Alex Bores Lost His House Primary but Is Now Raising $30 Million on AI

Former New York State Assemblyman Alex Bores is raising $30 million to push Democrats toward a unified position on AI regulation ahead of the 2028 presidential race, after losing New York's 12th congressional district Democratic primary in June with 35% of the vote to Micah Lasher's 39%. The race drew roughly $26.3 million in outside ad spending, making it the second-most expensive House primary on record, with the super PAC Leading the Future — backed by OpenAI president Greg Brockman, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz — spending more than $8 million against Bores while AI safety advocates spent more than $20 million backing him. Bores co-sponsored New York's Responsible AI Safety and Education Act with state Sen. Andrew Gounardes, which Gov. Kathy Hochul signed on December 19, 2025 and which requires large AI developers to publish yearly risk frameworks and report serious safety incidents to the state within 72 hours.

Alex Bores lost his House primary in June after Silicon Valley and AI safety groups poured tens of millions of dollars into the race to stop him or save him. This week he's raising $30 million to make sure the fight doesn't end there. Bores, a New York state assemblyman, just turned a primary defeat into the opening move of a much bigger campaign: get Democrats aligned on how to regulate artificial intelligence before the 2028 presidential race arrives. He lost the Democratic primary for New York's 12th congressional district in June, pulling 35% of the vote to Micah Lasher's 39%. The loss came only after the race turned into the second-most expensive House primary on record, with roughly $26.3 million in outside ad spending, according to Fox News. Before politics, Bores wrote code at Palantir. He left the company, citing concerns that included its renewed contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and won a State Assembly seat representing Manhattan's District 73 in 2022. In Albany, he co-sponsored the Responsible AI Safety and Education Act with state Sen. Andrew Gounardes, a law that requires large AI developers to publish yearly risk frameworks and report serious safety incidents to the state within 72 hours. Gov. Kathy Hochul signed it on December 19, 2025. That bill made Bores a marked man in Silicon Valley. The RAISE Act also hands New York's attorney general the power to bring civil enforcement actions against noncompliant AI developers, which is exactly the kind of state-level teeth the industry has spent 2026 lobbying against. Leading the Future, a super PAC that launched with more than $100 million in commitments from OpenAI president Greg Brockman and venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, spent more than $8 million trying to sink Bores' campaign, according to CNBC. AI safety advocates countered with more than $20 million backing him. Fortune's own reporting on the race put the combined tech-industry spending, from both sides, at close to $50 million once every PAC and outside group is counted. Satya Nadella Warns AI Isn't Worth Pursuing Without Human Control https://startupfortune.com/satya-nadella-warns-ai-isnt-worth-pursuing-without-human-control/ Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told employees in a September 14 memo that AI development not kept under human control isn't worth pursuing, calling for third-party security testing and warning that neglecting safety could cost companies their operational license. The memo landed the same week Microsoft AI published a draft Code of Conduct for its MAI... - why AI needs human control in business https://startupfortune.com/satya-nadella-warns-ai-isnt-worth-pursuing-without-human-control/ - AI safety and human oversight in development https://startupfortune.com/satya-nadella-warns-ai-isnt-worth-pursuing-without-human-control/ Here's the twist nobody planned for. The man who beat Bores agreed with him. Lasher, his fellow assemblymember and the eventual winner, had also co-sponsored the RAISE Act. Leading the Future spent millions trying to defeat a candidate whose replacement backed the same bill anyway. You'd think that would settle things. It didn't. Why Bores isn't walking away Bores' new $30 million effort, first reported by Gokhshtein, aims to counter what he sees as fragmentation in his own party's approach to AI, from frontier-model safety rules to how much state attorneys general should be allowed to enforce. Democrats don't currently have a unified position on any of it, and Bores wants that settled before Republicans or the AI industry define the terms first. A senior Democratic operative working for a likely 2028 presidential candidate told HuffPost that AI regulation is shaping up to be one of the biggest issues of that race, and that voters don't yet know which party they trust on it. That uncertainty is the bet underneath the $30 million. Losing a House seat is a setback you recover from. Losing the argument over who gets to regulate AI, before a single 2028 primary vote is cast, is the harder loss to reverse. Frankly, the dollar figures tell you more than the vote totals do. A single New York House primary pulling in roughly $50 million from tech billionaires on one side and AI-safety donors on the other is not ordinary politics. It's a preview of what every AI-adjacent race looks like heading into next year's midterms. Bores lived through the first version of that fight and lost it. Now he's betting $30 million that his party doesn't walk into the next one as unprepared as he found it. 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The cuts, which already total roughly 21,000 jobs, are funding an AI data-center buildout that pushed Oracle's capex toward $90 billion to $95 billion this year. - oracle layoffs september 2026 workforce reduction details https://startupfortune.com/oracle-guts-its-workforce-with-6am-layoff-emails-to-fund-its-ai-buildout/ - how oracle notifies employees of job terminations https://startupfortune.com/oracle-guts-its-workforce-with-6am-layoff-emails-to-fund-its-ai-buildout/ This article is posted in AI News https://startupfortune.com/category/ai/ , check it out for more related stories. Join the discussion Open in the community → https://startupfortune.com/community/ Almost there. Sign in and your reply posts straight away.