OpenAI Workers Are Bankrolling a Super PAC to Push Back Against Their Own Boss
Eight current and former OpenAI employees have quietly donated more than $215,000 to a political group that wants stricter rules on AI companies, setting up an unusual fight inside one of the world's most powerful tech firms.
Key points
- Eight current and former OpenAI employees donated more than $215,000 to the Guardrails Alliance super PAC, a political spending group that supports stricter AI rules, as of mid-2025.
- OpenAI research engineer Juan Felipe Cerón Uribe gave $200,000 of that total, making him one of the largest individual donors to the group.
- Guardrails Alliance launched in 2025 with $5 million in initial funding and aims to raise $15 million this election cycle.
- Its main opponent is Leading the Future, a rival super PAC backed with more than $100 million, including a $50 million commitment from OpenAI president Greg Brockman and his wife Anna.
- A separate super PAC called Public First Action, funded with $20 million from AI company Anthropic, is also working to promote AI safety rules in the 2026 elections.
A handful of ordinary OpenAI engineers and researchers have quietly taken on their own company's most senior figure, using their personal savings to fund a political group that wants governments to put tighter rules on AI companies like the one that employs them.
The group is called Guardrails Alliance, a super PAC, which is a type of political organisation in the United States that can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections. It launched last month with $5 million and is backed by tech workers, labour unions, and other groups. Wired AI first reported the employee donations.
The target of their spending is Leading the Future, a rival super PAC with far deeper pockets. Leading the Future has raised more than $100 million and counts OpenAI president Greg Brockman among its most prominent supporters. Brockman and his wife Anna have personally committed $50 million to the group. Its stated goal is to oppose policies that would, in its words, "stifle innovation."
The biggest donation from an OpenAI employee came from Juan Felipe Cerón Uribe, a research engineer at the company since 2022, who gave $200,000. He told Wired AI he spent four years working on ways to reduce the social harms AI can cause. "I've become concerned that all that research will have gone to waste if it doesn't translate to guardrails that hold private companies accountable," he said.
Gabriel Wu, a safety researcher at OpenAI, donated $5,000. So did Julie Steele and Jason Wolfe, two staff members who study AI alignment, which is the field of making sure AI systems do what humans actually intend. David Farhi, a former research manager who left OpenAI last summer after seven years, gave $3,000.
Why does this matter to people outside the tech world?
These donations put a spotlight on the real money now flowing into debates about whether and how governments should set rules for AI. The outcome will shape what AI products can do, how they handle your data, and who is held responsible when something goes wrong.
Shaunna Thomas, a co-founder of Guardrails Alliance and a longtime Democratic political organiser, acknowledges the funding gap is enormous. Her group's $15 million target looks small next to $100 million. Her argument is that it does not need to match the opposition dollar for dollar. "When you expose what the AI PACs are doing, the people reject it," she said. "It's less expensive to do that."
Guardrails Alliance is not the only group fighting Leading the Future. Public First Action, a super PAC backed with $20 million from Anthropic, the company behind the Claude AI assistant, has pledged to promote AI safety measures in the 2026 elections. Both groups supported Alex Bores, the author of New York's landmark AI safety law, in his recent congressional primary. He lost. More than $27 million poured into that single race from groups on both sides.
OpenAI told Wired AI that Brockman's involvement with Leading the Future is personal, not official company policy, and that employees are free to participate in politics on their own time and with their own money. Leading the Future says it has actually called for some federal AI rules and denies trying to shut down debate on the subject.
The Guardrails Alliance plans to file its first official donor report with the Federal Election Commission, the US body that oversees political money, on 15 July 2025.
