On January 3, 2026, a Bloomberg filing revealed that OpenAI President Greg Brockman was the single largest individual donor to Donald Trump's super PAC in the second half of 2025, contributing $25 million of the $102 million raised. Three years earlier, OpenAI spent $260,000 on federal lobbying. The distance between those two numbers—and the speed at which it was covered—tells the story of what building AI infrastructure actually costs.
The Escalation
Three years ago, OpenAI barely had a political footprint. The escalation is documented:
2023: OpenAI spent $260,000 on federal lobbying. The company was still structured as a nonprofit.
2024: Lobbying spending jumped to $1.76 million—a sevenfold increase. The disclosures listed specific bills: the AI Advancement and Reliability Act, the Future of AI Innovation Act. OpenAI was no longer observing the legislative process. It was shaping it.
November 7, 2024: On election night, Brockman posted: "Congratulations to President Trump! I'm encouraged by the tech-forwardness of his campaign. Leading in technology generally—and AI in particular—is how America can continue to lead the world." He added: "Looking forward to working with his administration."
August 2025: Brockman co-launched Leading the Future, a pro-AI super PAC network with $100 million-plus in funding, modeled on the crypto industry's Fairshake PAC. The partners: Andreessen Horowitz. The goal: shape the 2026 midterms and federal AI regulation. By January 2026, the network had raised $125 million.
H2 2025: Brockman personally donated $25 million to the president's super PAC—more than any other individual in the period, and nearly a quarter of all funds raised.
From $260,000 in corporate lobbying to $25 million in personal political donations. Three years.
The Stargate Thread
The acceleration in political spending—from lobbying to PAC founding to personal donations—tracks the Stargate project's expansion.
The $1.76 million lobbying disclosure landed the same week as the Stargate announcement—a project that required government cooperation at every level: land use, power generation, permitting, export controls, environmental review. The announcement was made at the White House, with the president standing alongside Altman.
The next day, Trump had a "lengthy phone conversation" with Altman about "AI's potential and the need to develop the tech in the US instead of China." A week later, Altman briefed US policymakers directly, citing the rise of DeepSeek as reason to accelerate Stargate's physical infrastructure.
By September, OpenAI brought Stargate to the UK as part of £31 billion in US tech investment announcements that coincided with Trump's state visit to Britain. The infrastructure ambition had gone international—and it traveled with the president.
Between the January announcement and the September UK expansion, Brockman launched the PAC. Between the UK expansion and the end of the year, Brockman made the $25 million donation. The political investment tracked the infrastructure investment at every stage.
The Nonprofit's President
Brockman was OpenAI's first CTO, hired in 2015 to build a nonprofit research lab whose charter committed it to ensuring artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. A decade later, he is the largest individual donor to the president's political operation.
At each stage of OpenAI's transformation—nonprofit to capped-profit to for-profit corporation now valued at $500 billion—the company needed something different from government. Tax-exempt status. Regulatory forbearance. Favorable AI legislation. And now, for Stargate: land, power, water, permits, export approvals, and the diplomatic relationships to replicate the project internationally. The political spending scales with the ask.
The Infrastructure Behind the Infrastructure
In November, Fortune profiled Brockman as OpenAI's "master builder"—the person turning "AGI ambition into hardware, capital, and political leverage." The magazine wasn't being metaphorical. The $1.4 trillion infrastructure buildout Brockman oversees requires building in two dimensions: physical infrastructure (data centers, power plants, fiber networks) and political infrastructure (lobbying, PAC funding, direct donations, diplomatic coordination).
This is not unique to OpenAI. The crypto industry's Fairshake PAC—the model for Leading the Future—spent over $130 million in the 2024 cycle. But the speed of OpenAI's escalation—from negligible political presence to the largest individual donation to the president's PAC in three years—matches the speed of its transformation from research lab to infrastructure company.
A $500 billion data center project requires cooperation at every level of government: local zoning boards, state utility commissions, federal permitting agencies, foreign heads of state. The $25 million isn't a donation. It's a line item in the infrastructure budget.