Top tech and AI companies spent more than $100 million to influence government policy in 2025, the first time they exceeded that figure.
What happened: Meta put $26.29 million into political lobbying last year, more than any other company in any industry, Bloomberg reported. Other big spenders include Amazon ($17.89 million), Alphabet ($13.10 million), and Microsoft ($9.36 million), and Nvidia’s relatively modest budget ballooned to $4.9 million, seven times its size in 2024. Big spenders have been rewarded as the federal government shifted toward more tech-friendly policies, notably support for building data centers and a reversal of the White House’s ban on selling advanced AI chips to China. (Disclosure: Andrew Ng serves on Amazon’s board of directors.)
How it works: Corporate spending on lobbying typically goes into advising officials and drafting legislative proposals, often indirectly through political action committees and industry groups. (Spending to elect favored candidates can be even higher; Meta has allocated $65 million to elect AI-friendly state officials this year, The New York Times reported.) Of the 10 tech companies that spent the most on lobbying last year, several donated to favored White House projects and political organizations. In addition, some companies hired employees who have close relationships with the Trump administration, had their executives attend White House events, and committed to spending on administration priorities.
- Meta, Alphabet, Nvidia, AMD, and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz raised their lobbying budgets in 2025. Amazon, Microsoft, and Oracle spent slightly less than in 2024. Qualcomm and Intel cut their budgets substantially.
- Alphabet, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft pledged to donate funds to rebuild the White House ballroom, a priority of President Trump’s. OpenAI President Greg Brockman and his wife together gave $25 million to the President’s political action committee.
- Meta recruited a former Trump adviser as its new president and vice chairman and promoted a former administration official to be its general counsel. OpenAI hired another former Trump adviser to lead its global energy policy.
Tech-friendly policies: Recent changes in national AI policy mirrored the interests of companies that spent the most on lobbying.
- No national laws explicitly regulate AI in the United States. However, Meta, OpenAI, and Andreessen Horowitz, all of which are among the top-10 tech companies in terms of lobbying, opposed state-level regulation of AI because they would create a patchwork of laws that would make compliance difficult. In December, President Trump issued an executive order that aims to limit state laws that govern AI.
- For years, the federal government has blocked Nvidia from selling its most advanced AI chips to China, depriving the company of an estimated $50 billion in sales. Nvidia increased its lobbying budget to $4.9 million from $640,000, and CEO Jensen Huang met with President Trump a number of times over the year. The president relaxed the ban in July and lifted it in December.
- OpenAI, which spent nearly $3 million on lobbying in 2025, up from $1.76 million in 2024, seeks White House support for its plan, known as Stargate, to build an immense network of data centers to process AI. CEO Sam Altman appeared with President Trump the day after his inauguration as the president moved to expedite siting, permitting, and funding of such data centers.
- During the first Trump administration, the White House had imposed tariffs on goods imported from China. This placed a burden on Apple, which assembles its products largely in China. In April, the Trump Administration exempted Apple products from tariffs. The following August, Apple agreed to spend $600 billion over four years to build facilities for domestic manufacturing of its products.
Why it matters: Tech companies aren’t the biggest spenders on lobbying. That distinction belongs to healthcare companies. Yet the AI giants’ escalating efforts portend a streamlined regulatory environment while consolidating their power within it. The impact on developers has been largely positive. Lobbying by tech giants appears to have helped alleviate the headache of navigating a patchwork of state laws. The push to build massive infrastructure projects and relax restrictions on chip exports promises a surge in overall compute capacity and hardware stability. However, doing business may become harder for companies that don’t pay to play.
We’re thinking: As industries mature, sometimes they shift from technical meritocracies in which the best tech wins to political arenas in which power dynamics matter at least as much. AI developers increasingly may be channeled into policy frameworks developed by big-tech lobbyists, for better or worse.