Tech companies are trying to kill California's AI regulation bill

Andreessen Horowitz, Y Combinator, and Big Tech are trying to stop SB 1047 from passing

As AI regulation bill SB 1047 moves through the California legislature, industry efforts to kill it are ramping up.

Andreessen Horowitz, a venture capital firm which manages $42 billion of assets, recently launched “stopsb1047.com”, urging voters to lobby their representatives against the bill. The website, which claims that SB 1047 would “let China take the lead on AI development”, provides a form letter for Californians to send to their representatives.

Y Combinator, the startup accelerator run by Garry Tan — who has said he made $2.4 billion from an investment in crypto firm Coinbase — is also lobbying against the bill. It recently organised a letter from startups claiming the bill “would mean that AI software developers could go to jail simply for failing to anticipate misuse of their software”.

Scott Wiener, the state senator behind the bill, lambasted Andreessen Horowitz and Y Combinator for their statements, calling them “inaccurate” and “highly inflammatory”. The jail claim, he said, was “categorically false”, “irresponsible”, and “a scare tactic”.

In their campaigns, Andreessen Horowitz and Y Combinator have positioned themselves as speaking up for “the little guy”. Despite the bill’s focus on large companies, they have painted it as a ploy by AI market leaders to create a regulatory moat.

Yet reality is rather different. Not a single Big Tech company has publicly supported the bill, and many oppose it. A recent California Assembly Committee on Judiciary analysis lists Google as opposing unless amended, Meta as having “concerns”, and IBM as fully opposing.

In fact, all major AI players — Apple, Microsoft, Google, Meta, Amazon, OpenAI and Anthropic — are either directly lobbying against the bill, or belong to organisations that are, including TechNet, the Consumer Technology Association and Chamber of Progress. (It should be noted, though, that being a member of a trade group does not necessarily mean the member supports all the group’s policy positions). Furthermore, both Andreessen Horowitz and Y Combinator own stakes in OpenAI.

Big Tech’s opposition is likely because the bill, rather than targeting startups, squarely targets them. SB 1047 would impose a range of safety measures on the developers of AI models which cost more than $100 million to train, requiring developers of such models to take steps to mitigate their model’s ability to cause catastrophic risks, such as cyberattacks or a biological weapons attack. Companies would be banned from releasing a model if “there is still an unreasonable risk that a hazardous capability will be exercised”.

In his letter to Andreessen Horowitz and Y Combinator, Sen. Wiener noted that “AI labs have already agreed to take safety measures in accordance with the White House Voluntary Commitments.”

“SB 1047 clarifies what steps need to be taken by such developers and makes these and other important safety requirements a matter of law rather than merely voluntary commitments,” he said.

The bill overwhelmingly passed the state Senate in May, and has since cleared the Assembly Privacy and Judiciary committees. It will next go to the Appropriations committee. Polls suggests that 77% of Californians support it.