TechFlow News, May 13: According to The New York Times, OpenAI opened its first lobbying office—named “Workshop”—in Washington, D.C., this week, just a few blocks from the White House, aiming to advance policies supporting data center expansion and unrestricted use of copyrighted content. In Q1 2026, OpenAI’s federal lobbying expenditures reached $1 million, doubling year-on-year. Its competitor Anthropic also opened an office in Washington, D.C., in April this year; its lobbying spending last year surged tenfold to $3 million.
Meanwhile, Meta, NVIDIA, and Alphabet collectively spent $47.8 million on lobbying last year—a 22% increase year-on-year. According to the civic watchdog Public Citizen, one-quarter of all federal lobbyists in Washington, D.C. are now engaged in AI-related issues, a sharp rise from 11% in 2023.
