AI PACs Have Dumped Nearly $1 Million Into an Obscure Senate Race

Major super PACs associated with AI labs and investors have poured close to one million dollars into incumbent Republican Mike Rounds’s South Dakota senate race, seeking to shape the outcome of a noncompetitive race amid a critical national debate over AI regulation.

Rounds has been the beneficiary this cycle of around $600,000 in spending by outside groups, with the vast majority of that figure coming from the super PAC Defend American Jobs, which receives funding from a super PAC financed by the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

He has also received roughly $215,000 directly from the employees and super PACs affiliated with AI labs, most notably Anthropic, as well as a constellation of other tech companies including Google and Microsoft, according to FEC filings.