OpenAI has been awarded a $200 million contract to provide the U.S. government with AI tools and to “develop prototype frontier AI capabilities to address critical national security challenges in both warfighting and enterprise domains,” according to the Department of Defense.
The Department of Defense announced the contract yesterday. Image from Adobe Stock.
The work, to be completed in Washington, DC, is estimated to be finished by July 2026.
In a blog post, OpenAI said their goal with this contract is “to unlock AI solutions that enhance the capabilities of government workers, help them cut down on the red tape and paperwork, and let them do more of what they come to work each day to do: serve the American people.”
With the $200 million contract, OpenAI will help the Defense Department “identify and prototype how frontier AI can transform its administrative operations,” according to OpenAI.
In the blog post, OpenAI announced its initiative “OpenAI for Government” to bring AI tools to public servants. Under this banner, OpenAI will consolidate existing and future efforts to provide services to the U.S. government. This includes ChatGPT Gov, which was announced in January.
AI research labs build ties with the U.S. government
Anthropic has also progressively expanded its collaboration with the U.S. government, especially in national security and intelligence sectors. In November 2024, the company partnered with Palantir Technologies and Amazon Web Services to integrate its Claude AI models into secure government environments. The focus of that partnership is to support tasks such as data analysis and decision-making support. In June 2025, Anthropic introduced “Claude Gov”, a suite of AI models tailored for classified applications. In August 2024, NIST announced that both Anthropic and OpenAI had entered into a research, testing, and framework agreement with the agency.
ChatGPT Gov is a tailored version of ChatGPT “designed to provide U.S. government agencies with an additional way to access OpenAI’s frontier models.”
OpenAI for Government will give U.S. federal, state and local governments access to ChatGPT Enterprise and ChatGPT Gov, custom models for national security, “hands-on support” and “insight into what’s coming next,” said OpenAI.
OpenAI mentioned that all use cases must comply with their policies and guidelines, which currently ban their services from being used to “develop or use weapons” and “injure others or destroy property.”
Pennsylvania has already participated in an OpenAI pilot program, where Commonwealth employees estimated they saved an average of 95 minutes a day by using ChatGPT.
Additionally, the Trump administration is expected to announce its AI Action Plan on July 22. Parts of this plan appear to have been leaked on GitHub. The U.S. General Services Administration posted code indicating that AI.gov is set to launch on July 4. 404 Media found a version of the website and API. The code, website, and API have been taken down.
The site offered a chatbot and integrations with OpenAI, Google and Anthropic. It also included Console, an analytics feature that monitors AI adoption among employees.
