Meta topped lobbying spending for Big Tech firms in the first quarter of 2025, doling out $8 million as it faces a major court battle in Washington, Ashley reports.

Why it matters: Tech giants are fighting on multiple fronts in D.C. and trying to influence policy that could upend their businesses, even as they cozy up to the Trump administration.

By the numbers: Meta, Amazon and Google were the biggest tech lobbying spenders in Q1, at $8 million, $4.3 million and $3 million, respectively, per federal filings.

• Meta and Google are both battling the federal government in court, with the FTC-Meta antitrust case and the Google-DOJ antitrust remedies proceedings underway.

Other tech companies kept mostly similar spending patterns to the previous quarter:

• ByteDance: $2.8 million compared to last quarter's $2.7 million.
• Apple: $2.5 million compared to last quarter's $1.7 million.
• Microsoft: $2.4 million compared to last quarter's $2.3 million.
• Oracle: $2.5 million compared to last quarter's $2.1 million.
• IBM: $1 million compared to last quarter's $1.1 million.

Zoom in: Meta lobbied on content policy, political ads, misinformation, encryption, privacy, digital service taxes, digital trade, Section 230, kids' online protection, AI and immigration, per federal filings.

• Google lobbied lawmakers on dozens of tech policy issues, including: online advertising, generative AI and copyright, intermediary liability, kids' online protection, global trade, data flows, health IT, antitrust, cloud computing and cybersecurity.

The intrigue: ByteDance is battling to keep TikTok running in the U.S. as President Trump slow-walks a deal to find an American buyer for the app.

• Lobbying issues, per ByteDance's filing, include the ban-or-sell law, cross-border data transfers and other international trade issues.

AI in the spotlight: AI companies of all sizes continue to boost their spending and presence in Washington as Trump officials look to shape policy in an anti-China, innovation-first way.

• OpenAI spent $560,000 lobbying in Q1 compared to $510,000 last quarter, on topics including AI and copyright.
• Anthropic spent $360,000 lobbying in Q1 compared to $250,000 last quarter, talking to lawmakers about AI export controls, national security and procurement standards.
• Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), which is making inroads in D.C. with other "little tech" companies, spent $650,000 in Q1 lobbying compared to $370,000 last quarter. Its filing includes digital assets and fintech, open-source AI, tax and the annual defense policy bill.

What we're watching: AI companies have spent far less than their Big Tech counterparts on lobbying historically.

• But their numbers have been steadily going up as they build up policy shops in D.C. (and have more to lose from unfriendly laws or policy from Congress and the administration).
• We'll be watching to see which company will be the first to hit $1 million in a quarter.

Andreessen Horowitz is pushing back against AI transparency proposals, calling them unconstitutional and uniquely harmful for startups, Maria reports.

Why it matters: Lawmakers in statehouses and on the Hill are introducing bills that run the gamut from requiring companies to share training data sets to providing AI warning labels that content might not be accurate.

Driving the news: a16z is countering with its own policy proposal, shared exclusively with Axios, that the VC firm says would protect smaller companies.

• a16z says startups will have a hard time taking on the "extraordinarily expensive" compliance burdens that come with mandated disclosures, which have penalties associated with them if companies share wrong information.
• The mandates could also violate the constitution, the group says, because the Supreme Court has stated that "unduly burdensome disclosure requirements might offend the First Amendment by chilling protected commercial speech."
• a16z is pitching this idea to policymakers around the country given the high volume of bills proposed.

What's inside: a16z is proposing requiring base model developers to provide a fact sheet they've dubbed "AI Model Facts" that includes information like the date a model stopped training so that people would know the limits of its knowledge.

• They suggest the fact sheet could include the company's terms of service and the model's release date.
• The fact sheet could also show how models perform against standards once they've been "well-established," a16z says, without specifying who should set them.

The big picture: Smaller tech and AI companies that have different business models than the biggest players have been flexing more muscle on policy to ensure larger companies that can afford compliance don't dictate laws.