The AI Giants are beating the banks to fund the future of technology, but the two hope that a $1 fee will help them gain foothold in Washington.
Openai and humanity are charging the Trump administration just $1 per agent to access major AI models next year.
In another indication of how competitive things remain, Openai announced its agreement for ChatGPT Enterprise Access on August 6th. Less than a week later, humanity announced access to Enterprise and Claude to Claude and similar contracts to the government.
Government contracts can be extremely advantageous for AI companies. Humanity has already signed a contract with the Pentagon, which may be worth $200 million.
“Some of these companies are open to the public. If they say their products are being used by government agencies, it will increase their long-term potential,” Darrell M. West, a senior fellow at the Centre for Technology Innovation, told Business Insider.
West said companies that have not surprised these types of contracts are at risk of being “squeezed out.”
“There are a lot of AI companies right now, but that's probably going to be narrow in the future. Some companies will work and many aren't going to make it. So if you let government officials use your product, you're more likely to become one of the survivors,” he said.
Google may be doing similar transactions offshore. Earlier this month, the US General Services Agency added Tech Giant's Gemini model to its list of approved AI vendors. After that announcement, Openai and humanity, which were also added to the list, announced $1 per agent contract.
Elon Musk's Xai originally intended to strike a similar partnership, but these talks flare up after Grok began posting anti-Semitic content, Wired reported.
Federal employees have other means of using popular AI chatbots.
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On Thursday, the U.S. General Services Agency announced USAI, a secure platform that allows federal government employees to experiment with AI models for free. The platform originally features models from Google, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, Anthropic and Openai.
A GSA spokesman told BI that the nominal fee contracts between humanity and Openai are “not the same as the USAI access mechanism.”
The partnership follows a set of policies designed to keep the United States at the forefront of the global AI race with President Donald Trump's announcement of the AI Action Plan.
AI companies are seriously maintaining their position in the US. Last year, Anduril and Palantir announced their own efforts to equip the government with AI. Openai CEO Sam Altman joined Trump in January and announced Stargate. Stargate is a $500 billion project that will help rebuild the AI giant's moat against its Chinese competitors.
The Human Consensus also applies to all three branches, emphasizing that the transaction will be extended to Congressional employees.
Despite repeated efforts, Congress was unable to pass drastic AI laws. More recently, lawmakers have dealt with some in the industry after stripping President Donald Trump's “Big Beautiful Building” of provisions that would have imposed decades of moratorium on state-level AI laws. That initial inclusion sparked bipartisan opposition. Openai, Meta and Alphabet are all opposed to previous state-level efforts to regulate the industry.
As Business Insider previously reported, some lawmakers remain skeptical of using the AI chatbot itself.
