OpenAI, Google, Anthropic and xAI have each been awarded a contrct of up to $200 million by the US Department of Defence in a bid to scale up adoption of AI capabilities in the US. The new contract will help DoD develop agentic AI workflows and use them to address critical national security challenges, DoD’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Ofice said as per Reuters.
“The adoption of AI is transforming the (DoD’s) ability to support our warfighters and maintain strategic advantage over our adversaries,” DoD’s Chief Digital and AI Officer Doug Matty stated.
US government agencies have reportedl been expanding their use of AI owing to a White House order in April which promoted the use of new technology. President Donald Trump has also looked to soften the regulation around AI by revoking a 2023 executive order which looked to reduce risks of AI by mandating data disclosures.
In a separate announcement on Monday, xAI announced a new range of products called “Grok for Government” which made its advanced AI models including the recently launched Grok 4 model available to local, federal, state and national government.
Prior to xAI and Google, Pentagon had announced last month that it was awarding a $200 million contract for OpenAI, noting that the company would “develop prototype frontier AI capabilities to address critical national security challenges in both warfighting and enterprise domains”
The new contract also comes at a time when there has been rising distance between President Trump and Elon Musk. Trump’s biggest backer during the 2024 elections had turned against him on the issue of government spending and later started his own American party.
Meanwhile, Musk’s xAI has also been embroiled in a recent controversy with the company’s Grok chatbot spewing anti-semitic sentiments and even going on to praising Adolf Hitler last week. Since then, xAI has apologized for Grok’s ‘horrific’ conduct and blamed it on a ‘deprecated’ code along with the extermist views of its users.
