// THE VERGE — INTELLIGENZA ARTIFICIALE
The $27 million Al proxy war over Alex Bores ends in a draw
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Anthropic didn’t get Bores elected to Congress in the NY-12 primary— but OpenAI didn’t crush him, either.
Anthropic didn’t get Bores elected to Congress in the NY-12 primary— but OpenAI didn’t crush him, either.
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The expensive, $27 million political proxy war between Anthropic and OpenAI came to a draw last night when Alex Bores, a New York state Assemblyman whose popularity surged after being targeted by a pro-AI super PAC, narrowly lost the Democratic primary to represent New York’s 12th Congressional district.
Prior to the race, Bores, a former tech industry employee, had coauthored and successfully passed the high-profile RAISE Act, which had implemented guardrails and safety requirements on frontier AI companies; a version of his bill was signed into state law last year. But the legislation drew the ire of Leading the Future, a $100 million super PAC backing a deregulatory agenda in this year’s midterms that was funded partially by OpenAI, Palantir, and Andreessen Horowitz executives. But his candidacy drew nationwide attention after several other AI-centric super PACs connected to Anthropic began pouring millions into the NY-12 race to defend Bores. (Legally, Bores is not allowed to coordinate his campaign with super PACs.) In the end, the once-obscure Bores came in second to Assemblyman Micah Lasher, 35 percent to 39.1 percent, according to the most recent ballot count.
Ultimately, according to FEC filings, the AI companies spent $27.41 million warring over Bores’s candidacy. Combined, the pro-Bores super PACS — Jobs and Democracy PAC, Dream NYC, You Can Push Back, and the Guardrails Alliance — spent $19.26 million to support Bores, while Leading the Future spent $8.15 million. All in all, an unusually massive amount of money was spilled for one local election — a primary, no less — because it was seen as a bellwether for how the midterms might go, especially when it comes to AI regulation.