Anthropic spent $1.97 million on lobbying in Washington in the second quarter of 2026, surpassing chipmaker Nvidia for the first time, which spent $1.25 million. OpenAI reached $1.2 million in the same period. Together, the two AI labs spent about $3.17 million – nearly double compared to the same quarter of the previous year.
Spending grows significantly faster than the rest of the industry
Quarterly disclosures to the U.S. Congress show that Anthropic’s lobbying expenditures increased by 26 percent compared to the first quarter, while OpenAI’s rose by 18 percent. In the first quarter, Anthropic reportedly spent about $1.56 million, and OpenAI about $1.02 million. As Axios reports, the combined total of both companies in the second quarter is approximately double that of the same quarter last year.
Anthropic’s total for the first half of the year is already over $3.5 million, exceeding the entire 2025 total of $3.1 million. This brings the company closer to the mark set by software giant Oracle, which spent around $2 million in the same quarter.
For comparison: Meta spent $5.99 million in the second quarter, Amazon $4.36 million – both amounts remained nearly unchanged from the previous quarter, according to CNBC. Industry-wide spending by the major tech companies totaled around $21.25 million. The publicly available raw data behind the disclosures is listed in detail for Anthropic by the independent database OpenSecrets.
Pentagon dispute drives Anthropic’s lobbying course
A key driver behind Anthropic’s increase is the conflict with the U.S. Department of Defense, ongoing since January 2026, over the use of Claude for military purposes. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth publicly criticized the company, the department canceled a contract worth around $200 million, and officially classified Anthropic as a supply chain risk. The reason was the company’s refusal to unconditionally clear its models for lethal autonomous weapons and mass surveillance.
At the heart of the dispute, according to court filings, is the Pentagon’s claim to unrestricted control over the models for “all lawful purposes,” while Anthropic insists on explicit contractual limits on weapons and surveillance use. A federal court blocked most of the imposed sanctions as unconstitutional, but the relevant appeals court let the risk classification itself stand. As Bloomberg Government reports, Anthropic simultaneously hired the law firm Ballard Partners, which has close ties to the Trump administration. OpenAI is pursuing its own path to government proximity and recently offered it a stake in the company.
Policy areas range from export controls to health data
The disclosures from both companies list a broad range of topics: export controls, cybersecurity, AI safety standards, copyright, cloud procurement, and defense contracts. Anthropic additionally reports holding discussions on funding for the Department of Energy’s Genesis Mission initiative and on AI applications in healthcare – a sign that the company is also competing for government-funded computing capacity and energy infrastructure. Lobbyists for both firms met during the period with members of both chambers of Congress as well as officials at the White House, the Commerce Department, and the Treasury Department – a sign of how broad the political contact-building extends beyond single pieces of legislation.
Democratic Congressman Don Beyer publicly criticized the administration’s handling of the AI companies as evidence of a regulatory climate lacking clear guardrails, accusing it of neglecting oversight in favor of rapid growth. The investment in political influence also comes at a time when Anthropic has separately started investor meetings ahead of a possible IPO – a setting in which regulatory predictability carries extra weight for the company.
What matters now is whether the higher spending translates into concrete legislative text in the coming months – on export rules for AI chips, for instance, or a possible new federal oversight body for AI models that the administration is currently developing. So far, the numbers are mainly an indicator of how much the industry’s political weight is shifting from established tech companies toward the AI labs themselves.
