Meta committed $130 million to support state legislators who favor the company’s position on AI regulation. It is the largest single-company political investment in the AI industry, and it is aimed almost entirely at state-level races.
The money flows through three separate PAC networks. The American Technology Excellence Project received $45 million to support state-level candidates nationwide who oppose strict AI oversight. Forge the Future and Making Our Tomorrow — Republican and Democratic PACs respectively — split $65 million between them. A California-specific PAC called Mobilizing Economic Transformation Across California received $20 million to target races in the state where Meta is headquartered and where AI regulation has advanced the furthest.
Meta is spending at the state level because that is where AI regulation is being written. State legislatures introduced 600 AI-related bills in 2025. One hundred became law, while Congress passed none.
Trump signed an executive order restricting states from enacting many new types of AI regulation, but state lawmakers in both parties have continued introducing bills. Meta’s PAC spending targets the races where those bills originate.
Federal super PACs must report donors to the FEC. State-level political spending faces 50 different regulatory environments. Some states require donor transparency for groups spending on elections. Others require little or none.
Meta’s $130 million operation spans all of them. The visibility of its donors depends entirely on which state’s laws apply to a given race.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told President Trump at a dinner earlier this year that the company plans to spend $600 billion on data centers to power its AI operations. The $130 million in PAC spending represents a fraction of one percent of that investment. Republican strategist Brian Baker and Democratic consulting firm Hilltop Public Solutions jointly manage the PAC networks — the same bipartisan structure every AI company uses to maintain access regardless of which party controls a given statehouse.
OpenAI and Anthropic are contesting who writes federal AI law. Meta directed its spending to the statehouses where AI regulation is already passing, at a scale larger than both of them combined.
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