New state reports filed on Monday found Big Tech lobbying totaled $2.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2025, adding up to an eye-popping $12 million year-end total.
“With key bills on kids’ safety, A.I., and algorithmic fairness on the line, Big Tech employed its classic playbook in 2025: pouring millions into lobbying, PR, and other scare tactics to stop accountability at all costs. And even though Big Tech pressure on California legislators was more intense than ever, this year, the influence campaigning is only going to get worse as Big Tech giants form California Super PACs, pledging to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to defeat lawmakers who stand up to them. Californians and their elected representatives must be hypervigilant to these tactics and call out Big Tech’s no-holds-barred campaign to overrule the preferences of Californians, who say in poll after poll they want stronger A.I. guardrails and accountability for Big Tech.”
– Sacha Haworth, Executive Director, The Tech Oversight Project
Some of the notable Big Tech lobbying numbers for fourth quarter of 2025, as well as year-end totals (rounded to the nearest $1000):
- Google: $1,008,000 in Q4; $3,504,000 year-end total
- Meta: $486k in Q4; $4,622,000 year-end total
- Amazon: $313k in Q4; $1,725,000 year-end total
- Technet: $116k in Q4; $932k year-end total
- Tiktok: $106k in Q4; $363k year-end total
- Chamber of Progress: $87k in Q4; $364k year-end total
- Snap: $57k in Q4; $212k year-end total
- OpenAI: $38k in Q4; $156k year-end total
- Computer & Communications Industry Association: $30k in Q4; $120k year-end total
Additionally, CalChamber, which lobbies on behalf of the tech industry in addition to other business interests and actively opposed a kids’ chatbot safety bill and legislation to rein in predatory AI pricing, spent a total of $13,464,741 on lobbying in Sacramento this year, and recently had its political coffers replenished with $3.1 million from Meta.
The newly-formed American Innovators Network, a coalition of AI startups led by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, spent more than $180,000 in lobbying during Q4, more than doubling its $75,000 spend in Q2 and Q3.