AI PACs spend nearly $1M in support of Mike Rounds’ Senate race

South Dakota is about as competitive a Senate battleground as a pickup basketball game against a toddler. The state has reliably sent Republicans to the upper chamber for decades, and incumbent Sen. Mike Rounds faces no serious threat to his seat. Yet AI-linked political action committees have already spent more on his race than the state’s own residents have contributed. The spending is part of a broader, well-funded operation by Leading the Future, a super PAC network that announced a $2 million general-election ad campaign on September 16, 2026. The campaign, which kicked off the very next day, targets several Republican Senate candidates, with Rounds occupying a prominent slot alongside Julia Letlow in Louisiana, Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi, and Darline Graham in South Carolina. The money behind the machine Leading the Future has raised over $140 million for the 2026 midterms, a figure that puts it in the upper echelon of political spending vehicles this cycle. OpenAI President Greg Brockman has personally contributed $25 million. Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital firm better known as a16z, has kicked in more than $50 million. Those two sources alone account for over...