Texas lawmakers made the artificial intelligence data center boom one of their top priorities — and they’re seeing a surge in campaign donations from big tech companies.
Data center developers have already donated millions of dollars to influence Texas elections this year as state officials debate new policies ahead of the 2027 legislative session.
Large campaign donations are nothing new in Texas, which has no limits on individual contributions. The AI industry, though, is flush with cash — some of the developers are worth trillions of dollars. That dwarfs even the energy, real estate and utility companies that have typically dominated campaign spending in Texas.
Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, is pumping $65 million into state-level campaigns around the country, and the broader industry is spending millions of dollars more on congressional races for this year’s midterm election cycle. Texas, meanwhile, will choose a governor, lieutenant governor and dozens of state legislators in 2026.
“This will be thought of as the AI midterms, because there’s so much money out there,” said Marjorie Connolly, communications director for the Tech Oversight Project, a watchdog group. “We’ve got months and months to go till the elections.”
In Texas, Meta spent $1.3 million on the state primary elections in March. Elon Musk, who controls the social media platform X and the artificial intelligence company xAI, has given $500,000 from a trust fund to a political action committee supporting state Senate candidates. Most of the funding has gone to Republicans.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), who started 2026 with a $105 million campaign fund, received at least $1.6 million from tech executives last year. Some tech companies, including Google and Amazon, have been giving smaller amounts for years.
And the spending could grow because campaign finance records are only available through the end of February, just days before Texas’ primary election was held. Observers expect the tech companies to keep spending through the rest of the year as the general election approaches.
Texas has hundreds of data center locations operating or in development, second only to Virginia among U.S. states.
Abbott and the GOP-controlled state Legislature have positioned the state as a pro-business haven for big tech and other industries. The state has minimal regulations on construction and abundant, relatively cheap, electricity.
“Texas is the epicenter of AI development, where companies can pair innovation with expanding energy,” Abbott said last year while announcing an investment by Google.
The AI boom relies on data centers the size of industrial warehouses stuffed with computers. Residents are worried that the power-hungry centers will drive up electric rates, deplete water supplies and gobble up massive plots of land, sometimes displacing farms or landing near existing homes.
Google said last year that it’s building centers worth $40 billion in Armstrong and Haskell counties between Dallas and Amarillo to complement other operations it already has in Texas. Facebook is planning a $10 billion data center near El Paso, and others are in development from the Rio Grande Valley to the Texas Panhandle.
Texas lawmakers passed a comprehensive law last year intended to regulate the use of AI. It prohibits AI that’s used for sexually explicit purposes like child pornography or deepfakes, as well as technology that infringes on constitutional rights, causes discrimination or that encourages self-harm.
In March, leaders of the state House and Senate said issues related to data centers will be among the items lawmakers examine during hearings this year, after fielding complaints from farmers, rural landowners and others.
“Everywhere we go, people are asking us about data centers, and costs, and all these things,” state Sen. Phil King, a Republican, said last week during a hearing of the state Senate’s Business and Commerce Committee. “We need to be able to tell our constituents it’s getting done.”
That public pressure is one of the reasons AI and tech companies are working so hard to influence state legislatures, said Brendan Steinhauser at the nonprofit The Alliance for Secure AI. Federal legislation to cope with the downsides of the boom has largely stalled, so the states have become the place where policy is getting made.
“I think the goal for them is to oppose any regulation, any limitation that they see, because once something gets through, it’s hard to reverse it,” he said.
Meta has said it wants to avoid a “patchwork” of state AI regulations and pointed to a previous statement from the company.
“This is why Meta is launching an effort to support the election of state candidates across the country who embrace AI development, champion the U.S. technology industry, and defend American tech leadership at home and abroad,” Brian Rice, vice president of public policy, said in a statement.
None of the other tech companies responded to requests for comment from POLITICO.
‘Very alarmed’
Some companies, including the AI developer Anthropic, have started PACs intended to promote regulations and safe uses of AI. But they haven’t been very active in Texas.
Google has donated tens of thousands of dollars to Republican and Democratic caucuses in both houses of the Texas Legislature for the last two years.Other tech companies have largely supported Republican candidates in Texas.
Abbott received a $1 million donation from Joe Gebbia in 2025, according to data compiled by the nonprofit Transparency USA. Gebbia is one of the co-founders of Airbnb, and he currently sits on the board of Tesla.
Abbott also got a $600,000 contribution in 2025 from MacKenzie Price, an Austin businesswoman who co-founded a network of AI-powered private schools.
Meta’s Forge the Future committee spent funds on state Sen. Kelly Hancock’s primary campaign for the state comptroller’s office and 11 other Republicans seeking state House and Senate seats, according to its campaign finance report.
Hancock lost despite $495,000 in favorable advertising from the Meta committee. Of the 11 legislative candidates backed by Meta, one is up for a special election in May and 10 made it through the Republican primary and advanced to the general election in November.
Abbott’s press office didn’t respond to a request for comment, and Gebbia and Price didn’t respond to messages left at their companies.
Likewise, the committee that Musk supported, the Texas Senate Leadership Fund, also focused on Republican candidates. Musk and xAI didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The Texas Senate Leadership Fund took in a total of $600,000 and spent $50,000 apiece on the two state Senate candidates. It spent another $373,000 on ads, polling and other expenses, but its campaign filing doesn’t specify whether those expenses were for specific office seekers.
That level of spending can be very effective in legislative races, particularly in small media markets like rural Texas, said Tiffany Muller, president of the campaign finance group End Citizens United, which is aligned with the Democratic Party.
Big money political campaigns have long been part of the landscape in Texas, she said. And money can allow companies to effectively buy favorable treatment from legislators, Muller said, while also discouraging officeholders from opposing the industry making the donations.
“We should be very, very alarmed by the amount and the scale of spending that we are seeing,” she said.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican who is running for reelection, has said addressing data centers is important for the state.
He told conservative activist Luke Macias in a recent interview that Texas can’t be the “wild, wild West” — and that data centers will need to supply their own power to avoid spiking electric rates for other users. Patrick launched the Texas Senate Leadership Fund, and he has called for looking at legislation that would affect data centers and cryptocurrency.
“I’m all in for AI and cryptos,” he said, “but we cannot let it drive the rates up of residences and businesses.”
