The $27 million Al proxy war over Alex Bores ends in a draw

The expensive, $27 million political proxy war between Anthropic and OpenAI came to a draw last night when Alex Bores, a New York state Assemblyman whose popularity surged after being targeted by a pro-AI super PAC, narrowly lost the Democratic primary to represent New York’s 12th Congressional district. Prior to the race, Bores, a former tech industry employee, had coauthored and successfully passed the high-profile RAISE Act, which had implemented guardrails and safety requirements on frontier AI companies ; a version of his bill was signed into state law last year . But the legislation drew the ire of Leading the Future, a $100 million super PAC backing a deregulatory agenda in this year’s midterms that was funded partially by OpenAI, Palantir, and Andreessen Horowitz executives. But his candidacy drew nationwide attention after several other AI-centric super PACs connected to Anthropic began pouring millions into the NY-12 race to defend Bores. (Legally, Bores is not allowed to coordinate his campaign with super PACs.) In the end, the once-obscure Bores came in second to Assemblyman Micah Lasher, 35 percent to 39.1 percent, according to the most recent ballot count . Ultimately, according to FEC filings, the AI companies spent $27.41 million warring over Bores’s candidacy . …