OpenAI staff fund opposing AI regulation PAC
When the engineers who build the technology start funding the opposition, you know the battle lines have been drawn. A group of rank-and-file OpenAI employees has donated over $215,000 to a super PAC called Guardrails Alliance, which pushes for stricter regulation of frontier AI labs. [3] The group launched last month with $5 million in initial funding and bills itself as a populist effort supported by tech workers, labor unions, and other groups. Its target is Leading the Future, a pro-AI industry super PAC bankrolled with more than $100 million from technology industry leaders — including OpenAI president and cofounder Greg Brockman. Seven current OpenAI employees have donated to Guardrails Alliance, along with one former employee, according to WIRED.
The Money Gap That Isn’t Really a Gap Leading the
Future has a $50 million commitment from Brockman and his wife Anna alone. Guardrails Alliance aims to raise $15 million this election cycle. Yet Shaunna Thomas, a cofounder of Guardrails Alliance, isn’t worried. “Getting to $15 million enables us to follow Leading the Future into more races,” Thomas, a longtime Democratic political organizer, said in an interview with WIRED. “But we’re not going to match our opponents dollar-for-dollar, we don’t have to. When you expose what the AI PACs are doing, the people reject it. We’re leveraging public opinion that already exists, and it’s less expensive to do that.”
The largest donation from an OpenAI employee came from Juan Felipe Ceron Uribe, who gave $200,000 to the political spending group. [3] Ceron Uribe, a research engineer at OpenAI since 2022, spent the last four years working on the company’s strategies for mitigating potential societal harms caused by AI. “In this time, I’ve become concerned that all that research will have gone to waste if it doesn’t translate to guardrails that hold private companies accountable for the responsible development of AI,” Ceron Uribe said in a statement. “Tech billionaires, such as Greg Brockman, funded the super PAC Leading the Future to keep AI unregulated. I was very happy to learn that Guardrails Alliance is pushing back against LTF; my decision to donate to them was easy.”
The Internal Fracture That Money Exposes Brockman’s donations to Leading the Future have sparked concern among some OpenAI employees, who have pressed executives to explain the company’s ties to the super PAC. OpenAI leaders have since tried to distance themselves from the group, but now some workers are using their own money to directly counter Leading the Future. An OpenAI spokesperson pointed to a June blog post stating that Brockman’s engagement with Leading the Future was in a personal capacity and not on behalf of the company. The blog also notes that OpenAI “employees are free to participate in the political process in their personal capacities, including by donating or providing advice to candidates, campaigns, and political organizations.”
Gabriel Wu, an OpenAI safety researcher, says he gave $5,000 to Guardrails Alliance in an effort “to push back against Leading the Future” and the massive amounts of money being spent to ensure AI remains unregulated. “AI is a powerful technology that could provide enormous benefits to humanity, but I worry about what will happen if we do not pass responsible regulations and instead allow a few ultra-wealthy and unaccountable individuals to control the future of AI,” Wu told WIRED in a statement. Julie Steele and Jason Wolfe, two OpenAI staffers who research AI alignment, each donated $5,000 to Guardrails Alliance, according to the group. They, and at least three other OpenAI employees, will appear on the super PAC’s future quarterly filings with the Federal Election Commission. David Farhi, a former OpenAI research manager who left the company last summer after seven years, donated $3,000 to the super PAC and will appear in the group’s July filing.
When the People Who Build It Fear What They’ve Made “As a leader of AI research at OpenAI for many years, it became abundantly clear to me that AI is going to present our world with both unprecedented opportunities and challenges,” Farhi said in a statement to WIRED. He added that it’s been disappointing to see Leading the Future “actively work against OpenAI’s mission by aiming to shut down” discussion around AI regulation before it can happen. This is not a theoretical disagreement about abstract principles. This is a concrete split between the people who design the systems and the executives who fund the political machinery to keep those systems unconstrained.
Leading the Future, which launched last summer with Brockman as one of the super PAC’s marquee supporters, has said its goal is to “oppose policies that stifle innovation” and figures who “support that agenda.” Among the PAC’s first political efforts was an attempt to sink the congressional campaign of Alex Bores, the author of New York’s landmark AI safety law, who ultimately lost in a primary election last month. The group has gone on to support a number of pro-industry candidates around the country. OpenAI’s global affairs chief, Chris Lehane, previously told WIRED he helped set up Leading the Future and has generally consulted Brockman on his political giving, though he’s not involved in the PAC’s day-to-day operations.
The Strategy That Doesn’t Try to Win on Money After seeing Leading the Future’s launch last year, she realized that politicians proposing new regulations on the AI industry would “have a very hard time advancing that conversation when they have a $100 million threat hanging over them.” Guardrails Alliance isn’t the first PAC trying to combat Leading the Future. Public First Action, a super PAC backed with $20 million from Anthropic, has committed to promoting AI safeguards and counter pro-AI groups in the 2026 elections. But Thomas says that Guardrails Alliance is unique in that it represents a broad set of interest groups and doesn’t have large corporate donors.
Both Guardrails Alliance and Public First Action supported Bores in his primary race for New York’s 12th congressional district. The race was flooded with $27 million in spending from pro-AI industry and pro-safeguard groups. Thomas tells WIRED that Guardrails Alliance is looking at supporting other Democrats in the 2026 elections, including in California’s 34th congressional district. The group is expected to disclose more of its donors on Wednesday night in its public filing, including former Andreessen Horowitz partner John O’Farrell, though it’s unclear how much he has contributed. A representative for O’Farrell did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.
The Real Story Is About Who Controls the Future In a New York Times opinion piece, he criticized his former colleagues for allegedly using Leading the Future to “intimidate politicians who appear to engage too aggressively with the question of how to govern A.I.” This is not a story about left versus right, or Democrats versus Republicans. It is a story about the people who build the technology versus the people who fund the political system that surrounds it. The engineers who spend their days trying to make AI safe are now spending their own money to ensure that safety becomes law. The executives who control the company’s direction are spending millions to prevent that from happening.
In a statement to WIRED, Leading the Future spokesperson Jesse Hunt denied that the super PAC has tried to stifle public debate about AI and noted that it has previously advocated for federal regulations on the technology. “Leading the Future has laid out a clear, positive, and proactive agenda and we’re proud of our track record supporting a diverse array of policymakers and candidates across the country,” Hunt said. But the numbers tell a different story. When $100 million is deployed to oppose regulation, and the counterweight is $15 million from workers and grassroots groups, the asymmetry is not just financial — it is structural. The question is not whether regulation will come, but whose version of it will prevail.
The Last Open Variable
But they represent something more significant than money: a signal that the people closest to the technology do not trust the people who control it. Ceron Uribe gave $200,000 of his own money because he believes his research “will have gone to waste” without guardrails that hold private companies accountable. Wu gave $5,000 because he worries about “what will happen if we do not pass responsible regulations and instead allow a few ultra-wealthy and unaccountable individuals to control the future of AI.” These are not abstract concerns from outsiders. These are the voices of the engineers who built the systems.
The split inside OpenAI mirrors a larger split in the technology industry. On one side are the billionaires who see regulation as a threat to innovation and profit. On the other side are the workers who see regulation as the only way to ensure that innovation serves humanity rather than the other way around. The outcome of this fight will determine not just the future of AI regulation, but the future of who gets to decide how powerful technologies are governed. The money is uneven. The stakes are not.
Sources
3. WIRED
4. Federal Election Commission
6. Anthropic