Three Bay Area AI companies, Santa Clara chipmaker Nvidia and San Francisco's Anthropic and OpenAI, each had their highest-spending federal lobbying quarter from July through September, disclosures show.
Why it matters: As fights over data centers, AI safety and chip exports heat up before the Nov. 3 midterms, the industry's biggest names are spending more to shape the rules.
By the numbers
- Nvidia: about $2.2 million, its biggest quarter ever and the first over $2 million. It has spent $4.7 million so far this year, Bloomberg Government reported.
- Anthropic: $2.1 million. Its biggest single quarter last year was just over $1 million, The Verge reported.
- OpenAI: $1.5 million. It didn't spend $1 million in a quarter until this year.
- Apple (Cupertino) also set a record at $3.1 million, its first quarter above $3 million.
What they lobbied on
Anthropic listed AI provisions in the Kids Online Safety Act, export control provisions in the AI Overwatch Act and the Ratepayer Protection Act, which aims to put data center energy costs on developers, according to The Verge. OpenAI lobbied on cybersecurity evaluations for frontier models, AI safety oversight and copyright. Nvidia's topics included export controls, 6G networks, competition policy and quantum computing.
For comparison, Google regularly spends more than $3 million a quarter, The Verge noted.