House spending records show ChatGPT dominates paid AI use on Capitol Hill

House disbursement records for the year ending March 31 show OpenAI’s ChatGPT received roughly 90% of all spending on AI tools by House offices, committees, and institutional accounts, totaling about $100,580 across 798 transactions. The next highest spender was Anthropic’s Claude, with $13,160 spent across 37 transactions. These figures exclude free accounts or AI features bundled into broader software contracts, focusing only on paid transactions.

Democratic offices accounted for $54,165 in AI purchases, which is three times the $15,782 spent by Republican offices during the same period. Congressional staffers reported using ChatGPT and other tools for drafting memos, summarizing and analyzing legislation, responding to constituents, preparing hearing materials, sorting through policy research, and drafting social media posts.

The records, analyzed by CNBC and cited by TechCrunch, provide a quantitative snapshot of AI adoption trends within a critical government body, underscoring ChatGPT’s dominant position in paid AI tooling among congressional entities.