Eight current and former OpenAI employees have donated more than $215,000 to Guardrails Alliance, a super PAC pushing for stricter regulations on frontier AI labs — putting them in direct financial opposition to a rival group backed by OpenAI president and cofounder Greg Brockman.
The donations, reported by WIRED ahead of Guardrails Alliance’s first Federal Election Commission filing on July 15, 2026, highlight deepening internal tensions at OpenAI over how the company seeks to shape AI policy.
The largest contribution came from Juan Felipe Cerón Uribe, a research engineer at OpenAI since 2022, who gave $200,000 to the group. “Tech billionaires, such as Greg Brockman, funded the super PAC Leading the Future to keep AI unregulated,” Cerón Uribe said in a statement. “My decision to donate to [Guardrails Alliance] was easy.”
Guardrails Alliance launched last month with $5 million in initial funding and aims to raise $15 million this election cycle. It describes itself as a populist effort backed by tech workers, labor unions, and other groups. Its stated target is Leading the Future, a pro-industry super PAC that has raised more than $100 million from technology industry leaders, including Brockman and his wife Anna, who have committed $50 million to the group.
Leading the Future, which launched last summer, says its goal is to “oppose policies that stifle innovation.” Among its early efforts was a campaign against Alex Bores, the author of New York’s AI safety law, who lost his congressional primary last month. OpenAI’s global affairs chief, Chris Lehane, previously told WIRED he helped set up Leading the Future and has consulted Brockman on his political giving.
Guardrails Alliance cofounder Shaunna Thomas acknowledged the financial gap between the two groups but said it was not a concern. “When you expose what the AI PACs are doing, the people reject it,” Thomas told WIRED. “We’re leveraging public opinion that already exists, and it’s less expensive to do that.”
The employee donations, while small relative to Leading the Future’s war chest, suggest that internal pressure over Brockman’s political activities may be moving beyond private conversations with executives and into direct financial action.
Source: WIRED