Super PACs backed by the cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence industries, as well as the pro-Israel lobby, have stockpiled hundreds of millions in cash to drop in 2026 midterms, setting themselves up to smash midterm spending records by outside groups. 

The crypto industry-funded Fairshake super PAC ended the year with a whopping $191 million in cash on hand, while AIPAC’s super PAC, United Democracy Project (UDP), ended the year with $96 million. Following in their tracks is the new AI industry super PAC Leading the Future, which had $50 million cash on hand and touts far more in pledges.

Excluding money spent by party leadership-tied groups, the current high-water mark for super PAC spending on midterms was set in the 2022 cycle by Club for Growth Action, which spent a total of $69 million.

Fairshake reported total receipts of nearly $73.8 million in the second half of 2025, according to new Federal Election Commission disclosures covering the second half of last year. Its donors during that period were Coinbase ($8 million), Ripple Labs ($25 million), and VC firm Andreessen Horowitz ($24 million), together the group’s largest funders in the past few years. Fairshake’s two affiliate super PACs—the Democrat-focused Protect Progress and the Republican-focused Defend American Jobs—have an additional $2 million in cash on hand.

The bulk of its contributions came in December, while Congress was debating a major cryptocurrency bill, the CLARITY Act, which the group says is its top priority. The bill just advanced along party lines by the Senate Agriculture Committee and is awaiting consideration by the Senate Banking Committee amid a lobbying battle between crypto companies and the banking industry. A version of the CLARITY Act was passed by the Republican-controlled House last summer. 

During the last election cycle, Fairshake groups spent more than $133 million targeting dozens of federal candidates, aiming to knock out lawmakers they deemed unsupportive of the crypto industry. 

A new crypto industry super PAC, Digital Freedom Fund, funded by the Winklevoss twins, raised $22.3 million from July through December, largely in Bitcoin that has not yet been liquidated. Payward, the parent company of the Kraken exchange, donated $1 million to the new super PAC; last cycle, it donated that same amount to Fairshake. Another crypto industry group, called Fellowship PAC, has sprung up, reportedly to challenge what they see as Fairshake’s tilt toward its largest donors like Coinbase. In September, Fellowship PAC, positioned as more closely aligned with the GOP and Trump, announced $100 million in donor pledges, reportedly including the stablecoin company Tether; however, the PAC filed zero dollars received through Dec. 31.

AIPAC’s super PAC, the United Democracy Project (UDP), raised more than $61.6 million in the second half of last year, including a record $30 million in two donations from the nonprofit AIPAC. Other large donors to UDP in the second half of 2025 included billionaires Paul Singer, a Republican megadonor ($2.5 million), and Haim Saban, a Democratic megadonor ($1 million. The amount given so far by AIPAC, which does not publicly disclose its donors, far outpaces the roughly $11 million it had previously contributed to UDP in an election cycle. 

AIPAC spent a record-high amount on lobbying at the federal level last year, seeking to influence Congress, the executive branch, and agencies like the Department of Defense on issues such as appropriations bills and defense spending. In December, AIPAC applauded military aid provisions included in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2026, like $500 million for missile defense funding and procurement for the “Iron Dome” program. Combined with the just-passed bill funding the State Department, Congress recently awarded Israel $4 billion in aid, the vast majority of it military aid, according to budget analyst Stephen Semler. 

UDP resumed ad spending about two weeks ago and has since spent nearly $2.3 million against former Rep. Tom Malinowski in the New Jersey primary for a special election in the Eleventh Congressional District. The Democrat is described as a former ally of AIPAC, but UDP spokesperson Patrick Dorton recently told the New York Times that Malinowski’s refusal to rule out the conditioning of aid to Israel triggered the spending against his bid. One UDP ad attacks Malinowski for a 2019 vote to increase funding for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency; a follow-up ad calls out his failure to file disclosures of stock trades in 2019–2020, which Malinowski said was an oversight in sales managed by his broker.

The 501(c)4 nonprofit AIPAC had record high revenue in 2024, receiving nearly $149.4 million in contributions and grants that year, according to its most recent tax return. In the 2024 cycle, UDP spent $37.9 million, flooding races it targeted with ads supporting AIPAC-aligned candidates and opposing those it deemed insufficiently supportive of Israel. 

