Delaware Gives AI a 30-Month Sandbox—and Owners a Liability Lifeline

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) is investigating Delaware’s proposal to establish an artificial intelligence company, or AIC, governed and operated by an AI agent. In a Monday letter dated October 26, 2026, Comer asked Delaware Gov. Matt Meyer for documents concerning who helped develop the proposal and how it would address potential harms and anticompetitive conduct.

“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 also questions private-sector involvement and notes that a December 2025 report from Delaware’s AI Commission did not mention evaluating safety risks or consulting independent experts. Comer requested all documents and communications related to the AIC’s development since January 2025, including “internal AI chat logs,” agreements with outside contributors, records of safety concerns and 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 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. Under the plan, an AIC could sue and be sued, own property and assume obligations at the direction of its AI agent. It would have a single member responsible for ensuring adequate capitalization, with that member shielded from the company’s debts unless the company was undercapitalized, used to commit fraud or engaged in a willful violation of law.

AICs would operate exclusively in a 30-month regulatory sandbox overseen by a committee of state officials and outside experts. They would have to disclose their AI status to counterparties and would be prohibited from using banking services. The Oversight Committee also cited the Secretary of State’s office declining to tell reporters about its working relationship with the AI company involved in the proposal.

A Stanford University-led study found that law professors preferred answers generated by artificial intelligence to answers written by fellow professors when evaluating large language models on legal-reasoning tasks. The research involved 16 professors from 14 U.S. law schools, including Stanford, Yale, New York University, the University of Chicago, Georgetown and UCLA.