OpenAI Reaches A.I. Agreement With Defense Dept. After Anthropic Clash

 

OpenAI Reaches A.I. Agreement With Defense Dept. After Anthropic Clash

 

The deal came hours after President Trump had ordered federal agencies to stop using artificial intelligence technology made by Anthropic, an OpenAI rival.

 

Cade Metz

By Cade Metz

Reporting from San Francisco

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/27/technology/openai-agreement-pentagon-ai.html

Published Feb. 27, 2026

Updated Feb. 28, 2026, 12:27 a.m. ET

 

OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, said on Friday that it had reached an agreement with the Pentagon to provide its artificial intelligence technologies for classified systems, just hours after President Trump ordered federal agencies to stop using A.I. technology made by rival Anthropic.

 

Under the deal, OpenAI agreed to let the Pentagon use its A.I. systems for any lawful purpose. The San Francisco company also said it had found a way to ensure that its technologies would not be applied for domestic surveillance in the United States or with autonomous weapons by installing specific technical guardrails on its systems.

 

“In all of our interactions, the DoW displayed a deep respect for safety and a desire to partner to achieve the best possible outcome,” Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, said in a social media post, using the initials for the Department of War, the administration’s preferred name for the Department of Defense.

 

The Department of Defense did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

 

The deal appeared to be a business and political coup for OpenAI, taking advantage of a rival’s troubles. Anthropic, which competes with OpenAI, had battled the Pentagon in recent weeks over how its A.I. could be used. In negotiations over a $200 million contract, the Pentagon had demanded that it be able to use Anthropic’s A.I. system for all lawful purposes, or it would cut the company off from government business.

 

But Anthropic said it needed terms that would ensure that its A.I. technology would not be used for domestic surveillance of Americans or for autonomous lethal weapons. The Pentagon, in turn, said a private contractor could not decide how its tools would be used for national security. Their disagreement erupted into public view this month and escalated as both dug in their heels.

 

Anthropic and the Pentagon failed to agree on terms by a 5:01 p.m. deadline on Friday. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth then designated Anthropic a “supply-chain risk to national security,” a label that cuts the A.I. company off from business with the U.S. government. Mr. Trump also weighed in, calling the start-up a “radical Left AI company.”

 

Amid the maelstrom, OpenAI stepped in. This week, Mr. Altman publicly backed Anthropic’s position that A.I. should not be used for domestic surveillance or autonomous weapons. On CNBC on Friday, he said he mostly trusted Anthropic and that “they really do care about safety.”

 

At the same time, Mr. Altman engaged in talks with the Pentagon, starting on Wednesday, over a deal for its technology, said two people familiar with the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

 

Mr. Altman negotiated with the Department of Defense in a different way from Anthropic, agreeing to the use of OpenAI’s technology for all lawful purposes. Along the way, he also negotiated the right to put safeguards into OpenAI’s technologies that would prevent its systems from being used in ways that it did not want them to be.

 

OpenAI “will build technical safeguards to ensure our models behave as they should, which the DoW also wanted,” Mr. Altman said.

 

These moves allowed Mr. Altman to uphold safety principles around A.I. while still landing the Pentagon contract. He added that the Pentagon had agreed to have some OpenAI employees work alongside government personnel on classified projects to “to help with our models and to ensure their safety.”

 

Anthropic did not respond to a request for comment on OpenAI’s deal.

 

(The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in 2023, accusing them of copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. The two companies have denied those claims.)

 

Mr. Altman and Dario Amodei, the chief executive of Anthropic, have long been bitter rivals. Dr. Amodei and several other founders of Anthropic previously worked at OpenAI. But they left in 2021 after disagreements with Mr. Altman and others over how A.I. should be funded, built and released.

 

Last week, during an A.I. summit in India, Mr. Altman and Dr. Amodei were caught on video refusing to join hands during a photo session with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

 

It may take time for OpenAI’s technology to be used by the Pentagon. The company is not yet approved for classified work in part because its technologies are not available from Amazon’s cloud computing services, which is how the government often accesses classified systems.

 

That could change after OpenAI signed a partnership with Amazon on Friday. Amazon, a new investor in OpenAI, is pouring $50 billion into the A.I. start-up as part of $110 billion in funding that OpenAI raised to pay for its continued growth and to fuel A.I. development.

 

The Pentagon may also use A.I. services from other Anthropic rivals. Google and Elon Musk’s xAI have contracts with the Defense Department, and the Pentagon said earlier this week that it had reached an agreement to use xAI’s technology for classified operations.

 

Google has had similar discussions, but it is unclear where those talks stand. In 2018, during the first Trump administration, Google backed away from a military contract after protests from employees. It has since agreed to work with the Pentagon again.

 

This week, as the Pentagon threatened to sever ties with Anthropic, dozens of OpenAI employees signed an open letter urging other A.I. companies to support the stance that the technologies not be used for domestic surveillance or with autonomous weapons.

 

“They’re trying to divide each company with fear that the other will give in,” the letter read, referring to the Pentagon. “That strategy only works if none of us know where the others stand. This letter serves to create shared understanding and solidarity in the face of this pressure from the Department of War.”

 

Cade Metz is a Times reporter who writes about artificial intelligence, driverless cars, robotics, virtual reality and other emerging areas of technology.