Ron Conway's SV Angel launches an AI policy bridge to Democrats

Why it matters

Project Blueprint gives AI companies a Democratic channel as safety and infrastructure costs become campaign issues, placing a major industry investor inside the rule-writing conversation.

Ron Conway (@RonConway) launched Project Blueprint on Monday through SV Angel, giving former White House press secretary Jay Carney a mandate to rebuild ties between AI executives and Democratic lawmakers before the November midterm elections.

Carney joined SV Angel after leaving Airbnb this summer, according to DealBook's report on the launch. He brings a career built across the institutions Project Blueprint needs to connect: Carney served as President Barack Obama's press secretary from 2011 to 2014, led global corporate affairs at Amazon for seven years and later ran policy and communications at Airbnb. Before entering government, he spent two decades at Time, including stints as Moscow correspondent and Washington bureau chief, according to Airbnb's executive biography.

Project Blueprint is designed to forge agreement between technology leaders and lawmakers on durable AI rules. SV Angel's memo, reviewed by DealBook, argued that the technology industry's political shift to the right had left a vacuum between AI developers and Democrats. The memo called for a "trusted bridge" to the lawmakers who may write the rules governing frontier systems.

The initiative starts from a sharper diagnosis than the usual industry appeal for permission to keep building. SV Angel's memo acknowledged that advanced systems have offensive cyber capabilities, protections for children remain inadequate, job displacement poses a real threat and opposition to data centers over electricity prices and water use is growing. It described public skepticism as a failure created by the industry itself.

That admission defines Conway's immediate task. AI developers want federal rules that offer predictability across state lines, while lawmakers face pressure from voters concerned about automation, safety and the physical costs of expanding computing infrastructure. Project Blueprint gives AI executives a channel into those negotiations through an operator who has represented both a presidential administration and two of the largest consumer technology platforms.

Conway's policy network gets a new purpose

Project Blueprint extends work Conway began during the first generative AI boom. In April 2023, SV Angel convened policy representatives from OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, Anthropic, Apple, Hugging Face and Stability AI to discuss responsible development, standards and public policy, Axios reported at the time. SV Angel now identifies Conway as the founder of its AI Ad Hoc Workgroup, which consolidates policy proposals from leading developers and advocates for AI safety.

The new initiative also reflects the political damage created by the AI industry's campaign spending. Conway was an early donor to Leading the Future, the pro-industry political network backed by investors and executives including Marc Andreessen, Joe Lonsdale and OpenAI President Greg Brockman. A group in that network spent $8.1 million opposing New York Assemblymember Alex Bores in June's Democratic congressional primary, according to a Washington Post analysis of campaign filings.

Bores, who advocated stronger AI safeguards, lost the race by roughly four percentage points. The spending turned a Manhattan primary into an early test of whether AI companies and their investors could punish lawmakers who supported tighter rules. It also demonstrated why Silicon Valley needs a different interface with Democrats: attack ads can remove a candidate, but they do not produce legislation or public trust.

Carney is being brought in to handle that second problem. He told DealBook that AI's benefits were substantial and that its risks had to be managed. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman endorsed the effort, calling national safety requirements for the most capable systems a first step toward a global framework.

Conway announced Project Blueprint after a week in which leaders at several frontier laboratories publicly supported slowing the development of their most advanced systems and called for stronger safeguards. The moment gives SV Angel an opening to argue that regulation and continued development can coexist.

Project Blueprint's influence will depend on whether Democratic lawmakers treat it as a credible negotiating forum rather than another industry vehicle for shaping its own rules. Conway has the relationships to get AI executives into the room. Carney's assignment is to make that access produce terms lawmakers can defend to voters who increasingly experience AI through threatened jobs, higher power demand and systems whose capabilities are advancing faster than Washington's response.