Tech CEOs could soon face Congress under oath
Democrats’ win in the 2026 US midterms has left Big Tech in a tough spot. In CNBC’s Voter Poll, 56% of voters said data centres were a crucial or major factor in their decision. Elon Musk spent over $200 million on Texas races alone, according to Politico, and most of the candidates he backed lost. Politico reported that venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz gave $116 million and OpenAI president Greg Brockman and his wife Anna gave $50 million, mostly to Republicans, while their pro-AI super PAC network Leading the Future spent millions more. A CNBC analysis of federal records found crypto, AI and online gambling interests put over $377 million into the races.
Representative Greg Casar of Texas said in a statement carried by CNBC that AI company CEOs “should be called to testify under oath. Robert Garcia, the likely next chair of the House Oversight Committee, put it more simply: “Lawyer up.” He was far from the only one. James Talarico beat Ken Paxton to become Texas’ first Democratic senator in nearly four decades, and Gina Hinojosa unseated three-term governor Greg Abbott. Elon Musk responded on X that data centres in space were “looking pretty appealing right now. Big Tech still has President Donald Trump on its side, and his veto may limit how far Democrats can go. Here is how the results could change things for Big Tech. Control of the House gives Democrats the power to investigate and issue subpoenas, and they plan to use it on tech.
The party took control of both the House and the Senate on Tuesday, and many of its winners campaigned against AI data centres and the tech billionaires backing Republicans.Rising prices, tariffs and corruption are said to have driven much of the vote, but tech was hard to miss.
AI stocks dip as investors price in tougher regulation
The moves were modest, and Ned Davis Research data cited by Reuters shows the S&P 500 usually rises after midterms in which the president’s party loses the House. Anthropic will be one of the first to test investor mood, as it begins formally marketing its IPO next week after reporting third-quarter revenue of $16.96 billion, up 47% from the previous quarter.
Investors told Reuters they see the results as a vote on AI as much as on Trump. You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.
Chipmakers TSMC, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix fell in Asian trading on Wednesday, and US data centre operators slipped before the market opened.
Democrats ran on the link between Big Tech, the White House and rising costs, and hearings help them keep that message alive until the 2028 presidential race. Trump’s $100,000 fee on new H-1B visa applications, introduced in September 2025, hits the programme tech firms use to hire skilled foreign workers. Indian nationals receive more than 70% of these visas each year.
Reuters cited a GLJ Research estimate that the state accounts for about a quarter of the US data centre capacity due to come online by 2030. Euronews reported that Abbott paused permits for new data centres pending an audit, as even Republican voters turned against the projects over power bills and too few jobs. Democrats won the governor’s race in Georgia, home to the busiest data centre construction market in the US, and Sherrod Brown won a Senate seat in Ohio after campaigning against data centres. AP has reported that some governors have halted tax breaks for data centres, and New York ordered a one-year ban on large facilities.
AP reported he said that as a mayor or governor he “would absolutely want” a large data centre, though he admitted the industry needs “a little public relations help. Trump told Fox News he would veto any bills he considers “insane. Analysts told Reuters that congressional probes could speed up efforts to require safety standards for advanced AI models, independent testing and incident reporting.
Hearings with tech CEOs have rarely led to new laws, so the bigger impact may be political. Texas sits at the centre of the AI data centre boom. Hinojosa campaigned on pausing new projects until stronger safeguards are in place, though a Republican-controlled state Legislature will limit how far she can go. Other hubs followed. Nationally, a Ipsos poll found only one in three Americans approve of the pace of construction. Trump has stood by the industry. Democrats face their own balancing act, since building trades unions in their base strongly support these projects. Trump’s order blocking states from writing their own AI rules still stands, and Democrats lack the votes to override a veto. So change will likely come through investigations first. States may move faster. The industry is also split, with Politico reporting that groups backed by Andreessen and OpenAI’s Greg Brockman spent the primaries fighting an Anthropic-linked group that supports stricter rules. Immigration is one area where the results could help tech companies. A federal judge struck the fee down in June, ruling it was a tax that only Congress can impose, and an appeals court upheld that in July. Trump extended the order anyway in September. A Democratic Congress is unlikely to approve such a fee, and Republican bills to tighten H-1B rules will now struggle to pass. The relief has limits. Congress cannot cancel executive orders on its own, and some Democrats and their union allies are also critical of the programme.
The pushback began before the vote.