In recent years, some of the world’s richest technology companies have increasingly found themselves the center of policy debates in St. Paul.

Minnesota lawmakers take on a breadth of topics that concern Big Tech. They’ve passed social media rules, a ban on AI nudification technology and debated data center regulations. Several of Minnesota’s laws relating to tech companies have already seen challenges in court.

Lawmakers looking to regulate Big Tech have observed the tech companies’ presence growing at the Capitol in recent years.

Sen. Erin Maye Quade, DFL- Apple Valley. (Courtesy of the Minnesota Senate)

Sen. Erin Maye Quade, DFL-Apple Valley, who has championed many tech-related bills at the Legislature, said her meetings with Big Tech representatives have been increasing.

“Before this year, I think I met with TikTok in 2023 and Google in 2024 or 2025, so I had two of those meetings in three years, and then this year alone I probably had six, so it’s noticeable; you can definitely tell,” Maye Quade said.

She joked, “I know Big Tech has a big problem with me.”

In July, Elon Musk’s company, xAI, filed a lawsuit against Minnesota’s first-in-the-nation ban on AI nudification technology, a law championed by Maye Quade.

Requests from Forum News Service to speak with several tech industry lobbyists were unanswered by the time of publication.

Lawmakers may be less receptive

Lobbying disclosures don’t require organizations to say what bills they lobbied for. Individual lobbyists only have to disclose what committees they lobbied on.

But several lawmakers in interviews with Forum News Service pointed to a few places they’ve seen Big Tech the most: social media, data centers and AI.

Rep. Peggy Scott, R-Andover, said she thinks lawmakers are less “receptive” to what Big Tech is approaching them with.

Scott said she remembers a tech lobbyist testifying on a bill for social media protections for minors, which has since been signed into law, and the lobbyist arguing about whether the features of social media were addictive.

“They said they were ‘habit forming,’ and people were just like, ‘Are you kidding me?’” Scott said, calling it “tone deaf.”

Rep. Peggy Scott, R-Andover. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Scott said, “If they (Big Tech) would just admit what we’ve created as far as kids go,” then maybe lawmakers would be more receptive.

“There were only two no votes in all of the Legislature on that bill. That’s how much members do not like Big Tech and what they’ve done to our kids,” Scott said.

Scott, who also said she feels Big Tech’s presence has increased at the Capitol, said she eventually saw lobbyists back off of the social media verification bill.

“I saw a sort of a quieting of the tech industry’s lobbying because I think their attitude was, ‘Well, we’re just going to sue; this thing is gonna pass’,” Scott said.

Lawsuits over bills

Besides Musk’s complaint, Minnesota has seen several lawsuits over bills related to the tech industry. Net Choice filed suit against a bill requiring social media warning labels that was supposed to go into effect July 1. The attorney general is not enforcing the law as that suit plays out.

Rep. Andy Smith, DFL-Rochester, said he feels like Big Tech’s presence has “absolutely” increased in recent years. He said that during negotiations on the social media protections for minors, it felt like the Big Tech lobbyists were making “demands” to lawmakers.

“Which was a very bizarre experience,” he said. “And from a lawmaker perspective, as someone who represents the people of Minnesota, pretty frustrating is probably a light word for it; it can be infuriating at times.”

‘Nobody has stepped up’

In the 2025 session for a bill relating to data center permitting, Sen. Jennifer McEwen, DFL Duluth, said she was concerned with how corporations were influencing the legislation but not showing up in person to answer questions.

She asked if anyone from Amazon was in the audience: “A lobbyist, an executive? Nobody? Nobody. Look around. Nobody has stepped up.”

Matt Ehling, with Minnesotans for Open Government, said that the lack of public presence is a trend for larger organizations.

“You see a lot of the grassroots, volunteer organizations testify at hearings, put material into the record because they’re trying to educate the public about the process and the policies,” Ehling said. “But there’s often an inverse effect for organizations that have a lot of resources that are trying to affect public policy. You don’t frequently see their lobbyists testify.”

