Build American AI launches data center ad blitz in three battleground states

Build American AI, a new pro-AI advocacy group, is putting millions of dollars behind a state-level ad blitz in Kansas, Ohio, and Wisconsin aimed squarely at data center siting, the first explicitly physical AI fight of the 2026 midterms.

The group is affiliated with Leading the Future (LTF), a pro-AI super PAC launched in 2025 with more than $50 million in funding from Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, and OpenAI President Greg Brockman and his wife Anna. LTF has spent most of that money donating to specific candidates and opposing candidates who lobby against AI. The new ad vehicle is the first time that war chest has been deployed against a single piece of physical infrastructure rather than a candidate.

OpenAI published a public rebuke of LTF's tactics in June, saying the company "does not direct the activities" of the PAC and condemning what it called astroturfing, the practice of running paid campaigns made to look like grassroots support. OpenAI did not cut ties with Brockman; the president continues to fund LTF personally, and his name is still on its donor list. The statement is the rare public signal that even the leading AI lab reads the playbook it is being funded through as rough.

The ad buy is the first time the broader Andreessen Horowitz political footprint has been aimed at a state-level infrastructure fight. The firm has spread more than $115 million in disclosed federal contributions to the midterms, more, by The New York Times's tally cited in TechCrunch's coverage, than Elon Musk or George Soros, making it the largest disclosed midterm donor so far. Federal donations buy access; data center ads buy a permit fight.

That fight is already live. Data centers have become a central theme in 2026 statewide elections in those three battlegrounds, with local opposition to new builds forcing candidates to take sides on power use, water draw, and tax breaks. Build American AI's candidate questionnaire covers nine policy areas, including energy, infrastructure, and American AI leadership, and asks state-level candidates to sign on before LTF-aligned groups put money behind them.

Anthropic has been a known supporter of Public First Action, a super PAC that backs AI regulation, showing that the AI industry's political spending is split between accelerationist and safety camps. The broader AI midterm spending picture is now organized around which vision of the technology wins in Washington and in the statehouses.

For voters in Ohio, Kansas, and Wisconsin, the political unit has narrowed. The fight is no longer over AI in the abstract, over a model, or over a policy paper. It is over a building, a substation, and a water draw that will land in someone's county. The next move is whether local data center opposition groups buy airtime of their own, or whether Build American AI's messaging wave goes uncontested into November.