AI giants lobby Washington unprecedentedly, OpenAI opens its first policy office On May 13th, according to a report by The New York Times, OpenAI opened its first lobbying office, "Workshop," in Washington D.C. this week, just a few blocks from the White House, with the aim of promoting policies such as data center expansion and free use of copyrighted content. In the first quarter of 2026, OpenAI's federal lobbying spending reached $1 million, doubling year-on-year. Competitor Anthropic also opened an office in Washington in April this year, and lobbying spending increased tenfold year-on-year to $3 million last year. Meanwhile, Meta, Nvidia, and Alphabet collectively spent $47.8 million on lobbying last year, a year-on-year increase of 22%. According to Public Citizen, a citizen watchdog organization, currently a quarter of federal lobbyists in Washington are involved in AI issues, a significant increase from 11% in 2023.