Robo-Trump: Big Tech’s Big Spending and the Republican Effort to Delete State Laws Against AI Harms
By Rick Claypool
To the evident pleasure of his Big Tech backers, President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress want to delete state laws that protect the public from harms caused by artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.
Federal legislators have so far failed to adopt nationwide standards to protect Americans from becoming Big Tech’s guinea pigs. But state lawmakers and governors have led the charge to advance and enact laws against AI-generated child exploitation material, predatory deepfakes, algorithmic workplace surveillance and discrimination, and more. Innovative state laws like these are already protecting Americans and demonstrating that supporting technological advancement does not require sacrificing the public’s rights and safety.
But a proposed Congressional moratorium on state AI rules and an Executive Order the Trump administration is reportedly preparing to sign aim to erase this progress and seize this authority for the federal government, which at this time has no clear path toward guaranteeing the public will be protected from AI-powered harms.
How did the technology sector achieve so much power under the second Trump administration? One undeniable factor is money – more than $1 BILLION in influence spending:
- Big Tech executives and investors spent at least $764.5 million during the 2024 election cycle and over the course of 2025 so far. (See Table 2)
- Nearly three-quarters of this sum (74%) favored Republicans; nearly half was given by Elon Musk (46%).
- Corporations categorized by OpenSecrets.org as electronics businesses, including Apple, Nvidia, and OpenAI, collectively spent $226 million lobbying the federal government during the first three quarters of 2025. Internet businesses, including Meta, Amazon, and Google parent Alphabet, spent $88 million. (See Table 3)
- The combined $314 million in lobbying spending by technology sector corporations is surpassed only by the pharmaceutical industry, which spent $341 million.
- Big Tech corporations collectively gave $21.6 million to pay for Trump’s inauguration. (See Table 4)
- Palantir and ByteDance investor Jeffrey Yass each are reportedly giving $2.5 million to pay for Trump’s replacement of the East Wing of the White House with a “Golden Ballroom,” and Google is giving $22 million to the project to settle a lawsuit Trump filed over his suspension from YouTube after the January 6 riots. ALL of the largest Big Tech companies have cozied up to Trump by helping pay for his garish ballroom(See Table 4)
- Taken together, this means Big Tech has so far spent more than $1.1 billion to distort federal policy to prioritize the industry’s profits over protecting the public. (See Table 1)
Big Tech also has a direct hand in the Trump administration. Former Big Tech executives and investors hold key administration positions. In the early months of the administration, Elon Musk ran roughshod throughout the government has head of DOGE. And, crucially, the draft Executive Order would empower AI investor David Sacks, a Special Government Employee serving as Trump’s “AI and Crypto Czar,” with a central role in determining which state laws and rules the administration should challenge.
Table 1: Big Tech’s more than $1.1 billion in influence spending during and since the 2024 elections.
| Big Tech Influence Spending Category | Amount |
|---|---|
| Political Spending | $764,500,000 |
| Lobbying | $314,000,000 |
| Inauguration and Ballroom | $48,600,000 |
| TOTAL | $1,127,100,000 |
Table 2: Political spending by Big Tech executives and investors during and since the 2024 elections.
| Donor | Political Spending | Political Lean |
|---|---|---|
| Elon Musk | $351,000,000 | Republican |
| Jeffrey and Janine Yass (ByteDance investor) | $116,000,000 | Republican |
| Marc Andreessen (a16z) | $93,600,000 | Republican |
| Dustin Moskovitz (Facebook co-founder) | $50,000,000 | Democratic |
| Greg Brockman (OpenAI president) | $50,000,000 | Single-issue/bipartisan |
| Ben and Felicia Horowitz (a16z) | $44,100,000 | Bipartisan |
| Reid Hoffman (former PayPal executive) | $31,500,000 | Democratic |
| Michael Moritz (Sequoia Capital) | $8,800,000 | Democratic |
| Jeffrey Skoll (Sequoia Capital) | $7,000,000 | Democratic |
| Ron and Gayle Conway (SV Angel) | $5,500,000 | Democratic |
| Patricia Perkins-Leone (Sequoia Capital) | $5,000,000 | Republican |
| Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) | $1,000,000 | Republican |
| Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang | $1,000,000 | Republican |
| TOTAL | $764,500,000 | 74% Republican lean |
Source: Public Citizen analysis of OpenSecrets.org and news reporting on pledged 2025 donations.
Table 3: Top 20 Big Tech corporate lobbying spenders over the first three quarters of 2025.
| Corporation | 2025 Lobbying Spending |
|---|---|
| Meta | $19,790,000 |
| Amazon | $13,960,000 |
| Alphabet and Google | $10,365,000 |
| Oracle | $8,660,000 |
| Apple | $7,270,000 |
| Microsoft | $6,940,000 |
| Bytedance | $6,650,000 |
| Samsung Group | $5,690,000 |
| Tencent Holdings | $5,335,000 |
| Qualcomm Inc | $4,760,000 |
| Palantir Technologies | $4,440,000 |
| Entertainment Software Assn | $4,330,000 |
| SK Group | $4,200,000 |
| Dell Technologies | $4,160,000 |
| eBay | $3,960,000 |
| Nvidia | $3,460,000 |
| Software & Information Industry Assn | $3,339,013 |
| Advanced Micro Devices | $3,180,000 |
| Micron Technology | $3,170,000 |
| SalesForce.com | $3,130,000 |
| TOTAL | $126.8 million (40% of the total $314 million) |
Source: Public Citizen analysis of OpenSecrets.org.
Table 4: 28 Big Tech corporations that collectively donated $48.6 million toward Trump’s inauguration and “Golden Ballroom”
| Donor | Trump Inauguration and Ballroom Donations |
|---|---|
| Alphabet and Google | $23,000,000 |
| Jeffrey and Janine Yass (ByteDance investor) | $2,500,000 |
| Palantir Technologies | $2,500,000 |
| Uber and CEO Dara Khosrowshahi | $2,000,000 |
| Adobe | $1,000,000 |
| Amazon | $1,000,000 |
| Applied Materials | $1,000,000 |
| Broadcom Inc | $1,000,000 |
| C3.AI | $1,000,000 |
| Citrix Systems | $1,000,000 |
| Coupang Inc | $1,000,000 |
| X (formerly Twitter) | $1,000,000 |
| Hims & Hers Health | $1,000,000 |
| Intuit Inc | $1,000,000 |
| Meta | $1,000,000 |
| Micron Technology | $1,000,000 |
| Microsoft | $1,000,000 |
| Nvidia | $1,000,000 |
| Sam Altman (OpenAI CEO) | $1,000,000 |
| Perplexity AI | $1,000,000 |
| Tim Cook (Apple CEO) | $1,000,000 |
| IBM | $750,000 |
| Hewlett Packard Enterprise | $250,000 |
| PayPal | $250,000 |
| SAP | $200,000 |
| Anthropic | $50,000 |
| Cognizant | $50,000 |
| HP Inc | $50,000 |
| TOTAL | $48,600,000 |
Source: Public Citizen analysis of inaugural donor disclosures and news reporting on White House ballroom pledges.
Nobody voted to hand over our country to Big Tech billionaires like Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, X’s Elon Musk, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Palantir’s Peter Thiel, or a16z’s Marc Andreessen. It’s time for the White House and Republican lawmakers to stop prioritizing the profits of Trump’s biggest Big Tech backers over protecting the American people.