The AI industry just did something Silicon Valley incumbents have been doing for decades: it hired Washington in bulk.

Federal lobbying disclosures for the third quarter show Nvidia, Anthropic, and OpenAI each posting their highest-spending quarter on record, according to AI Affairs, reporting on The Verge's analysis of the filings. Nvidia led the group at roughly $2.2 million, followed by Anthropic at $2.1 million and OpenAI at $1.5 million.

The raw sums are still modest next to legacy Big Tech — Google regularly clears $3 million in a quarter, and Microsoft has spent at least $2 million per quarter since 2021. But the trajectory is the story. Anthropic roughly doubled its highest quarterly total from 2025. OpenAI didn't top $500,000 in a single quarter until late 2024, and didn't clear $1 million until this year. A Project On Government Oversight analysis puts the three companies' combined Q3 spend at about $7.5 million — up 23% from the previous quarter, up 61% from a year ago, and part of roughly $37 million the trio has spent since the start of 2024, about half of it in 2026 alone.

What they're buying matters more than the total. Nvidia's disclosures list export controls, competition policy, and "responsible AI design" — and it opposes the AI Overwatch Act, which would let Congress block high-tech chip exports to China, Russia, and Iran. Anthropic lobbied on child safety provisions in the Kids Online Safety Act, chip export rules, the Ratepayer Protection Act (which would make data-center developers pay for their electricity demand), and even the White House order rebranding AI "Super Intelligence." OpenAI pressed on cybersecurity evaluations, safety oversight frameworks, copyright, and — tellingly — antitrust protections for sharing safety information with competitors.

That's the real tell. Just last month, Anthropic proposed its own draft AI safety legislation, and all three labs signed a White House voluntary accord the president called "morally binding." Now the filings show they're each building the influence machines to make sure whatever Congress eventually writes looks the way they want it to. With at least 99 AI-related bills circulating on the Hill and midterms weeks away, the labs are betting — correctly, in all likelihood — that the next Congress will be more regulation-friendly, and more expensive to persuade.

The industry spent years claiming it was too busy building the future to engage with Washington. This quarter is the receipt showing that's over.

— via AI Affairs