OpenAI has scored a $200 million contract from the Pentagon to bring artificial intelligence to American warfighters.
The Department of Defense said this week that it is paying OpenAI to “develop prototype frontier AI capabilities to address critical national security challenges in both warfighting and enterprise domains.”
OpenAI said this represents the first partnership of a new “OpenAI for Government” effort, which intends to provide the government with custom models for national security and insight into its future plans, among other things.
“This contract, with a $200 million ceiling, will bring OpenAI’s industry-leading expertise to help the Defense Department identify and prototype how frontier AI can transform its administrative operations, from improving how service members and their families get healthcare, to streamlining how they look at program and acquisition data, to supporting proactive cyber defense,” OpenAI said on its blog.
The Pentagon said the $200 million award will go toward work with “an estimated completion date of July 2026.”
OpenAI has already partnered with U.S. National Labs and is working on additional projects for national security consumers, including in the U.S. intelligence community.
While OpenAI is courting the government, its rival Meta looks to be recruiting OpenAI’s brightest minds.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said Tuesday on his brother’s podcast that Meta was offering large sums of cash to lure away his employees.
“They’ve started making these giant offers to a lot of people on our team: 100 million-dollar signing bonuses, more than that comp per year,” Mr. Altman said.
He said he was happy that none of the people he viewed as OpenAI’s best had decided to decamp to Meta — so far.
Meta, meanwhile, has poached top tech minds from ScaleAI and was partnering with the company. Scale said last week that Meta was also providing additional funding, which would value Scale at more than $29 billion.
