POLITICS

Silicon Valley's $100 million bet to buy AI's political future

Silicon Valley's biggest names are bankrolling a massive campaign to stop AI regulation before it starts. The industry is putting more than $100 million into Leading the Future, a new super-PAC network aimed at defeating candidates who support strict AI oversight ahead of next year's midterm elections.

Andreessen Horowitz and OpenAI President Greg Brockman are spearheading the effort, alongside Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, AI search engine Perplexity and veteran angel investor Ron Conway. OpenAI's chief global affairs officer Chris Lehane helped shape the strategy during initial conversations about creating industry-friendly policies.

The group is copying the playbook of Fairshake, the crypto super-PAC that spent over $40 million to defeat crypto skeptic Senator Sherrod Brown and backed candidates who passed the first crypto regulations. Fairshake proved that targeted political spending could reshape entire policy landscapes in emerging tech sectors.

Leading the Future will focus initial efforts on four key battleground states:

• New York and California (major AI hubs with active regulatory discussions)

• Illinois (home to significant AI research and development)

• Ohio (swing state with growing tech presence and regulatory debates)

The group plans to support candidates opposing excessive AI regulation while pushing back against what White House AI czar David Sacks calls "AI doomers" who advocate for strict controls on AI models.

The timing reflects growing anxiety about regulatory momentum. California's Governor Newsom vetoed major AI safety legislation SB 1047 but signed other AI bills. The EU's AI Act is reshaping global AI development. Congress has avoided comprehensive AI legislation, creating a state-level patchwork that tech executives say hurts innovation.

The network represents Silicon Valley's broader political shift. Marc Andreessen, whose firm backs the effort, switched from supporting Democrats like Hillary Clinton to backing Trump, citing concerns about tech regulation. This rightward migration has created what Andreessen calls a fractured Silicon Valley with "two kinds of dinner parties."

This $100m PAC reveals Silicon Valley's evolution from asking "please regulate us responsibly" to "no more regulators, please." The speed of this transformation shows how the industry has moved from cooperation to confrontation as AI capabilities outpace policymakers’ understanding.

The danger is the false binary Leading the Future is creating between innovation and safety. By branding legitimate concerns about AI's societal impact as "doomerism," they're not just fighting bad regulation, they're fighting the idea of regulation itself. When companies that profit from AI get to define what constitutes reasonable oversight, the public loses before the debate even begins.

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CHATBOTS

Saudi Arabia launches Islamic AI chatbot

Saudi Arabia's Humain has launched a conversational AI app designed around Islamic values, marking another Gulf state's push for culturally authentic artificial intelligence. Powered by the Allam large language model, the chatbot accommodates bilingual Arabic-English conversations and multiple regional dialects.

CEO Tareq Amin called it "a historic milestone in our mission to build sovereign AI that is both technically advanced and culturally authentic." The app, initially available only in Saudi Arabia, was developed by 120 AI specialists, half of whom are women.

Humain joins the UAE's established Arabic AI ecosystem rather than competing directly with it. The Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence launched Jais in 2023, a 13-billion-parameter open-source model trained on 116 billion Arabic tokens. Named after the UAE's highest peak, Jais was built to serve the over 400 million Arabic speakers globally, and has been adopted by UAE government ministries and major corporations.

Both countries are channeling oil wealth into AI through similar partnerships with U.S. tech giants. Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund manages $940 billion and backs Humain, while the UAE's sovereign funds support G42 and other AI initiatives. During Trump's recent Middle East visit, both countries secured massive U.S. chip deals—Saudi Arabia getting 18,000 Nvidia chips for Humain, while the UAE gained access to 500,000 advanced processors annually.

The parallel development reflects a broader Gulf strategy of using sovereign wealth to build culturally authentic AI capabilities while maintaining ties to Silicon Valley technology and expertise.

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COMPETITION

Musk follows through on Apple threat with new xAI lawsuit

Two weeks after threatening Apple with "immediate legal action" over alleged App Store bias, his xAI startup filed a federal lawsuit Monday accusing Apple and OpenAI of illegally conspiring to stifle AI competition.

The Texas court filing alleges the two companies have "locked up markets to maintain their monopolies and prevent innovators like X and xAI from competing." Musk complains that Apple's exclusive partnership with OpenAI for Siri integration makes ChatGPT the only generative AI chatbot natively integrated into iPhones.

Musk's real frustration appears to be with App Store curation. Despite Grok ranking sixth in the "Top Free Apps" section, neither X nor Grok has ever appeared in Apple's coveted "Must-Have Apps" guide. ChatGPT, meanwhile, consistently holds the top spot and remains the only AI chatbot featured in that editorial section.

This marks yet another legal front for Musk, who's already battling OpenAI in California federal court over the startup's conversion from nonprofit to for-profit structure. That case prompted a federal judge to essentially tell both billionaires to grow up after calling their dispute "gamesmanship."

Apple defended its practices, saying the App Store "is designed to be fair and free of bias." OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was less diplomatic, calling Musk's claims "remarkable" given allegations that Musk "manipulates X to benefit himself and his own companies."

xAI acquired X in March for $33 billion, positioning itself as both a social platform and AI competitor that's now struggling to break through Apple's ecosystem dominance.

LINKS

• US state-based AI bills shift focus from comprehensive AI regulation to narrower issues, like mental health

• DHL’s AI upgrade: ‘Love it or hate it, you have to work with it’

• Perplexity to let publishers share in revenue from AI searches

• Elon Musk’s xAI secretly dropped its benefit corporation status while fighting OpenAI

• YouTube used AI to edit people's videos without them knowing

• Intel says Trump deal has risks for shareholders, international sales

• Nvidia’s new ‘robot brain’ goes on sale for $3,499 as company targets robotics for growth

• Attorneys general to AI chatbot companies: You will ‘answer for it’ if you harm children

• NotebookLM’s Video Overviews feature now supports 80 languages

• Trace: Trace breaks down your workflows and assigns the right agent – human or AI to complete it

• Finto: AI-powered accounting for enterprise finance teams

• Nomi: Gives you real-time sales advice during calls

• Onlook: An open-source cursor for designers

• Linear: Product Support Speciality

• Spotify: Associate Machine Learning Engineer

• Reality Defender: Computer Vision Intern

• Anthropic: Machine Learning Systems Engineer, Research Tools

GAMES

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