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Tech News
Elon Musk contributed at least $474 million toward the 2026 midterm elections, according to The New York Times. Despite that spending, Democrats are now projected to win 259 House seats and at least 54 Senate seats, giving them a new congressional majority.
US stock markets saw sharp declines on Thursday, with the Nasdaq hit hardest among indices tracking major tech firms including Alphabet, Nvidia, Meta and Apple. The sell-off followed this week's midterm elections, in which Democrats secured sweeping wins that give the party full control of Congress. Several prominent Democratic candidates had campaigned on curbing the unchecked growth of data centres that support AI development.
On the latest Vergecast episode, hosts Nilay Patel and David Pierce discuss how Democratic gains in the 2026 midterms could reignite congressional attention on tech CEOs, AI regulation, and data center buildouts. They also examine whether AI companies, including OpenAI and Google, have found sustainable business models despite AI search growth and reported pullbacks in enterprise spending.
Pew Research found about 8% of surveyed US adults used AI chatbots to research candidates and policies ahead of the midterms. Testing by Forum AI found nearly 40% of chatbot answers on election topics contained factual errors, including Google's Gemini citing a wrong ballot deadline and Claude confusing a congressman with another person of the same name. NewsGuard separately found chatbots citing so-called 'pink slime' partisan sites nearly half the time when answering election-related questions.
Market experts note that U.S. stocks have historically risen in the months following midterm elections, with the S&P 500 gaining an average of 13.7% in the year after midterms since 1980, according to a CNBC analysis. However, some experts are warning that 2026 could break from this historical pattern due to unusually difficult conditions this cycle.
A Washington Post review of roughly 3,000 AI-generated voter guides found chatbots like ChatGPT frequently gave inaccurate information about candidates and races, including inventing a Missouri Senate seat not up for election and misclassifying municipal races as federal ones. The investigation found chatbots failed to correctly identify a user's congressional district 48 percent of the time, and were wrong 22 percent of the time even when they produced an answer.
Cryptocurrency-linked super PACs, led by Fairshake, have committed more than $200 million to influence 2026 congressional races, according to Public Citizen, surpassing spending by online betting and data-center groups this cycle. Fairshake is backing 33 House candidates across both parties and directing at least $1 million each to six incumbents, including House Financial Services Committee leaders French Hill and Bill Huizenga. Coinbase has been a major funder, contributing $25 million to Fairshake's midterm push after donating $79 million to 2024 races.
A coalition of Republican state attorneys general has publicly backed a South Dakota law that could impose criminal penalties for certain abortion-related speech. The move comes as several states prepare to vote on abortion-related ballot measures or candidates during this year's midterm elections.
The Senate Leadership Fund has spent about $14 million in the past week across Kansas, South Carolina, Nebraska and Mississippi, according to federal filings reviewed by WIRED. More than $5 million went to Kansas, where GOP Senator Roger Marshall faces a closer-than-expected race against Democrat Adam Hamilton, and another roughly $5 million went to South Carolina to support Senator Lindsey Graham.
Crypto-industry political action committees have amassed $176 million in contributions ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, according to reporting on campaign finance figures. The funds are intended to back candidates viewed as favorable to digital-asset regulation in Congress.
Anthropic filed to go public, listing an 'evolving and uncertain regulatory and political environment' among its key business risks ahead of a planned mid-November IPO. The filing comes as bipartisan opposition to data centers and AI-driven job displacement grows among voters, with new lawmakers from the midterms set to take office in January. CNN reports campaign ads opposing data centers have surged from 1% to nearly 8% of video ads, with more than $35 million spent on such messaging this cycle.
Data centres, the warehouse facilities powering AI services like ChatGPT and online activity generally, are drawing bipartisan political opposition ahead of the 3 November US midterms. Both Republican and Democratic candidates have spoken out against their rapid growth, citing heavy electricity consumption and environmental concerns, while President Trump has dismissed the backlash as a 'sick conspiracy.'