OpenAI, Anthropic, and Nvidia Post Record Q3 Federal Lobbying Spending

Nvidia $NVDA, Anthropic, and OpenAI each recorded their highest-spending quarterly lobbying totals between July and September, collectively spending nearly $6M according to federal disclosures. Nvidia spent $2.2M—the first quarter it exceeded $2M—while Anthropic spent $2.1M (up from a single-quarter peak of just over $1M last year) and OpenAI spent $1.5M after not crossing $1M in a quarter until this year. Anthropic lobbied Congress and the White House on AI provisions in the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), export controls in the AI Overwatch Act, President Donald Trump's executive order renaming AI "Super Intelligence," and the Ratepayer Protection Act, which seeks to place data center energy costs on developers. OpenAI engaged Congress, the White House, the Small Business Administration, and the Commerce and State Departments on copyright, frontier model cybersecurity evaluations, AI safety oversight frameworks, and antitrust protections for information sharing. Nvidia lobbied on export control policy, competition policy, 6G networks, quantum computing, and "responsible AI design." Apple $AAPL also posted a record lobbying quarter at $3.1M—its first time surpassing $3M—focusing on app store age verification bills, tariffs, intellectual property, competition, and domestic semiconductor manufacturing, while Google spent over $3M and Microsoft maintained its streak of spending at least $2M per quarter since 2021.