About

Why was the site renamed from “Follow the Crypto” to “Tech Influence Watch”?

When I launched this project in 2024, it focused exclusively on cryptocurrency industry spending, hence the name. Along with the staggering amount of money they poured into the elections, they also developed a unique and incredibly aggressive playbook: identify the legislators sympathetic to their agenda and flood them with cash; flip those who opposed them with promises of funding and primary anyone who wouldn’t comply; buy influence with and direct access to the president through campaign contributions and his family’s crypto ventures; wrap it all in a persecution narrative about “debanking” and a “war on crypto” and “stifling innovation” while presenting naked self-interest as a noble fight for individual freedom.

By 2026, artificial intelligence companies were following the same playbook. Some of the biggest crypto spenders I was already tracking, like Andreessen Horowitz, also have substantial AI investments and were spending as much or more to back these new PACs as they were on crypto. The PACs are also themselves intertwined: Josh Vlasto, the spokesperson for theFairshake crypto super PAC network, simultaneously leads the Leading the Future AI super PAC network. And increasingly, the PACs appear to coordinate spending.

Only tracking the crypto side of this network would mean telling only half the story. The old domain still works if you’ve bookmarked it.

What counts as a crypto or AI company?

For crypto, this includes exchanges, stablecoin issuers, blockchain infrastructure and mining companies, and funds whose portfolio includes a substantial number of crypto-related companies. For AI, I focus on companies building or deploying AI models, data center infrastructure, and the funds that substantially back them. The line can get blurry — some companies are involved in both sectors and categorized accordingly on this site. And some tech companies that are not exclusively AI- or crypto-focused, like Google and Oracle are tracked because of their substantial activity in these sectors.

What criteria determine which companies and individuals are included?

Companies are included if they have substantial interests in the cryptocurrency or artificial intelligence industries and have made significant contributions reportable to the FEC. Individuals are included if they are executives, senior employees, or major investors at those companies and have made contributions that appear connected to their role in the industry. I make judgment calls here; not every person who works at a crypto company and donates to a political campaign is included. If you think a company or individual is missing, please get in touch.

Who cares what the cryptocurrency and/or AI industries are doing when [oil|pharma|banking|some other industry] also spends millions on lobbying and politics?

I do! As a technology industry researcher, this is something I pay a lot of attention to. However, I also think the magnitude of spending warrants scrutiny from a much broader audience.

I firmly agree that corporate influence on politics is a much broader issue than just in the cryptocurrency and AI industries. The broader problem is Citizens United and the ability for corporations and the super wealthy to pour this much money into politics. If you would like to see a project like this to track spending from another industry, please make it happen! As always, my code is all open source.

Does this project use blockchain data?

No, the monetary data for this project comes from reports to the FEC (which includes donations made both in dollars and in cryptocurrency). This project does not aim to track dark money political spending that is not reported to the FEC — except where that spending involves committees tracked on this site.

Are these people and companies donating cryptocurrency or regular dollars?

It’s a mix, but anecdotally it appears to be mostly dollars.

Why does it look like there hasn’t been much recent spending activity?

There are delays between when expenditures are made and when they are filed with the FEC. This project attempts to pull as much as possible from 24- and 48-hour reports, but some data just isn’t filed that frequently.

Why do some numbers not seem to add up?

You might notice that there are some discrepancies between numbers — for example, committees that appear to have spent more than they’ve raised, or cash on hand that doesn’t equal receipts - disbursements. This is largely due to the fact that different data is subject to different reporting requirements and timeframes. For example, the FEC requires that committees report independent expenditures within 24 or 48 hours of the expenditure, but receipts are reported monthly or quarterly. This site aims to show the most up-to-date data as possible, at the expense of occasionally unusual numbers.

What’s going on with the list of PACs? Why aren’t the amounts contributed to each PAC displayed?

There are some errors in FEC data, generally where in-kind cryptocurrency contributions have been double-reported or even triple-reported. While the FEC accounts for this by recording a disbursement for each duplicate contribution, it causes the receipts data to appear artificially high. Because I am only calculating committee receipts (accounting for duplicates) for the cryptocurrency-related PACs, and it is not feasible for me to do this type of labor-intensive data correction across all political committees, I am showing the order of PACs as reflected by the FEC, while acknowledging that PACs with cryptocurrency-denominated contributions may appear slightly too highly. To avoid propogating numbers that I know are misleading, I no longer show the FEC-reported PAC receipts in the lists of PACs. With those caveats in mind, this data is still available from the FEC.

Why are some contributions attributed only to “Individual”?

Although the FEC publishes detailed information about anyone who contributes to political candidates or campaigns, the goal of this project is not to draw attention to the many everyday people who choose to make small contributions to support their favored causes or candidates. For those who don’t appear to be executives or senior-level employees at these companies, I have redacted identifying information.

Why are some political advertisements missing?

Although the FEC tracks ad spending, they do not maintain a database of the advertisements themselves. I am doing my best to gather this information as I am able, but databases with this information are either limited or prohibitively expensive. If you’re aware of an advertisement that’s missing, please send it in so I can add it!