The US Department of Defense has made contracts worth up to $200 million each to several leading American artificial intelligence companies, including Elon Musk’s xAI, OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic.
The contracts aim to advance the Pentagon’s use of agentic AI technologies for defense applications, the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) announced Monday.
The announcement comes days after xAI faced backlash over controversial responses by its Grok chatbot, which included praise for Adolf Hitler and anti-Semitic remarks. The company has since apologised and said it updated Grok’s instructions to prevent similar incidents.
Musk, a supporter of Trump’s last campaign, had been appointed to head a budget-cutting task force but later resigned and criticised the administration’s spending. The two have since exchanged public remarks, with Musk apologizing for some of his comments.
Despite the controversy, xAI is moving forward with its new “Grok for Government” service, following a similar move by OpenAI to cater to federal clients.
xAI confirmed it is now listed as an official supplier, allowing all US government departments and agencies to purchase its products.
Meanwhile, OpenAI previously announced in June that it had secured a similar $200 million ceiling-value contract with the Pentagon. Meta is also active in the defense AI space through its collaboration with defense tech firm Anduril to build VR headsets for military and law enforcement use.
The Pentagon’s CDAO said the contracts are designed to help the Department of Defense access cutting-edge AI tools and expertise. “These partnerships will broaden DoD use of and experience in frontier AI capabilities,” the office said in a statement.