Just caught something interesting about how much crypto and AI are actually spending on politics right now. Turns out these two sectors combined are throwing around $250 million into the midterm election cycle to get their preferred candidates elected. That's... a lot of money.

Breaking it down, the AI side got things rolling early. A16z's Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz dropped $25 million into a Super PAC called 'Leading The Future' back in February. That PAC has since pulled in around $75 million total from various billionaires - including Greg Brockman from OpenAI. When you factor in the dark money nonprofits that don't have to disclose their donors, the AI industry's total spending jumps to $140 million.

But here's where it gets wild - the crypto industry is actually outpacing them. Fairshake, which is basically the biggest Super PAC in crypto, has independently raised over $134 million. We're talking serious coordination here. Cantor Fitzgerald - that Wall Street firm now run by Brandon Lutnick - threw $10 million at a pro-crypto Super PAC called Fellowship. Even Anchor Labs added another $1 million to the mix.

Elon Musk's contributions are interesting too. He put $1.6 million into his America PAC in March, which is honestly pretty modest compared to what he was dropping in 2024 when he was hitting Super PACs with over $250 million across the board.

One more thing worth noting - Anthropic committed $20 million to Public First Action, a nonprofit that's funneling some of that cash into Super PACs for the 2026 elections. What's different about Anthropic is they're actually pushing for strict federal AI safety regulations, which puts them at odds with most of the industry that's just trying to block regulation.

So basically, crypto and AI have decided midterm elections are worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Whether that actually shifts policy in their favor remains to be seen, but the investment they're making is definitely sending a message about how serious they are.