share was 52.6%. Most of that gap comes from one race: South Carolina's Senate contest, where Republican Darline Graham, backed by two Leading the Future-linked PACs, lost to Democrat Annie Andrews. TNW puts that spending at $4.8 million.

A broader picture

TNW, citing other outlets, reports that Leading the Future ends the cycle with just over $20 million, and that its biggest primary effort, more than $8.1 million against New York Democrat Alex Bores, did succeed, while Public First's roughly $15 million in support of Bores did not.

Anthropic's role is drawn from press reports rather than filings: Politico reported that the company gave $20 million in February to a nonprofit associated with Public First, FourWeekMBA notes. FEC data does not show how much of either network's money came from a single company.

Limits

None of these analyses shows that AI money decided any race. TechCrunch, cited by FourWeekMBA, observed that the effect is hard to separate from the broader Democratic swing, and Bloomberg's method for its 10-of-17 count was not public on accessible pages. Some later spending is not yet in the FEC snapshot.