The Ny Congressional Race On The Frontlines Of An Ai Industry Civil War

Artificial intelligence investors have poured over $1 million into a crowded New York City congressional primary to defeat Alex Bores, a Democratic state lawmaker who spearheaded new state rules on the industry.

But Bores’ campaign is simultaneously flush with money from a different faction of the tech industry: dozens of AI experts and rank-and-file tech workers who support government regulations on the technology, new Federal Election Commission filings show.

The result is a costly civil war within Big Tech, waged in the Manhattan district that Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler is vacating after 34 years.

The battle could be a preview of broader political dynamics splitting the AI industry, and perhaps both political parties, in the months ahead.

As a member of the New York Assembly, Bores proposed a state law that established guardrails against catastrophic AI risks. That prompted the AI industry PAC Leading the Future to select Bores as its first target for defeat, launching a $1 million ad campaign against his House candidacy late last month.

But Bores is simultaneously raking in cash from the other side of the debate.

In the last three months of 2025, his campaign raised more than $364,000 from people at top AI labs and roughly $420,000 from employees at AI safety groups, including many affiliated with “effective altruism,” a tech-adjacent ideology whose adherents see AI as an existential threat to humanity. Many of those groups are also backed by tech billionaires.

A “small group of AI oligarchs who want to avoid any meaningful oversight are running a shameless and aggressive campaign against me,” Bores — a former engineer for the data analytics giant Palantir — said in a statement to POLITICO. He said his donations from individuals working on AI safety and at leading AI labs suggest that “engineers and rank-and-file employees who are closest to the technology know how powerful it is.”

The donations amounted to roughly a third of Bores’ total $2.2-million campaign haul last quarter, itself nearly $1 million more than his closest primary challenger.

Meanwhile, the PAC seeking to defeat Bores is awash in cash from some of the industry’s most prominent names. Leading the Future’s donors include the venture capitalist firm Andreessen Horowitz, OpenAI President Greg Brockman and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale.

But former Rep. Brad Carson (D-Okla.), whose super PAC Public First favors AI regulations, said the donations to Bores suggest that the “smart political play” is to back reasonable guardrails on the technology. He also said it shows that Leading the Future “doesn’t even represent the AI industry.”

“The people who are working in OpenAI or Anthropic [or] Google DeepMind are on the side of Public First, not on the side of Leading the Future,” said Carson.

Leading the Future spokesperson Jesse Hunt countered that the donations from regulation supporters show that Bores is backed by “an extreme ideological dark money network that has bankrolled him and others for years.” He said Bores is beholden to “a broader movement that seeks to control innovation to fit their personal ideological and business interests.”

Donors to Bores’ campaign include groups funded by Coefficient Giving, formerly known as Open Philanthropy, a prolific backer of AI safety efforts financed by billionaire Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz.

Leading the Future has attacked Bores with advertisements claiming he supported contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement during his career. Bores has said Palantir’s contracts with the agency caused him to leave the firm.

Workers at Anthropic — a leading startup explicitly focused on building safe AI models — led the pack in corporate donations to Bores. They gave a combined $168,500 to his campaign, with most of them maxing out contributions to both his primary and general election campaigns.

In a statement, Anthropic spokesperson Danielle Cohen said that while the company supported the New York law that Bores championed “and appreciates lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who take AI transparency seriously, employees' donations are personal and not company-directed.”

Employees at Alphabet, Google and DeepMind, the company’s frontier AI lab, sent a combined $58,000 to Bores’ campaign. OpenAI workers sent Bores $57,000, while employees at Palantir scraped together nearly $33,000. Employees at Microsoft and Meta also chipped in, respectively sending $23,000 and $16,000 to Bores’ campaign.

The rank-and-file at top AI safety organizations also gave heavily to Bores. Employees at Coefficient Giving contributed about $95,000, with most maxing out.

Employees at Redwood Research, an AI safety group funded by Coefficient Giving, gave nearly $45,000 to Bores, while workers listing the effective altruist group 80,000 Hours as their employer donated $35,000. Other AI safety groups whose employees sent significant donations to Bores include METR, the Centre for Effective Altruism, Epoch AI, the Machine Intelligence Research Institute and Lightcone Infrastructure.

A similar dynamic is playing out on the West Coast, where California state senator and Democratic House candidate Scott Wiener received over $475,000 in the fourth quarter of last year from employees at AI safety groups and companies such as Anthropic, OpenAI and Google. While Wiener also spearheaded passage of state legislation meant to rein in top AI labs, Leading the Future has so far declined to oppose his primary campaign.

But the industry PAC remains committed to taking down Bores in New York. And while it would not say how much more it’s willing to spend on that race, Leading the Future recently announced it has raised $125 million with $70 million on hand.

Public First, Carson’s opposing PAC, is also gearing up for battle. Carson said his PAC does not need to support Bores for now, because Leading the Future and other AI industry opponents are raising his profile in ways that benefit him.

But he wouldn’t rule out backing Bores in the future. And Carson said that since the start of this year, Public First has raised “tens of millions” of dollars and is well on the way to its $50 million goal. Many of those dollars, he said, are coming directly from the AI industry.

“Every day people reach out to me who work in the labs — all of the labs — and say ‘We want to support your efforts here,’” Carson said.

Christine Mui contributed to this report.