AI companies are spending millions to thwart this former tech executive’s congressional bid

If you’ve seen the recent ads attacking New York Assemblyman Alex Burris, you’ll know that he used to work for Palantir, the artificial intelligence company backing the controversial raids and large-scale deportation efforts of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The ads even accuse Boris of making hundreds of thousands of dollars building technology for ICE and “subsidizing their deportations.”

But this is not the whole story. “She left Palantir specifically because of her work with ICE in 2019,” Burris told TechCrunch on last week’s episode of Equity.

He is now running for Congress in New York, where Big Tech billionaires are funding outside groups targeting his campaign.

The ads are being funded by a super PAC called Leadership the Future, which ironically has the backing of Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, as well as OpenAI chief Greg Brockman, venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, AI research startup Perplexity, and other big Silicon Valley companies. The PAC has raised $125 million to go after candidates in state elections advancing AI legislation and support candidates with a simple approach to regulating AI.

“They have committed to spending at least $10 million against me… because they know I am their biggest threat in their quest for absolute control over the American worker, our children’s minds, the climate, and our utility bills,” Boris said. “They are targeting me to set an example.”

He said his background working in technology, including at Palantir and several startups, is exactly why he made the Leading the Future program his top target.

“I actually understand technology deeply and I wouldn’t be dismissive of saying this person doesn’t understand it,” Burris said, adding that if elected, he would be the second Democrat in Congress with a degree in computer science.

The Bores sparked the wrath of Silicon Valley after they sponsored the RAISE Act, an AI transparency bill signed into law in December. The law requires large AI labs—particularly those generating more than $500 million in revenue—to have a publicly available safety plan, adhere to it, and report when a catastrophic safety incident occurs.

It’s the kind of light regulation that other industries would kill for — more disclosure and planning rather than proactive oversight.

Burris says he doesn’t think Leadership Future wants to see any regulation of AI, unless it’s at the federal level, the PAC said. Over the past year, states have been fighting against industry to protect their rights to regulate AI in the absence of a federal standard. In December, President Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to challenge “onerous” state AI laws, such as Boris’ RAISE law.

Boris pointed to his campaign’s proposed National AI Governance Blueprint — which includes eight issue areas and 43 policy recommendations — adding that anyone serious about federal regulation of AI should support it. He has also introduced legislation that would force companies to disclose what goes into their training data and include metadata standards that would make tracking synthetic content easier.

Future Leadership isn’t the only Silicon Valley-backed political action committee participating in the midterms. Meta has put $65 million into two super PACs – the American Technology Excellence Project and Mobilizing Economic Transformation Across (META) California – to elect statewide candidates friendly to the AI ​​and technology industries. AI companies, industry groups and top executives donated at least $83 million in 2025 to federal campaigns and committees.

“This isn’t ‘We want to have a part of the conversation,'” Burris said. “This is: We want to intimidate elected officials and intimidate anyone who doesn’t agree with us.”

“The average rally race in New York might raise a total of $100,000, maybe less,” Burris continued. “For one company (Meta) to spend $65 million on state races, not to mention everything they do in Congress — I think it’s hard for people to understand how much more that is than usual.”

For his part, Boris has the backing of a separate, humanitarian-backed political action committee called Public First Action, which is spending $450,000 on The New Yorker. Public First Action also describes itself as pro-AI, but with a focus on transparency, safety, and public oversight.

He says Future Leadership represents “a very small minority of voices” who see any organization as a threat to the progress of AI and who “just want to destroy it.” Among Boris’ base of supporters are tech workers at the same companies whose leaders want to thwart his campaign — part of a broader pattern of grassroots organizing within tech companies over how AI is deployed and who it serves.

At the other end of the spectrum are a minority of people who “want to pretend AI never existed, put the genie back in the bottle and burn down all the data centres”, Boris said.

He believes most Americans fall somewhere in the middle: They use artificial intelligence and see its potential but are concerned about how quickly it will move.

“[They] “I wonder if the government is up to the task of ensuring we have a future that benefits the many rather than the few,” Boris said.