OpenAI and Anthropic spent a combined $3.17 million on federal lobbying in the second quarter, a 23 percent jump from the first three months of the year that pushed the two AI developers past Nvidia and within striking distance of Oracle. The increase matters because it marks the moment the generative AI sector stopped acting like a startup curiosity and started behaving like a mature industry that knows exactly which levers to pull in Washington.
Anthropic led the charge at $1.97 million, up 26 percent quarter over quarter, while OpenAI added nearly 18 percent to reach $1.2 million. Both companies reported lobbying on cybersecurity, copyright, cloud computing and defense procurement, the exact vocabulary of firms preparing for sustained regulatory combat. Anthropic now spends more than Nvidia’s $1.25 million and nearly matches Oracle’s $2 million; OpenAI trails Nvidia by just $50,000. A year ago neither was in the same conversation: Anthropic’s outlay has more than doubled since the second quarter of 2025, OpenAI’s has nearly doubled.
The old guard barely moved. The five Magnificent Seven companies tracked by CNBC, Meta, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Nvidia, spent a combined $21.25 million, essentially unchanged from $21.27 million in the first quarter. Meta remained the largest at $5.99 million but cut spending 15 percent. Amazon was flat at $4.36 million. Google and Microsoft moved the other way, rising 25 percent to $3.57 million and 13 percent to $2.69 million respectively. As a group they are up 7.7 percent from a year ago, a reminder that Big Tech’s lobbying machine runs on a different, slower cycle.
Defense contractors, the other habitual heavyweight, actually retreated. The eight largest U.S.-based publicly traded defense firms spent $19.68 million, down 3.3 percent from $20.36 million in the first quarter. Lockheed Martin led at $4.18 million, followed by RTX at $3.86 million and General Dynamics at $3.42 million. RTX sliced $600,000, the biggest dollar drop; L3Harris cut nearly 45 percent to $530,000. Only Boeing bucked the trend, raising spending 13 percent to $2.77 million.
The contrast is stark: the sector building the models is accelerating its Washington budget while the sectors selling the chips and the missiles are tapping the brakes. CNBC noted the AI companies reached what it called record levels ahead of the midterm elections and highly anticipated IPOs, a phrasing that makes the spending look less like civic engagement and more like capital allocation. If the IPOs happen, the lobbying tab becomes a line item in the prospectus.
What to watch next is whether the pace sustains. The Magnificent Seven’s flat quarter suggests big tech may be digesting the first wave of AI regulation; the defense dip suggests Pentagon budgets are not the only thing tightening. But OpenAI and Anthropic are still rounding errors next to Meta or Lockheed. The real signal will come when an AI firm cracks the top five spenders outright, and whether that happens before or after the first serious federal AI bill lands on a president’s desk.