The Download: OpenAI's lobbying, and making ammonia below the Earth's surface

OpenAI spent 1.76 million on government lobbying in 2024 and 510,000 in the last three months of the year alone, according to a new disclosure filed on Tuesday--a significant jump from 2023, when the company spent just 260,000 on Capitol Hill. The disclosure is a clear signal of the company's arrival as a political player, as its first year of serious lobbying ends and Republican control of Washington begins. While OpenAI's lobbying spending is still dwarfed by bigger tech players, the uptick comes as it and other AI companies are helping redraw the shape of AI policy. Forget massive steel tanks--some scientists want to make chemicals with the help of rocks deep beneath Earth's surface. New research shows that ammonia, a chemical crucial for fertilizer, can be produced from rocks at temperatures and pressures that are common in the subsurface.