Dario Amodei and five other Anthropic employees supplied 92.5% of Public First’s itemized second-quarter contributions, giving the AI-safety super PAC campaign money while underscoring its concentrated donor base and smaller cash reserve.
Anthropic’s chief executive and five of its employees financed nearly all of Public First’s itemized contributions in the second quarter. Their money gave the AI-safety super PAC funds it could use in elections, but the filing also reveals a campaign operation dependent on donors tied to one company.
Amodei contributed $1 million to Public First on May 4, according to the super PAC’s quarterly FEC filing. The receipt lists Anthropic PBC as his employer and CEO as his occupation.
The donation appears to be Amodei’s first seven-figure political gift, although he previously gave smaller amounts to Democratic politicians, according to an account of his contribution history. Anthropic did not comment for that report.
Five other people listing Anthropic as their employer gave a combined $2,154,900 during the quarter. The same filing records $250,000 from a Google DeepMind software engineer and $5,000 from an OpenAI technical employee.
That makes the donor concentration unusually clear. Amodei and the five other Anthropic employees supplied $3,154,900 of Public First’s $3,409,900 in itemized individual contributions, or about 92.5%. Another $250 in unitemized contributions brought the super PAC’s total quarterly receipts to $3,410,150.
Employer fields do not establish that a company directed an employee’s donation. The DeepMind and OpenAI contributions also cut against a simple account in which every employee at Anthropic’s competitors backs the opposing political network. What the filing establishes is narrower: Public First’s disclosed fundraising for the quarter overwhelmingly came from six people who identified Anthropic as their employer.
Amodei’s personal check is distinct from Anthropic’s earlier $20 million corporate contribution. The company gave that money in February to Public First Action, the 501(c)(4) nonprofit that sits above a network of affiliated political groups, as both an archived account and a separate report noted.
Public First Action says Anthropic’s corporate funding is restricted to public education about AI policy and cannot be used for political campaigns. Amodei’s $1 million, by contrast, went directly to the super PAC. The distinction matters because the nonprofit’s headline fundraising total is not a measure of cash immediately available for campaign spending.
Public First reported raising $3,410,150 and disbursing $3,362,442.42 during the quarter. Of those disbursements, $3.3 million consisted of contributions to Jobs and Democracy PAC, its Democratic-focused affiliate. Public First began April with $445,842.48 and ended June with $493,550.06.
The transfer means Public First’s low closing balance does not show that all of its newly raised money had already been consumed by vendors or advertising. Most of it moved to another super PAC in the same political operation.
Jobs and Democracy spent a reported $12 million supporting New York Assemblymember Alex Bores in the Democratic primary to replace retiring Rep. Jerry Nadler. Bores had authored a state AI-safety law. The same account says Leading the Future’s network, backed by OpenAI President Greg Brockman and Andreessen Horowitz, spent $8 million against him.
The spending accounts do not fully align. A separate report puts the spending against Bores by OpenAI- and Palantir-funded interests at $7 million and the two sides’ combined spending at $26 million. The retained source bodies do not reconcile those figures or establish that they use the same entities and time period, so no single combined total is reliable from the available evidence.
Bores lost narrowly to Assemblymember Micah Lasher. The latter account put the margin at fewer than 5,000 votes.
The result does not isolate what the AI-focused spending accomplished. It shows that rival technology interests were willing to spend heavily in one congressional primary; it does not prove that either side’s advertising determined the outcome. Public First later said it believed the campaign shifted opinion toward tougher AI rules, but that is the group’s assessment, not a finding established by the election result.
Leading the Future closed the second quarter with $31 million after transferring $10 million each to Think Big PAC and American Mission PAC, according to a quarter-end review. The group had previously amassed $75 million and reported no new fundraising in the latest period.
The safety-focused super PACs reported much smaller balances: about $494,000 at Public First, about $1.3 million at Jobs and Democracy, and nearly $315,000 at the Republican-focused Defending Our Values. Guardrails Alliance, a separate group advocating AI-safety rules and worker protections, reported nearly $400,000.
Those figures still should not be collapsed into a single scoreboard. Public First Action said it had raised $80 million since launching, but some had been spent and some was restricted from campaigns. Jobs and Democracy also received nearly $10 million from that nonprofit during the quarter. On the other side, Leading the Future’s $31 million balance came after it sent $20 million to two affiliates. The available accounts do not provide a like-for-like, quarter-end total for every entity in both networks.
The defensible comparison is therefore narrower. Leading the Future alone retained far more cash than any of the named safety-focused super PACs, while Public First’s own quarter relied heavily on Anthropic-linked individuals. That gives the lighter-regulation group a larger disclosed reserve at its flagship super PAC, but it does not measure every dollar available to the broader advocacy organizations surrounding either side.
An access-limited report illustrates why the primary filing is the firmer basis for the donor math: its available text says the five other Anthropic employees gave both “more than $2 million” and a combined $1.26 million. The itemized FEC receipts add up to $2,154,900.
The next disclosure period will answer the central financing question: whether Amodei’s check was an exceptional contribution or the start of a donor base that can repeatedly replenish Public First after large transfers and expensive races.
Three signals matter most: whether new donors reduce the operation’s dependence on Anthropic employees, how much cash returns to Public First and its affiliated super PACs, and where the rival networks direct their next transfers and independent expenditures. Until those records arrive, the $1 million gift is evidence of Amodei’s personal commitment and Public First’s donor concentration—not proof that Anthropic directed the employees’ giving or that either political network can convert spending into votes.
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