They are not just warning us. They are paying to be left alone.

Methodology & Sources

How we gathered these figures.

Every figure on this page is sourced from public records. Lobbying in the United States is a legal, constitutionally protected activity. This page documents publicly disclosed lobbying expenditures and publicly stated corporate positions. It does not allege any unlawful conduct by any company or individual.

Primary sources

• OpenSecrets / Center for Responsive Politics — federal lobbying disclosures filed under the Lobbying Disclosure Act (LD-2 forms). Per-company spend figures cite OpenSecrets directly.
  opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying
• Public Citizen — "Artificial Intelligence Lobbyists Descend on Washington DC" (Cheng & Tanglis, May 2024) and "One in Four Federal Lobbyists Now Work on AI" (2025). Source for the lobbyist count and growth figures.
  citizen.org
• Contemporaneous reporting — TechCrunch, OpenSecrets News, NPR, CalMatters, Politico, MIT Technology Review, Wikipedia entries with dated citations. Specific articles linked from each company's source line.
• Letter from Dario Amodei to Governor Newsom — August 21, 2024, on Anthropic's revised position on SB 1047. Public letter.
• Karen Hao, Empire of AI — HarperCollins, 2025 (NYT Bestseller). Source for internal Meta documentation cited in the Meta card.

Important caveats

• Total federal lobbying ≠ AI-specific lobbying. For Google, Meta, Microsoft, and other large companies, lobbying disclosures do not break out AI-specific spending. The figures shown for these companies are total federal lobbying spend per OpenSecrets, with the AI portion noted separately where it can be verified. We do not claim these companies spent the entire amount on AI.
• Lobbying is legal. Every company on this page is engaged in lawful, constitutionally protected activity. Whether their priorities align with the public interest is a matter of public concern and reasonable comment.
• Causation is hard to prove. Bills die for many reasons. We document the pattern: companies spent money, lobbied a position, the regulation went their way. We do not claim a single cause.
• Figures are time-stamped. Lobbying spend changes quarterly. Every figure includes a year. Verify against current OpenSecrets data before quoting in any new context.
• Anthropic and SB 1047. Anthropic's position on SB 1047 evolved. The company raised concerns about the original bill, suggested amendments, and ultimately offered a qualified endorsement of the amended version in CEO Dario Amodei's August 21, 2024 letter to Governor Newsom. We characterize this evolution honestly. We do not claim Anthropic killed the bill.

Right of reply

Any company, organization, or individual named on this page may submit a response. We will publish substantive corrections and, where appropriate, contrary perspectives alongside the existing content. Write to us at corrections@operationimaginal.org.

Corrections

We aim for accuracy. If you believe any figure or characterization on this page is incorrect, out of date, or unfair, please write us at corrections@operationimaginal.org. We will verify, correct, and credit. The credibility of this work depends entirely on the figures being right.

Last verified: April 2026.
All quotations are from public statements and are reproduced for the purpose of comment and criticism on matters of public concern. Fair use is asserted under 17 U.S.C. § 107.