House Oversight Chair Comer Probes Delaware Plan for AI-Run Companies

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) is investigating Delaware's effort to create a new kind of corporate entity run by an artificial intelligence agent, the committee said on Monday.

In a letter to Delaware Gov. Matt Meyer, Comer raised concerns about the proposed Artificial Intelligence Company, or AIC, which would give the person or entity behind it protection from liability for harms caused by the AI agent running it.

"We are concerned that Delaware's AIC proposal could be used to protect powerful AI companies and their investors from responsibility for reckless harmful actions, while also protecting non-transparent forces seeking anticompetitive regulatory capture behind state AI initiatives," Comer wrote.

The letter questions the role of private-sector contributors to the proposal. It notes that a December 2025 report by Delaware's AI Commission made no mention of efforts to assess safety risks or consult independent experts, and that the Secretary of State's office declined to tell reporters about its working relationship with an AI company involved in the project.

Comer asked Meyer to hand over all documents and communications about the AIC's development since January 2025, including "internal AI chat logs," along with agreements with outside contributors, records on safety concerns and all drafts of the proposal, by November 9. The committee said the information could inform federal legislation, including proposals to limit state AI regulatory initiatives.

Delaware's AI company plan

Delaware Secretary of State Charuni Patibanda-Sanchez and John Nay, CEO of legal AI firm Norm Ai, unveiled the proposal in a Fortune op-ed in July, describing a public-private partnership led by Norm Ai.

An AIC would be able to sue and be sued, hold property and take on obligations at its AI agent's direction. It would have a single member responsible for keeping it adequately capitalized, and that member would be shielded from its debts unless it failed to capitalize the company or used it to commit fraud or a willful violation of law. AICs would operate only within a 30-month regulatory sandbox overseen by a committee of state officials and outside experts, would have to disclose their status to counterparties, and would be barred from banking.

The proposal aims to "wrap AI in legal form," the authors wrote, arguing that a recognizable legal identity would make an autonomous system's conduct "visible, traceable, and accountable."

Some legal scholars have questioned that reasoning. "There's really no overarching regulatory plan here for dealing with the fallout that AI-governed companies could bring," Christopher Bruner, a business law professor at the University of Georgia, told WHYY in September.

Patibanda-Sanchez has rejected the idea that the plan is a liability shield. "We're not trying to shield liability. We're trying to define where exactly liability lands when there's some type of malfeasance or psychopathic behavior," she told Bloomberg Law in July.

Meyer has also defended the effort. "It is coming, and the solution is not ignoring it," he said on a WHYY call-in show in September. State lawmakers are expected to consider draft legislation when they return in January.