Big Tech and AI lobbying 'skyrockets' under Trump — and experts are sounding the alarm

From Alphabet to X, eight of the largest tech giants spent a record of $71 million combined on U.S. political lobbying in 2025, according to a new report from Issue One, a bipartisan nonprofit working to reduce the influence of money in politics.

“Big Tech is using every tool in the toolbox to gain access and influence in Trump's Washington,” said Michael Beckel, senior research director at Issue One and report co-author.

It’s the latest example of “pay-to-play politics” under President Donald Trump, the report says — highlighting how tech, artificial intelligence (AI) and social media companies spent nearly $330,000 each day Congress was in session in 2025, and came away with a series of wins around industry regulations.

For one, this week the U.S. and China signed off on an agreement to sell social media company TikTok’s U.S. business to investors including Oracle, run by billionaire Trump backer Larry Ellison.

ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, spent $8.3 million on lobbying in 2025, after spending a record $10.4 million in 2024, according to the report.

“We're talking massive political contributions, massive lobbying expenditures, and these new filings show that there's been a huge boom for many of the highest profile tech players in Washington, making sure that they've got friends and ways to influence people in Washington,” Beckel said.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, spent the most among the tech giants on federal lobbying in 2025, at $26.29 million — up 8 percent from the previous year.

‘Delivering what AI wants’

AI companies “skyrocketed” lobbying spending in 2025, Beckel said.

That’s because AI companies stand to win “substantially” by such expenditure as they look to expand data centers and get ahead of competitors, said Jonathan Ernest, an assistant professor of economics at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

“They're finding that that lobbying can be reasonably successful in persuading the administration to potentially craft laws that are maybe more favorable to them in certain ways,” Ernest said.

“They've found that these additional dollars being spent on lobbying are now more worthwhile than they were before because the likelihood of them being successful goes up, and the potential gains have increased as well.”

Nvidia, an AI company, increased lobbying expenditures eightfold in 2025, spending nearly $5 million.

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, spent just shy of $3 million, approximately 70 percent up on 2024.

“The overwhelming pattern that we've seen from the Trump administration is putting certain industries and certain companies at the forefront of how they're making policy decisions,” Beckel said.

In December, Trump signed an executive order limiting state AI regulation, which Beckel said was “basically delivering to the AI industry what it wants.”

“This seems pretty clear that the Trump White House is playing favorites, and the industry leaders who are able to make their voices heard in Washington through political contributions and lobbying expenditures have a prime seat at the table right now,” Beckel said.

‘Influentially large’

The report examined the latest lobbying disclosures from Alphabet, Microsoft, Snap, X, ByteDance, Meta, Nvidia and OpenAI.

Alphabet spent $16.62 million in 2025, second-most of the Big Tech players and up 12 percent from the previous year. Microsoft spent $10.1 million — just 2 percent less than its 2024 spending, according to the report.

All the companies either declined to comment or did not respond.

Issue One said curtailing the influence of Big Tech money on politics was supported by both Democrats and Republicans. The nonprofit advocates for "common sense reforms to the tech sector to help ensure that Congress holds Big Tech accountable," Beckel said.

For tech giants with billions in revenue, lobbying expenditures don’t represent “a huge chunk of their operating budget, but it's still a very influentially large amount of money,” Ernest said.

But, that doesn’t mean tech giants will continue to spend on lobbying at a growing rate.

“It will depend on how much it feels like it's needed for them,” Ernest said.

“If they feel like they already have an administration that's reasonably lax in terms of enforcement of regulatory matters or reasonably supportive of companies that even may be amassing some sort of advantage by growing very large and becoming more monopolistic, then they'll find it less useful to continue to put money towards those ends.”