The nation's largest tech companies spent more than $28 million on lobbying services in the first quarter of 2024.
Federal lobbying firms — advocates paid to try to influence legislators on Capitol Hill — were required to disclose their first-quarter earnings from companies on April 22, showing the groups they partnered with and some of the services they were lobbying for.
Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, and other industry leaders have spent billions in the past year alone developing AI tools and large language models, with each company trying to one-up the other. That is abundantly clear in federal lobbying disclosures, which reveal the companies have spent nearly $5 million more this quarter compared to Q1 in 2023, when they spent just under $23.6 million.
These companies also spend big bucks trying to persuade legislators to join their causes as they struggle to regulate the ever-changing technology industry.