OpenAI spent $1.76 million on government lobbying in 2024 and $510,000 in the last three months of the year alone, according to a new disclosure filed on Tuesday—a significant jump from 2023, when the company spent just $260,000 on Capitol Hill.
The disclosure is a clear signal of the company’s arrival as a political player, as its first year of serious lobbying ends and Republican control of Washington begins. While OpenAI’s lobbying spending is still dwarfed by bigger tech players, the uptick comes as it and other AI companies are helping redraw the shape of AI policy. Read the full story.
—James O’Donnell
A new company plans to use Earth as a chemical reactor
Forget massive steel tanks—some scientists want to make chemicals with the help of rocks deep beneath Earth’s surface.
New research shows that ammonia, a chemical crucial for fertilizer, can be produced from rocks at temperatures and pressures that are common in the subsurface. The research was published yesterday in Joule, and MIT Technology Review can exclusively report that a new company, called Addis Energy, has been founded to commercialize the process.
Ammonia is used in most fertilizers and is a vital part of our modern food system. It’s also being considered for use as a green fuel in industries like transoceanic shipping. The problem is that current processes used to make ammonia require a lot of energy and produce huge amounts of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change. Read the full story.
—Casey Crownhart
