Tech Oversight Project

The Tech Oversight Project is a Washington, DC-based 501(c)(4) advocacy organization founded in January 2022 that describes itself as "the only tech watchdog dedicated solely to research, rapid response, and aggressive media tactics that shape the debate around tech policy in Washington, D.C., and statehouses across the country." Led by Executive Director Sacha Haworth — a veteran of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, House Majority PAC, and American Bridge 21st Century Foundation — it has become the primary US organization tracking and exposing the AI industry's political-money footprint, operating a standing research program on AI super PAC spending, public voter education tools, and coordinated multi-organizational coalition opposition to federal AI preemption legislation.

Founding and early focus

The Tech Oversight Project was launched in January 2022 with initial backing from the Omidyar Network — the philanthropic network of eBay founder Pierre Omidyar — and the advocacy arm of the Economic Security Project, led by Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes. The organization launched with an explicit campaign-style posture aimed at Big Tech antitrust accountability: its first major advocacy project supported the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, bipartisan legislation that would have required large technology platforms to refrain from preferentially ranking their own products in search results.

This origin in antitrust accountability — treating large technology companies as political actors whose regulatory environment requires active counter-pressure — established the organizational model that its subsequent AI-focused work would inherit and intensify.

AI political-money exposure

By 2025–2026, the AI industry's political spending had grown to a scale that made it the Tech Oversight Project's primary focus. In June 2026, the organization launched two complementary public-access tools: an AI Super PAC Research Book and a companion Ad Library that together track 17 industry-funded dark-money organizations aligned with the AI industry's political interests in the 2026 midterm election cycle. The Research Book draws exclusively on FEC, IRS, and publicly available disclosure filings and documents over $188 million raised and more than $74 million spent by entities backed by OpenAI, Palantir, Andreessen Horowitz, Anthropic, Meta, and Google across federal and state races. The Ad Library catalogs over 100 political advertisements and is designed to be navigable by journalists, researchers, and voters without specialist campaign-finance knowledge.

The central target is "AI preemption" — the industry-funded argument that a federal framework should supersede state-level AI consumer and worker protections. The Tech Oversight Project documented more than $100 million flowing through entities including Leading the Future (backed by a16z founders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, which raised $15 million and transferred $10 million to subsidiary PACs Think Big and American Mission), and David Sacks's Innovation Council. Industry-backed PACs outspent movement organizations by roughly $5 million at the federal level and over $20 million unchallenged at the state level — a financial disparity the organization's research is designed to make visible to the public and to legislators' own constituents.

In June 2026, the Tech Oversight Project specifically fact-checked OpenAI's role in creating and funding Leading the Future, naming it as an AI super PAC whose advertising made specific claims the organization publicly challenged.

Coalition building and constituent accountability

The organization deploys its exposure research into active coalition and voter accountability campaigns. In April 2026, the Tech Oversight Project coordinated a coalition letter from 13 organizations spanning children's online safety, disability rights, AI safety, and tech watchdog groups, addressed to Democratic Members of Congress — Representatives Clarke, Gottheimer, Gomez, Liccardo, and Subramanyam — urging them to reject endorsements from Leading the Future and disavow its advertising support. The coalition's argument links the super PAC's preemption agenda directly to concrete harms: existing state laws that lower costs on families, protect children and teens online, and protect workers.

To ground the coalition's political argument in constituency data, the organization commissioned district-level polling in CA-23 and MA-3 — districts whose members are targeted by AI super PAC spending. The polling found that by a two-to-one margin, constituents in those districts oppose their representatives' support for AI preemption and believe states should retain the authority to pass their own AI consumer protection laws.

On the legislative side, the Tech Oversight Project supports the GUARD Act and state-level chatbot protection bills, anchoring its exposure and coalition work in specific policy demands rather than leaving the political-money research standing alone as accountability journalism. The voter education tools — Research Book and Ad Library — are the public-facing layer of this integrated approach, translating movement-side political intelligence about AI industry money flows into a form that voters in affected congressional districts can understand and act on.