Despite the heated national debate on AI, the biggest AI legislation fights of 2024 happened in statehouses, not Congress. Now, the House Energy and Commerce Committee aims to take control of AI policy at a national level with a new measure in a must-pass budget reconciliation bill: a moratorium on state-level AI legislation that cements Congress as the sole authority on AI. And with the measure, the startups poised to take advantage of the growing AI market have the chance to cement themselves as a political force, not just a market one.

Last summer, a coalition of startup founders, investors, and new media played a significant role in killing California’s onerous SB 1047, which would have created a new state agency to regulate AI — and which critics argued would “stifle innovation in the AI sector and hurt California’s economy” — through intense, dogged engagement with politicians and media. Now, the Energy and Commerce Committee’s moratorium gives this same group a key opportunity to prove they’re a lasting constituency with clout.

The most ambitious attempts to regulate AI to date have come from state-level bills like SB 1047. Just as California’s Clean Air Act waiver allows the state to dictate emissions policy for the whole country without going through the federal legislative process, state AI bills would effectively regulate all American artificial intelligence companies.