OpenAI’s Greg Brockman drops his second $25m gift to an AI super PAC

OpenAI president Greg Brockman and his wife, Anna, have pulled out of a second $25m donation to Leading the Future, a super PAC that backs pro-AI candidates for Congress. Theodore Schleifer and Mike Isaac reported the move for The New York Times on Wednesday.

Leading the Future had said the couple would give $50m in total, with $25m in 2025 and $25m this year. The super PAC told the Times in February that the second donation would come in the first quarter of 2026. It did not come in the first or second quarter.

Brockman never announced the change publicly. In June, he told OpenAI staff in a Slack message, obtained by the Times, that he had no plans to give more.

“I also want to say that I feel terrible about the fact that LTF keeps reflecting on the company and become so much of a distraction for people here,” Brockman wrote. “We’ve donated $25m so far, and have no plans to donate more at this time.”

A representative for the Brockmans declined to comment to the Times. So did Leading the Future.

Ten days before that message, OpenAI published a blog post about the super PAC.

“We want to be explicit: No outside political group speaks for OpenAI or represents our company’s views,” OpenAI wrote.

Brockman had said he made the donation in a personal capacity, Maxwell Zeff and Laura J. Nelson reported for The Wall Street Journal . OpenAI employees criticised it as an attempt by the company’s leadership to block AI regulation, according to the Journal. In a May interview, Brockman said he did not agree with all of the group’s spending decisions, the Journal reported.

In July, a group of OpenAI employees said they would pool more than $200,000 for the Guardrails Alliance, a rival super PAC, Quartz reported. The Guardrails Alliance said pressure from inside and outside OpenAI had led to Brockman’s reversal.

Leading the Future is not short of money. It took $50m from Andreessen Horowitz, and its groups had about $43m on hand at the end of June, the Times reported. Brockman and his wife also gave $25m to President Donald Trump’s super PAC last year.

Groups aligned with OpenAI and Anthropic have spent $55.7m on the 2026 congressional races, according to a Times analysis published on Tuesday. The paper reviewed 95 ads from four of their super PACs. None mentioned data centres, and only seven mentioned AI or an AI company.

On Tuesday, Brockman attended the White House lunch where tech leaders signed Trump’s AI accord . He signed it for OpenAI. The company is also seeking $30bn in new funding. Earlier this month, OpenAI’s top strategist called the state-by-state route to AI rules “reverse federalism” .