Pro-AI Super PAC Network Paid $20 Million to a Nevada Shell Company

By James Calloway

A consulting firm that has collected roughly $20 million from one of the largest pro-AI super PAC networks appears to exist nowhere except a post office box in a Sparks, Nevada, shopping center. Lantern Production Consultants LLC lists its address at the Spanish Springs complex, which also hosts a Spirit Halloween, a hearing aid supplier, and a Vietnamese restaurant, according to federal campaign finance records reviewed by WIRED. The payment figure and the address are both documented; what the firm actually does, and for whom, is not.

Lantern Production Consultants has been paid around $20 million since last year by Think Big, part of a network of pro-AI super PACs funded by Leading the Future PAC. The payments covered polling, digital advertising, research, and strategy, the records show. Leading the Future says it supports candidates who back what it calls "an AI innovation policy agenda." The stakes are considerable: the network has raised more than $140 million to influence midterm races that align with AI-industry priorities.

Lantern is one of four opaque Nevada LLCs receiving money from super PACs in the Leading the Future network, including Think Big and American Mission. The network itself is based in Nevada.

• Lantern Production Consultants LLC — about $20 million from Think Big since last year; address is a post office box in the Spanish Springs shopping complex in Sparks.
• Summit Ridge Media Group LLC — roughly $13 million from American Mission between December 2025 and September 2026; address is a mail center in a Reno strip mall.
• Blue Horizon Compliance Consultants — appears in the filings with an address listed as a Staples location in Reno.
• Prusik Partners LLC — listed address is a strip mall in Henderson, Nevada, sharing a building with a chiropractor and a beauty salon.

What do the watchdogs allege?

Election watchdogs argue these LLCs are shell companies built to conceal the identities of strategists, consultants, and production companies working with Leading the Future. "This is about hiding where the money is going," said Shanna Ports, senior legal counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit that litigates campaign finance cases.

In May, the Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission — the body that enforces campaign finance law — alleging that Think Big and American Mission broke federal law by using shell companies. The group's lawyers argued that super PACs in the Leading the Future network violated the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA), the statute requiring disclosure of political spending, by failing to reveal the actual recipients of their payments. The LLCs, they wrote in the complaint, "function as mere extensions of the super PACs they serve."

The complaint is an allegation, not a ruling. No regulator has yet tested it.

How did Leading the Future respond?

In an emailed statement to WIRED, Leading the Future spokesperson Jesse Hunt wrote: "We comply with all applicable laws and this is merely a desperate ploy for attention from Public First, Anthropic, and the groups aligned with their outside organizations who see our message resonating with the public and policymakers."

The statement points a finger at specific rivals, and those rivals reject it. WIRED contacted Anthropic and Public First — a pro-AI super PAC focused on transparency and safeguards, with significant backing from Anthropic leadership — about the charge. "I have no idea what they're talking about," said Public First spokesperson Anthony Rivera-Rodriguez. "We unequivocally had nothing to do with this complaint." Anthropic did not respond.

Can the FEC actually act?

Probably not soon. The FEC has six commissioner seats, all presidential appointees, and needs a quorum of four to act on a legal complaint. It has lacked that quorum since May 2025, leaving it effectively unable to decide cases. The Campaign Legal Center does not expect its complaint to be heard anytime soon. Meanwhile, according to the records WIRED reviewed, Think Big and American Mission have continued to pour millions of dollars into the Nevada LLCs.

The enforcement gap is the practical takeaway: a formal complaint exists, but no functioning body exists to judge it.

Who funds this network — and why hide the vendors?

Leading the Future holds the most cash of any pro-AI group, drawing on Silicon Valley backers including billionaire Marc Andreessen, venture capitalist Ben Horowitz, and OpenAI president Greg Brockman. It also splits its spending across party lines: Think Big overwhelmingly funds Democrats, while American Mission funds Republicans.

That bipartisanship is unusual, and it shapes the speculation about the hidden vendors. Political strategists and consultants typically work for one party, not both. "If you're running in a Democrat primary and Think Big comes to spend in your race, and they drop half a million on your congressional district doing positive ads while using Republican vendors and strategists—that's news," said Kyle Morse, deputy executive director of the Tech Oversight Project, a nonprofit advocacy group critical of big tech.

The possible motives run a spectrum. A super PAC might hide vendors for benign reasons — a production company may not want public association with a pro-AI campaign — or for something worse. With the FEC missing a quorum for the foreseeable future, nobody can compel an answer. "We are not fundamentally equipped to figure out what's happening here," Morse said.

Is this part of a wider pattern?

Yes, according to the Campaign Legal Center's dockets. Earlier this year the group filed an FEC complaint against pro-gun YouTuber Brandon Herrera, now a congressional candidate in Texas District 23, alleging that more than 99 percent of his campaign's disbursements were funneled through Texas Strategy Group, a firm the complaint claimed was "being used as a shell entity." Herrera's campaign referred WIRED to conservative personality Matt Braynard, who runs Texas Strategy Group. Braynard called the complaint "meritless" and "little more than a recycled legal theory from a partisan advocacy group."

The group also filed against Lead Left PAC, a pop-up super PAC funded by Republican operatives while posing as a Democratic entity, with the presumed goal of meddling in Democratic primaries. That complaint accused Lead Left of paying shell companies to avoid being linked to Republican strategists.

Ports frames the pattern as a second layer of opacity stacked on top of existing dark money — political spending whose sources are not disclosed. "There's no way of tracing the source behind the money, and that's bad enough on its own," she said. "Now there's this new component, where groups are playing games to hide where the money is being spent. As a result, voters really lack fundamental information about where the money is coming from and where it's going."

Her claim is specific: voters lose visibility on both ends of the transaction, not just the donor side. With $140 million raised, an FEC without a quorum, and midterms in November, the burden of proof now sits with no one in particular — and the money keeps moving through Nevada mailboxes.