They’re Building an AI Government Affairs Firm. Seriously.

Government affairs is not exactly the first industry you think about when someone says AI startup.

That’s probably why Locke is interesting.

Founded in 2026, Locke is building an AI-native government affairs firm for companies that need to navigate regulations, lobby policymakers and win government contracts. The company combines AI agents with actual policy people who handle the relationships and the messy human parts of the job.

It sounds like a bizarre combination until you look at the problem. Government is enormous, complicated and painfully slow. There are bills, regulations, agencies, procurement rules and thousands of people making decisions that can determine whether a company gets to operate, sell or win a contract.

Locke thinks the existing system is basically the worst possible interface for getting any of this done.

Their pitch is pretty simple. Let AI handle the mountain of research, legislation, monitoring and paperwork while humans handle the relationships and strategy. The goal is not to replace the lobbyist. It is to make one lobbyist capable of doing a hell of a lot more.

The founder, Parth Badhwar, comes at this from both sides. He worked at the White House and Deloitte’s policy team before running go-to-market at a startup that sold to government offices. So he has seen the bureaucracy from the inside and the frustration from the outside.

And they’re moving fast. Locke says that just six weeks after quietly launching, it had already passed a $500K annual revenue run rate with clients across defense, healthcare and GovTech.

That’s why we’re watching it.

Not because “AI lobbying” sounds cool. It doesn’t.

Because every few years, someone looks at an industry everyone has accepted as painfully broken and says, there has to be a better fucking way to do this.

Locke is betting government affairs is one of those industries.

They might be onto something.

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