AI companies are spending millions to avoid calling an old tech exec’s meeting

If you’ve seen the recent ads attacking New York congressman Alex Bores, you’ll know that he used to work at Palantir, an artificial intelligence company. encouraging counterinsurgency and deporting more people to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The ad accuses Bores of making tens of thousands of dollars to develop ICE technology and “manage their deportations.”

But that’s not the whole story. “I left Palantir primarily because of its work with ICE in 2019,” Bores told TechCrunch during last week’s session. Equity.

Now he’s running for New York’s 12th district, where the Big Tech billionaire is backed by outside groups that want his campaign.

Ads are paid for in cash is a super PAC called Leading the Future, which, ironically, is backed by Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, as well as OpenAI president Greg Brockman, VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, AI search startup Perplexity, and other Silicon Valley heavy-hitters. PAC said earned $125 million following state election representatives who are introducing AI legislation and supporting candidates is a simple way to implement AI.

“They have committed to spending at least $10 million against me … because they know I am their biggest threat to their desire to have unlimited control over the American workforce, our children’s minds, the climate, and the welfare state,” Bores said. They just want me to make an example of myself.

He said his background in technology, including at Palantir and several startups, is why Leading the Future made him its first target.

“I have a good understanding of technology and I can’t say ‘this guy doesn’t understand,'” Bores said, adding that if elected, he could be the second Democrat in Congress with a degree in computer science.

Bores angered Silicon Valley after he backed it RAISE Act, The AI ​​transparency bill was signed into law in December. The law requires large AI labs — especially those making more than $500 million — to have a security plan that is publicly available, adhered to, and reported in the event of serious security incidents.

It’s the kind of light-hearted regulation that some industries can kill because – more disclosure is planned than proactive oversight.

Bores says he doesn’t believe Leading the Future wants to see any AI legislation, unless, as the PAC has said, it’s at the federal level. For the past year, countries have been to fight against companies to protect their rights to control AI in the absence of a federal standard. In December, President Trump signed it Executive Order leading government agencies to oppose “hard” government AI legislation, such as Bores’ RAISE Act.

Bores pointed to his campaign a national AI policy – based on eight sections and 43 recommendations – adding that anyone serious about federal AI legislation should support him. He also introduced legislation that would compel companies to disclose what goes into their training and set metadata standards that would make manufacturing products easier to track.

Leading the Future isn’t the only Silicon Valley-backed PAC taking center stage. Meta has created $65 million being two top PACs – the American Technology Excellence Project and Mobilizing Economic Transformation Across (Meta) California – to elect candidates for government who are friendly to AI and the tech industry. And AI companies, industry groups, and top management gave no less $83 million in 2025 to federal campaigns and committees.

“This is not a ‘We want to have a part of the conversation,'” Bores said. “It’s this: ‘We want to intimidate elected officials and harass anyone who disagrees with us.’

“The average New York convention raises maybe $100,000, maybe less,” Bores said. “For one company (Meta) to spend $65 million on government competition, not to mention everything they’re doing in Congress – I think it’s hard for people to understand how much is on top of what’s going on.”

For his part, Bores has secured the support of an Anthropic-backed PAC called Public First Action, which is costing $450,000 in the New Yorker. Public First Action also describes itself as pro-AI, but focuses on transparency, security, and public oversight.

Guiding the Future, he says, represents a “very small minority” who see any regulation as threatening the progress of AI and who “just want to leave it alone.” Among the Bores’ support base and tech workers in companies whose leaders want to thwart his campaign – part of a a broad way from the countryside manufacturing within the technology industry why? AI is provided and those who serve.

At the other end of the spectrum are the few people who “want to pretend that AI never existed and put the genie back in the bottle and burn the whole data center,” Bores said.

He thinks most Americans are somewhere in the middle — they use AI and see its potential but are concerned about how fast it’s moving.

“(They) wonder if government has a role to play in making sure we have a future that benefits the many instead of the few,” Bores said.