Another AIPAC-allied super PAC, Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI), also has $2 million in cash on hand. The super PAC of the group 314 Action, which quietly received a million-dollar donation from UDP last cycle and spent to support a pair of AIPAC-aligned U.S. House candidates in Democratic primaries in Oregon, has almost $1.6 million in cash on hand.

The super PACs of crypto and AIPAC have a track record of spending in primary elections, as well as general election face-offs—typically on campaign ads that did not mention their lobbying issues of digital assets or military aid to Israel. The AI industry has picked up the crypto interests’ playbook of mixing party-focused super PACs with a nonprofit arm and issue scorecard—and even hired some of the same staffers in preparation for the midterms.

The new AI industry super PAC Leading the Future raised more than $50.3 million in the second half of last year from a handful of donors. It was bankrolled by OpenAI President Greg Brockman and his wife Anna ($25 million combined), Andreessen Horowitz ($25 million), and Perplexity AI ($100,000). The super PAC transferred $5 million apiece to two affiliate super PACs: Democrat-focused Think Big, and Republican-focused American Mission. It also donated $500,000 to the nonprofit Build American AI. Leading the Future entered this midterms year with $39 million in cash on hand—with more funding promised, as the group recently announced total commitments of $125 million and cash on hand of $70 million.

Leading the Future’s affiliates made their debut spending in House races in December, and have so far totaled more than $1.3 million. Think Big PAC has spent $586,000 opposing New York Assemblymember Alex Bores, running in the Twelfth Congressional District. Bores co-sponsored the state bill named the RAISE Act, a bill requiring large companies with over $100 million in AI spending, like Meta and OpenAI, to develop safety plans for their high-risk, frontier AI models. The larger share of Think Big’s spending has been behind a negative ad on Bores that makes no mention of AI, but rather attacks his past engineering work for Palantir and claims he made money helping ICE; Bores says he never worked on a contract for ICE and sent a cease-and-desist letter over the ad. American Mission PAC has spent $748,000 supporting Texas Republican candidate Chris Gober, who served as legal counsel to Elon Musk and was formerly treasurer of his America PAC, in the Tenth Congressional District. Its debut ad for Gober made no mention of AI, rather praising him as a “Trump conservative.”

In September, Meta announced it would spend tens of millions to back its AI policy allies in state governments through two super PACs: the American Technology Excellence Project, and a California-focused group called Mobilizing Economic Transformation Across California (META California).

Meta set a new high in federal lobbying last year with $26.3 million in spending, frequently mentioning AI issues when lobbying Congress. The company, along with AI giants like Google and OpenAI, have endorsed federal preemption of state AI regulations, saying it seeks to stop “a patchwork of state laws that could impede innovation and investment.” At least 38 states adopted protective AI measures last year alone, like banning the generation of nonconsensual nude images with AI and requiring companies and governments to disclose AI usage, that could be preempted. 

In May, the Republican-led House passed a 10-year ban on state AI laws in the major budget reconciliation bill, but the Senate voted 99-1 to remove the AI provision on July 1. Efforts by House Republican leaders to resuscitate federal preemption as part of later spending bills, such as the FY26 NDAA, were met with opposition from hundreds of groups and did not advance. In December, President Trump issued an executive order that seeks to limit state regulation of AI by asserting federal authority over AI laws and threatening noncompliant states with lawsuits or having federal broadband funding revoked. The AI industry will be pressuring congressional lawmakers to bring together legislation and endorse regulatory frameworks they support, much as the crypto industry did with the GENIUS Act that was enacted into law last year—and will similarly unleash spending this year to help elect industry-friendly legislators.

When these super PACs fund TV, digital, and other ads in the year ahead, they’ll push up the soaring levels of outside spending in elections. In the 2022 cycle, spending by super PACs hit the highest-ever mark for a midterms at $1.37 billion, according to OpenSecrets. In the 2024 cycle, super PACs’ spending in federal races jumped to almost $2.7 billion.