How they must disclose spending

Prior to 2024, organizations were required to disclose to Minnesota’s campaign finance board how much money they spent in two categories: “General Lobbying” and lobbying with the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission.

Now organizations must disclose what’s spent in four categories:

• Influencing the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission,

• Influencing legislative action (including attempts to influence the governor),

• Influencing administrative rules by a state agency,

• And influencing the Metropolitan Governmental Units.

How much money is Big Tech spending at the Capitol on lobbying?

That disclosure change lends a bit of insight into how much Big Tech and industry groups are spending on lobbying at the Capitol. In 2025, Google reported about $152,000 on legislative lobbying, Amazon Web Services reported about $111,000 in legislative lobbying, TechNet reported $93,000, NetChoice reported $80,000, Meta reported about $76,000, Microsoft reported $84,000 and Apple $80,000.

Comparing the spending to before the 2024 disclosure change is difficult. Several of the companies and industry groups reported lobbying expenditures under the “General Lobbying” category, making it hard to tell how much of that went previously toward legislative lobbying.

For example, Google reported $120,000 in general lobbying in both 2022 and 2023 before reporting more detailed spending across the four categories beginning in 2024.

TechNet spent $70,000 in 2022 and $73,000 in 2023, but all those funds shifted from “general lobbying” to legislative lobbying with the disclosure change in 2024.

The numbers fall somewhere in the middle of other big lobby groups or Minnesota corporations. For example, Xcel Energy spent $376,000 in 2025; the League of Minnesota Cities spent $1 million and United Health spent $57,000.

‘Tip of the iceberg’

Jeff Hauser, founder and executive director of the Revolving Door Project , a D.C.-based nonprofit that tracks political influence, said he suspects spending is far more than what’s being disclosed.

“This is the tip of the iceberg about what they’re spending because the stakes of what big tech wants from a relatively affluent, pretty big state like Minnesota, it’s way more important,” Hauser said. “The economic stakes are way more than six figures.”

Though he emphasized the companies wouldn’t necessarily be doing something illegal because lobbying disclosure laws are written “narrowly.”

“Those are reporting the expenditures required to be touching base directly with legislative offices, but that is only a small share of how any entity, private sector, or substantial nonprofit, seeks to influence the politics of a moment,” Hauser said.

He said things such as communicating with the executive branch, networking, pitching op-eds or making payments to trade associations aren’t accounted for.

“A lot of the time, Amazon’s interests are going to be roughly comparable enough to Meta that it’s just useful for them to work behind a trade association with a name that doesn’t include their names, and they can fund that to carry their interests,” Hauser said.

Nationally, Big Tech is spending $226,000 a day at Congress, according to Fortune.

‘Spending more and more’

Hauser said that, state by state, “Big Tech has been making decisions about how much they should compromise or not compromise.” He said what they compromise on in one state will set expectations in another.

“They’ve been spending more and more, and now the data center issue — that’s existential. You have companies that are making incredible bets,” Hauser said. “I mean, you have an expectation of potentially close to a trillion dollars in capital expenditure in the United States in 2026.”

Across the board, lawmakers said they’re concerned about the “deep pocket” nature of the tech industry.

“These Big Tech lobbyists don’t play in the same ways,” Smith said. “The money that they have is at a scale we haven’t seen, really in human history. These are some of the richest companies in the world that are willing now, with a completely deregulated system … to use that money basically however they would want to use it.”

Elections are another way Big Tech could be spending money to influence Minnesota politics that isn’t directly on legislation.

Maye Quade said she’s seen estimates that Big Tech has committed more than $100 million to super PACs to unseat state legislators across the country, on both sides of the aisle, who want to regulate AI.

“And a lot of these companies feel that they have, to be frank, the people of Minnesota held hostage because people like Amazon, they like overnight delivery, they like Facebook, they like Instagram, they like social media, for good reasons,” Smith said.