Tech giants developing AI models—including OpenAI, Google, Meta, and Amazon—have donated more than $2 million combined to the national Democratic and Republican attorneys general campaign committees since the start of 2025, as AGs in both parties are suing AI companies over harms to children and deceptive safety claims.
More than half of that arrived in the past few months. Google, Meta, and Amazon each donated matching amounts in the second quarter of 2026—$250,000, $200,000, and $125,000, respectively—to the Democratic Attorneys General Association (DAGA) and the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA), according to the groups' IRS disclosures.
The Democratic AG group received $25,000 in May from Elon Musk’s xAI, as the company is both suing California Attorney General Rob Bonta to block enforcement of a new AI transparency law—and is being investigated by Bonta this year over its Grok model's creation and distribution of sexually explicit deepfakes. Anthropic gave $250,000 to RAGA on May 6, its first donation to either group.
In June, a coalition of state AGs led by New York Democrat Letitia James subpoenaed OpenAI for documents on practices including treatment of minors and advertising, after user safety incidents. In August 2025, a bipartisan group of 44 state AGs—led by Republicans in South Carolina and Tennessee, alongside Democrats in Illinois and North Carolina—sent a letter to OpenAI, Meta, Google, xAI, and other AI firms warning of "grave concerns" over children's interactions with AI chatbots. A follow-up letter in December, led by Pennsylvania Republican Dave Sunday and New Jersey Democrat Matthew Platkin, demanded stronger safeguards after harmful interactions with children and vulnerable users.
The DAGA donation from xAI was unexpected, given the company is in active litigation with one of the group’s prominent members. In December 2025, xAI sued Bonta in federal court, seeking to block AB 2013, a new California law requiring AI developers to disclose their training data. The company argued that the disclosure requirements amounted to an unconstitutional taking of trade secrets and compelled speech. Weeks later, on Jan. 16, Bonta sent xAI a separate cease-and-desist letter demanding that the company stop distributing sexually explicit deepfakes generated using Grok. Bonta said his office had opened an investigation after a wave of reports that Grok was being used to produce nonconsensual, sexualized images of women and girls—including content depicting minors—which he said met the legal definition of child sexual abuse material. He demanded xAI immediately halt the practice.
In March, a federal judge denied xAI's request to block the training-data transparency law while the suit continued. xAI then donated $25,000 on May 4—its first donation to either group.
