Hajra Naz
Turns out Congress has a favorite AI tool, and it’s not close. According to a new report from CNBC, OpenAI’s ChatGPT is dominating spending among the AI tools used by House offices right now.
The Numbers Behind the Trend
House disbursement records show that ChatGPT pulled in roughly 90% of all AI tool spending across House offices, committees, and institutional accounts during the year ending March 31. Specifically, CNBC found around $100,580 spent on ChatGPT across 798 separate transactions. That’s out of at least $113,740 in total AI spending housewide.
Anthropic’s Claude came in a distant second. It brought in about $13,160 across just 37 transactions—a fraction of what ChatGPT pulled in, both in total dollars and number of purchases.
A Clear Partisan Gap
The spending split isn’t even close to balanced along party lines either. Democratic offices spent $54,165 on AI tools, roughly three times the $15,782 spent by Republican offices during the same period. That gap is worth sitting with for a second, since it hints at a broader difference in how each side is approaching AI adoption on the Hill, at least when it comes to paid tools.
It’s also worth noting what these numbers don’t capture. Free ChatGPT accounts aren’t included here, and neither is any AI functionality bundled into larger software contracts. So the real footprint of AI use in Congress is almost certainly bigger than these figures suggest; this is just what shows up as direct, itemized spending.
You may also like to read: Most Visited Websites of 2026: ChatGPT Ranks at the Top
What Staffers Are Actually Doing With It
So what’s all this AI actually being used for? Quite a lot, apparently. Congressional staffers are leaning on these tools to write memos, summarize dense legislation, and dig through policy research faster than doing it manually. Some are using it to draft responses to constituents, prep materials ahead of hearings, or even knock out social media posts.
None of this is particularly surprising, given how much reading and writing goes into daily Capitol Hill work. What is notable is just how lopsided the tool choice has become, with one company effectively cornering the market inside Congress for now.
