Major super PACs associated with AI labs and investors have poured close to one million dollars into incumbent Republican Mike Rounds’s South Dakota senate race, seeking to shape the outcome of a noncompetitive race amid a critical national debate over AI regulation.
Rounds has been the beneficiary this cycle of around $600,000 in spending by outside groups, with the vast majority of that figure coming from the super PAC Defend American Jobs, which receives funding from a super PAC financed by the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
He has also received roughly $215,000 directly from the employees and super PACs affiliated with AI labs, most notably Anthropic, as well as a constellation of other tech companies including Google and Microsoft, according to FEC filings.
With fewer than 50 days until the midterm elections in November, recent polls show Rounds ahead of the independent candidate Brian Beng after the Democratic candidate Julian Beaudion dropped out last month.
Rounds has so far raised more from tech groups than from donors in South Dakota, and this spending reflects a new effort by AI labs to deploy vast war chests to shape thorny issues on AI and the data centers that power it. Rounds has been viewed by AI executives as a top supporter of the industry, which could prove crucial in the next Congress when AI regulation is expected to become a top priority, according to congressional aides familiar with the matter.
It also appears to reflect how AI labs have become focused on keeping allies, which have been in short supply on Capitol Hill as lawmakers spring up a raft of bills as they react to public anxiety around AI safety concerns.
A spokesperson for Rounds did not respond to a request for comment.
On Thursday, Leading the Future, the super PAC funded in part by OpenAI president Greg Brockman, along with investors Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreesen, announced that it would put $2 million towards a raft of Senate Republicans that have been supportive of the AI or crypto industry. The list included Rounds.
In South Dakota, AI regulation is already a live issue after the state legislature passed a bill earlier this year forcing hyperscalers to bear a larger share of the water and energy costs associated with powering data centers.
Data centers have been the subject of a bitter fight among Republicans in the state legislature, which voted against giving tax breaks for equipment and software purchases required by data centers earlier this year, stalling construction of a planned development by Applied Digital, a company that builds and designs data centers.
Rounds also ultimately endorsed adding restrictions on data centers, although his senior aide and former chief of staff, Robert Skjonsberg, is a registered lobbyist for Meta for matters before the South Dakota legislature. (Meta operates a network of data centers, though there isn’t currently a Meta-affiliated center in South Dakota.) Rounds’ office told Politico that their general counsel consulted with the Senate ethics committee about the unusual arrangement and was told there was no conflict of interest.
Concerns about data centers have been bipartisan across the country: A recent Gallup poll for instance found that seven out of 10 Americans are opposed to data center development, given their outsized draw upon water and energy resources that local communities often end up subsidizing.
