Anthropic spent $1.6M on federal lobbying in Q1 2026, a 344% increase from $360,000 in Q1 2025, while OpenAI spent $1M, up 78.6% from $560,000 a year earlier, with both companies posting their biggest-ever lobbying quarters as they increasingly engage Washington on issues central to their businesses. Anthropic's lobbying focused heavily on AI procurement, Defense Department procurement, supply chain risk, and acceptable use policy, directly mirroring its ongoing legal battle with the Pentagon over red lines for military use of its technology. Meta remained the biggest Big Tech spender at $7.1M, followed by Amazon at $4.4M and Google at $2.9M, while both AMD and Nvidia kept spending steady as they lobbied on export control rule changes.
