By admin 
A dozen employees working for the artificial intelligence company Anthropic provided a late surge in contributions to Democrat Xavier Becerra’s campaign for California governor in the final days and weeks of his primary.
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The roughly $470,000 in collective spending far outstripped employees of any other company to Becerra; they deposited more than a third of that total on June 1, the day before the primary election he went on to win.
Three employees sent another nearly $59,000 to Attorney General Rob Bonta’s easy primary win in week leading up to June 2. Anthropic’s political arm also collectively contributed more than $30,000 to seven California lawmakers, including Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, on June 2.
While Republican-led Congress and President Donald Trump have so far been reluctant to regulate AI, states are hashing out their own regulations despite White House opposition. The contributions to Becerra and Bonta are one signal that AI giants and their employees have taken notice, investing in state elections in addition to congressional races.
The companies are in the early stages of a multipronged policy fight over the future of AI regulations. Anthropic has advocated for more stringent AI regulations — at times incurring the wrath of the Pentagon and White House — while OpenAI has pushed a more hands-off approach. Anthropic, whose ranks include many safety-minded defectors from its rival, argues the slower rollout will help society adapt to the powerful new tools. Other industry boosters argue the rules could stifle innovation and put the U.S. at a competitive disadvantage with rivals.
Becerra took a centrist path on AI regulations in the primary. At a debate hosted by CBS last month, he said California should be home to the industry, which he predicted “is going to offer us great opportunity.” The former attorney general said the state needed guardrails to protect workers without imposing rules that might cause the industry to uproot to “places like China.”
He didn’t go as far as rival Tom Steyer, who called for levying a tax on AI companies for every “calculation” done by their models and using the proceeds to retrain workers displaced by the technology.
Both Anthropic and rival OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, are set to go public in the coming year, minting thousands of new multi-millionaires.
Anthropic employee investments nationwide
Anthropic employees contributed more than $2.7 million to federal races since 2025, according to campaign data analyzed by The Bee.
Anthropic employees have so far provided a $476,000 boost to Alex Bores, a New York assemblymember running for Congress who sponsored that state’s new law regulating AI. The June 23 primary to replace retiring Rep. Jerry Nadler has become a proxy battle between OpenAI, which has funded attacks against Bores, and Anthropic, which is backing him.
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In February, Anthropic contributed $20 million toward an effort to elect congressional candidates who favor strengthening AI safeguards.
It’s not clear whether Anthropic employees are coordinating directly with their employer. The employees have given more than $110,000 to Anthropic’s political action committee.
Reached by phone, two of the employees declined to comment, and the rest did not respond to emails or social media messages seeking information on their giving. A spokesperson for Anthropic also declined to comment.
Becerra’s spokesperson Jonathan Underland did not address questions about whether the campaign met with Anthropic’s leadership or held fundraisers with staff. He said only that the campaign “regularly engages with a wide variety of stakeholders” across California.
All but one of the employees had no history of spending on California’s statewide or Legislative races until this election; most serve in technical or research roles.
Anthropic has spent more than $245,000 lobbying the California Legislature, Gov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta since January 2025. The company backed SB 53, an AI safety bill Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law last year.
Catherine Bracy, the CEO of TechEquity, a tech advocacy group that favors stronger AI regulations, speculated that the Anthropic employees were receiving advice to back Becerra because of his frontrunner status.
“It’s good for your cause if he sees you on the balance sheet,” Bracy said.
Bracy said Becerra’s team had spoken to her own staff in drafting his AI platform, which she said largely resembled positions supported by TechEquity. Anthropic, meanwhile, clearly sees AI safety “as their competitive advantage.”
“I’m not naive at all about what’s actually happening here, and I think the best thing we could see—and at least rhetorically, Anthropic agrees with me — is for there to be a set of industry-wide [safety] standards,” Bracy said.
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