The US Department of Defense (DoD) announced on Monday that OpenAI, Alphabet’s Google, Anthropic, and Elon Musk’s AI company xAI have each secured contracts worth up to $200 million with the goal of expanding the use of cutting-edge AI capabilities within the government organization.
According to the department’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, the contracts will allow the DoD to create agentic AI workflows and apply them to important national security issues.
Chief Digital and AI Officer Doug Matty stated, “The [DoD’s] ability to support our warfighters and maintain strategic advantage over our adversaries is being transformed by the adoption of AI”.
Due to a White House order encouraging adoption in April, US federal organizations have been using AI more and more. Additionally, Present Donald Trump has taken steps to loosen tech rules by rescinding an executive order from the Biden administration in 2023 that aimed to lower AI risks by requiring data disclosures.
Separately, on Monday, xAI introduced a line of products dubbed “Gork for Government”, which will allow federal state, local, and national security clients to use its cutting edge AI models, including its most recent flagship Grok 4.
The $200 million deal was disclosed by the Pentagon last month, stating that OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, would “develop prototype frontier AI capabilities to address critical national security challenges in both warfighting and enterprise domains”.
In addition to resolving concerns about the need for competitive contracts for AI use in federal agencies, the contracts announced on Monday strengthen the bonds between US government operations and the companies at the forefront of the AI race.
At a time when Musk’s Grok chatbot was gaining traction in the federal government, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren asked DoD to guarantee competitive AI contracting in May.
SOURCE: DAWN NEWS
