Big Tech’s $600 million campaign spending blitz failed to keep Congress in Republican hands or stop a local backlash against artificial intelligence infrastructure in the Tuesday, November 3, 2026 US midterm elections, the Financial Times reported. Despite nearly $500 million in contributions from Elon Musk and a nationwide campaign by Silicon Valley’s pro-AI Super PAC network Leading the Future, Democrats swept both the US House and Senate, flipped the race for Texas senators, and passed roughly two dozen local ballot measures restricting data center expansion.
For AI companies and the communities where they want to build, the vote carries an immediate hardware cost. The Financial Times reported that the midterm results could affect 45% of planned US data center expansion, threatening the server capacity tech firms need to train and run large AI models. Out of 41 data center ballot measures across 10 states on Tuesday, about two dozen proposals to block or restrict development appeared to pass based on initial returns, according to Axios reporter Maria Curi.
Reacting to the local ballot defeats late Tuesday night, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk posted, “Data centers in space look pretty appealing right now,” Axios reported. On Wednesday, November 4, Musk followed up on X with a post reading, “Guess my election-interfering space lasers didn’t work this time 🤷♂️”
Where Elon Musk’s $474 million went
Musk accounted for the vast majority of the tech industry’s midterm spending. According to a New York Times tally of Federal Election Commission and IRS filings cited by Fast Company, Musk put about $474 million into the 2026 midterms through October 14. That total nearly doubled the estimated $250 million he spent to help elect Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election. His 2026 contributions flowed primarily through three groups:
- About $216 million to his own America PAC
- $168 million to the Senate Leadership Fund
- $30 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund
Musk backed Republican candidates across 106 House and Senate races, according to Engadget and Fast Company. A Forbes analysis of those 106 contests on Wednesday showed that only 18 of Musk’s candidates won, all in already safe Republican districts. Depending on the Wednesday count, 44 or 45 of his backed candidates lost, while 43 or 44 races remained uncalled as ballot counting continued.
“Elon Musk dropped nearly half a billion dollars on the midterms. 98% of the money he spent on specific candidates went to losers,” financier Steve Rattner posted on X on Wednesday, as cited by Engadget.
Defeats in the race for Texas senators and battleground states
The single largest share of Musk’s spending went to Texas, where Democrat James Talarico defeated Republican Ken Paxton to flip the US Senate seat formerly held by John Cornyn. Sources varied slightly on the exact total Musk put into the state: The 19th reported he spent almost $200 million supporting Paxton in the final weeks of the most expensive Senate race in state history, Fast Company reported $212 million went toward helping Paxton defeat Talarico, and Engadget cited a CNBC estimate of around $225 million funneled to the Texas region overall.
On election night, Talarico told supporters that Texas voters had rebuked billionaire and trillionaire megadonors, Fast Company reported. Alongside Democratic challenger Gina Hinojosa, who defeated Republican incumbent Governor Greg Abbott on Tuesday according to CBS News, Talarico became the first Democrat to win a statewide race in Texas since 1994, according to The 19th.
Musk’s America PAC also spent heavily in Midwest Senate races that went to Democrats, Fast Company reported. Through October 20, the PAC put $8.9 million into Ohio, where Democrat Sherrod Brown won, and $7.2 million into Michigan, where Democrat Abdul El-Sayed won.
Silicon Valley’s $173 million data center ad war
Beyond Musk’s personal outlay, Silicon Valley billionaires funded Leading the Future, the largest pro-AI Super PAC network operating in the 2026 cycle. Wired reported that the network failed to make a meaningful difference in the midterm outcomes.
Axios reported that data center development fueled a $173 million midterm advertising war as tech backers tried to overcome local opposition to the power and land demands of new server farms. With voters instead approving roughly two dozen local restrictions across the 10 states voting on data center measures Tuesday, and 43 to 44 of Musk’s 106 backed congressional races still awaiting final calls as of Wednesday, tech companies now face both a Democratic Congress and tighter local limits on where they can build AI infrastructure.