Gov. Gavin Newsom signs AI regulations, bucking Big Tech
After months of lobbying on both sides from Big Tech, safety advocates and Hollywood A-listers, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed off on artificial intelligence regulations that are expected to be a model for other states looking to rein in the burgeoning technology.
Newsom had hinted in recent days that he would support guardrails on artificial intelligence, which has become Silicon Valley’s raison d’être in recent years as it has automated entry-level jobs and upended industries from banking to the arts. Companies have poured billions into the burgeoning technology despite questions about its financial sustainability and the costs of its high demand for electricity and water being passed onto consumers.
AI enthusiasts have ramped up federal lobbying efforts as executives from Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg to Silicon Valley investors Marc Andreessen and David Sacks have embraced President Donald Trump. In turn, Trump installed Sacks as his White House AI czar and gave tech executives a front-row seat to his January inauguration. Meanwhile, Congress has resisted legislative attempts to regulate the technology, and federal agencies have contracted with Meta and OpenAI to use their AI models.
On Monday, Newsom signed Senate Bill 53, a bill by Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, that requires AI companies to enact and publish safety protocols and report critical safety incidents to the Office of Emergency Services. It also establishes Cal Compute, a public AI research vehicle.
“California has proven that we can establish regulations to protect our communities while also ensuring that the growing AI industry continues to thrive,” Newsom said in a statement. “AI is the new frontier in innovation, and California is not only here for it – but stands strong as a national leader by enacting the first-in-the-nation frontier AI safety legislation that builds public trust as this emerging technology rapidly evolves.”
Last year, he vetoed a similar but broader bill from Wiener that Big Tech had heavily lobbied against. The industry had argued that the bill’s provisions requiring companies to protect whistleblowers and prevent AI models from being used for “critical harms” like paralyzing power grids were too heavy-handed. Instead, Newsom convened a panel of AI experts, who published a report in June offering policy recommendations.
Wiener introduced SB 53 earlier this year as a more narrow alternative to the bill Newsom vetoed last year.
“With a technology as transformative as AI, we have a responsibility to support that innovation while putting in place commonsense guardrails to understand and reduce risk,” he said in a statement included with Newsom’s signing announcement. “With this law, California is stepping up, once again, as a global leader on both technology innovation and safety.”
Tech Oversight, an AI oversight advocacy organization that set its sights on the California Legislature earlier this year, applauded Wiener and Newsom for supporting SB 53 despite Big Tech’s objections.
“This is a key victory for the growing movement in California and across the country to hold Big Tech CEOs accountable for their products, apply basic guardrails to the development and deployment of AI, and protect whistleblowers’ ability to step forward when something goes wrong,” Executive Director Sacha Haworth said.
Anthropic, the fourth-richest company in the world, has set itself apart from other AI companies by backing SB 53. In a statement, co-founder and policy head Jack Clark applauded Newsom and Wiener, saying the bill “establishes meaningful transparency requirements for frontier AI companies without imposing prescriptive technical mandates.”
“We’re proud to have worked with Senator Wiener to help bring industry to the table and develop practical safeguards that create real accountability for how powerful AI systems are developed and deployed, which will in turn keep everyone safer as the rapid acceleration of AI capabilities continues,” Clark said.
Others, like Chamber of Progress, an organization founded by a former Google executive that represents Big Tech firms like Nvidia, a16z, Apple and Amazon, said SB 53 enacted “sweeping restrictions on AI developers.”
“California has always offered a fair shot for new innovators – that’s exactly why our tech sector has flourished,” said Robert Singleton, the group’s senior director for California. “But this could send a chilling signal to the next generation of entrepreneurs who want to build here in California.”
Newsom, a longtime tech ally since his days as mayor of San Francisco during the dot-com boom, has been hesitant to heavily regulate AI.
He has touted the technology as the solution to streamlining government, and tapped moguls like Nvidia’s Jensen Huang to advise state agencies on using generative AI, which creates new images, audio and other media using existing data.
This story was originally published September 29, 2025 at 1:37 PM.
