About

Colophon

Who I am

Tech Influence Watch is a project of Citation Needed, my independent newsletter covering cryptocurrency, technology, and tech policy. I’m Molly White, a technology writer, researcher, and software engineer. I also run Web3 is Going Just Great, where I document the many disasters in the crypto industry.

I don’t use paywalls, run ads, or accept industry funding. This work is entirely supported by readers. Consider subscribing to Citation Needed to support this kind of independent research and writing.

I have disclosures for my crypto-related work.

Data

Most of the data shown on this website comes directly from the Federal Election Commission. Some data about political advertisements comes from Google’s Ad Transparency Center. Some additional information, such as news coverage and some other political ads, is gathered manually.

Election data is messy, and despite best efforts to clean up the data, there may be errors. Always verify against primary sources before relying on this data for any purpose. If you think something’s missing or erroneous, please get in touch.

Methodology

Which entities are tracked

This site tracks political spending by companies and individuals with significant ties to the cryptocurrency or artificial intelligence industries. For companies, inclusion is based on whether a meaningful part of the company’s business involves cryptocurrency, blockchain technology, or AI development. For individuals, inclusion is based on executive or senior-level roles at tracked companies, or on significant personal investment activity in the sector (e.g. prominent crypto- or AI-focused venture capitalists).

Entities are added manually as they appear in FEC data or are identified through reporting. If you believe a company or individual is missing, please get in touch or open a GitHub issue.

Attribution

Contributions are attributed to a company when the corporate entity made the contribution, or the donor lists that company as their employer in FEC filings. Individual contributions are attributed to the person named in the filing. Where FEC data contains obvious errors — misspelled names, malformed employer strings, duplicate entries — corrections are made manually and noted where relevant.

Some contributions are listed as “Individual” rather than attributed to a named person. This applies to donors who do not appear to be executives or senior employees at tracked companies; their contributions are still counted in totals but identifying information is redacted. See the FAQ for more.

Election cycles

Data currently covers the 2026 federal election cycle. Data from 2024 is preserved at an archived version. The 2026 cycle is ongoing; figures will change as new FEC reports are filed. Historical cycles are considered complete but may be amended if errors are found. The site does not currently track state-level campaign finance outside of federal races.

Limitations

FEC data has inherent delays: committee reports are typically filed monthly or quarterly, while independent expenditures must be reported within 24 or 48 hours. Totals shown on this site reflect the most recently available filings and may not capture the very latest activity. In-kind cryptocurrency contributions have known double-reporting issues in the FEC database; this site applies corrections where identified. This site does not attempt to track dark money or spending that is not disclosed to the FEC.

Code & tech stack

The code for this website is all open source and available on Github: frontend, backend.

The frontend is a Next.js application written in TypeScript. Some data visualizations are built with D3. Data is served from Firebase.

The backend is a separate Python service responsible for ingesting and processing raw FEC data.

Caching and additional cloud services are generously provided by Fastly through their Fast Forward program.

License & reuse

The source code for this site is released under the MIT License — you are free to use, copy, modify, and distribute it. The underlying campaign finance data comes from the Federal Election Commission and is in the public domain.

If you use data from this site in reporting, research, or publications, attribution to Tech Influence Watch is appreciated but not required. If you find an error in something you’ve published based on this data, please let me know so it can be corrected at the source.