Kyrsten Sinema unloaded $3 million of her former campaign funds to help Arizona State University research artificial intelligence and made big payments to a payroll services company in her first three months out of office.

The spending is the first glimpse of how Sinema is winding down her campaign war chest since leaving the U.S. Senate in January.

The Arizona independent’s spending on travel and security dropped considerably after a string of campaign finance reports pointed to a life of luxury travel and eye-popping expenses unmatched by her then-Senate colleagues.

What stands out in the report she filed on April 14 are charitable donations, dominated by the ASU gift, and another donation to a group advocating for a drug treatment favored by one of her employers and her payments to Gusto Inc., a payroll services company.

Even after giving away $3.1 million and $436,000 in operating expenses, Sinema’s campaign organization still had $833,000 in cash entering April. Her campaign cash balance dropped 81% from the previous quarterly report and she ended with $39,000 in credit card debt.

Sinema teamed with OpenAI, the company behind the powerful chatbot ChatGPT, to launch the Spark Center for Innovation in Learning. The new center is aimed at finding new ways to help neurodivergent people learn.

Besides that, Sinema’s campaign gave a combined $90,000 to five other organizations.

The biggest slice of that — $50,000 — went to VETS: Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions, a Texas-based charity that brings together several strands of Sinema’s recent work.

VETS is a nonprofit organization that advocates, among other things, for psychedelic-assisted therapies for traumatic brain injuries to veterans.

VETS recently touted the introduction of a bill in the Texas legislature to fund clinical trials of ibogaine, a drug made from a west African plant to treat opioid disorders.

In February, Sinema urged the Arizona Legislature to pass a bill to set aside $5 million from the state’s general fund to conduct clinical studies on ibogaine.

On March 31, the international law firm of Hogan Lovells announced that Sinema had joined its global regulatory and intellectual property group. The law firm had previously represented MindMed, a biotech company that was running a clinical trial of ibogaine in Australia.

For her part, Sinema maintained that her advocacy of funding ibogaine trials was unrelated to her work with the law firm.

“My work on this project took place before any discussions occurred regarding joining Hogan Lovells,” Sinema said in a statement released by the firm earlier this month. “The bill is not related to MindMed or its pipeline. MindMed is not exploring the use of ibogaine.”

Sinema made advocacy for veterans causes a major part of her 12 years in Washington.

She gave $10,000 each to four other nonprofit organizations in the first three months of the year. They are:

• Transcend Foundation, a Michigan-based nonprofit affiliated with a telehealth company;  
• Team Red, White, and Blue, Inc., an Indiana nonprofit that aids fitness programs for veterans;
• Task Force Dagger Special Operations Foundation, a Florida-based charity that caters to helping veterans involved with Special Operations Command; and
• The Casey Skudin 343 Fund, Inc., a New York-based charity that provides first responders access to alternative treatments for trauma and related mental health services.

Sinema’s campaign paid five staffers $185,000 in the first three months of the year. The campaign detailed $289,000 in payroll-related fees paid to Gusto Inc., a New York-based payroll services company.

It was a big bump in pay for the staffers and Gusto compared to the end of 2024. Sinema’s campaign spent a total of $79,000 for payroll-related expenses in the final three months of last year.

At least one of the people paid by Sinema’s campaign committee, Austin Kennedy, works with her now.

Kennedy’s online resume identifies him as the executive director of the Arizona Business Roundtable, the firm touting corporate interests in which Sinema is the president and CEO.

Her campaign committee paid Kennedy $6,500 in January days after she established the business.

Much of the final year of Sinema’s single term in the Senate was dominated by chronic absences after she announced in March 2024 that she would not seek a second term.

During the period she first became a no-show, her campaign committee billed about $216,000 for travel, including bills for visits to France, Japan and the United Kingdom between July and September. Her campaign also paid $152,000 for her security-related expenses.

In the final three months of 2024, Sinema’s campaign spent $144,000 on travel expenses that pointed to stays in luxury hotels in San Francisco, Las Vegas, New York City, the Grand Canyon, Park City, Utah, Montana and Wyoming.

The reports didn’t detail specifically where Sinema went, why or even when. But it did echo the kind of complaints of indulgent spending that helped lead to ethics complaints filed against her by her critics.

Her campaign also covered $241,000 in security-related expenses in the final three months of the year, including almost $234,000 to Chandler-based Kinsaker Security Group LLC.

But at the outset of 2025, her security organization sent her campaign money. Kinsaker refunded her campaign committee $71,000 for an unused retainer fee that dated to November 2023.

That income was easily the biggest of a handful of refunds that provided her a net $82,000 in income during the first three months of the year.

Sinema left office in January and moved quickly into the private sector.

On the day her term ended, Sinema filed paperwork creating the Arizona Business Roundtable, a firm touting corporate interests in which she is the president and CEO.

She has also joined Coinbase Global Inc., a cryptocurrency firm, as a member of its global advisory council, along with Chris LaCivita, the co-campaign manager for President Donald Trump’s 2024 reelection.

(This story has been updated to add new information.)