Two rival political donor networks with differing views on AI policy have raised more than $200 million for this year’s midterm elections, according to federal filings through the end of June, which show they had put roughly $44 million behind some 40 House and Senate candidates, with all but a couple of their backed candidates winning decided primaries. The strategy mirrors the cryptocurrency industry’s 2024 playbook, when a super PAC network called Fairshake, funded chiefly by Coinbase, Ripple and Andreessen Horowitz, raised roughly $260 million over the election cycle. Fairshake concentrated enormous sums on a small number of races, putting more than $10 million into ending Katie Porter’s Senate hopes in a California primary and spending about $40 million helping Bernie Moreno defeat Sherrod Brown in Ohio. Its advertisements, reviewed by Axios across 59 spots, focused on insulin prices, border security and China without mentioning crypto, a tactic political messaging consultant Matthew Erickson called “usually the sign of a group that’s operating with some sophistication.” Within a year, the crypto industry got its first federal law governing stablecoins, and a bill deciding who regulates the rest of the market has since cleared committee in the Senate. Some of those same crypto operatives have moved to AI, with one camp being Leading the Future, launched last year with money from Andreessen Horowitz, OpenAI’s president Greg Brockman, and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale.