Anthropic Triples Federal Lobbying to $3.53M in First Half of 2026, Outpacing OpenAI

According to Financial Times, Anthropic nearly tripled its federal lobbying expenditure to $3.53 million in the first half of 2026, outpacing rival OpenAI by over $1 million. The firm added the Treasury Department to its list of lobbied agencies for the first time in the second quarter.

According to watchdog group Issue One, six major tech and AI companies—Alphabet, Anthropic, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and OpenAI—retained 324 lobbyists during the second quarter alone, roughly one lobbyist for every 1.5 members of Congress. Meta led second-quarter spending at nearly $6 million, followed by Alphabet at $5.3 million and Microsoft at about $3 million.