The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) has announced a $200 million contract with AI research frontrunner OpenAI to provide the government with new AI tools.
The DOD mentioned in a post outlining the deal that OpenAI “will develop prototype frontier AI capabilities to address critical national security challenges in both warfighting and enterprise domains.” This work will be primarily completed in Washington D.C., and likely to be completed by July 2026.
OpenAI said in a blog post that this contract is its first partnership under a new initiative to provide its AI technology to workers across federal, state, and local governments. The company is offering custom models for national security on “a limited basis,” according to the announcement with OpenAI saying that all use cases must comply with its policies and guidelines.
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Currently, the OpenAI’s usage policy bans its services from being used to “develop or use weapons” and “injure others or destroy property.” This is notable since the word “warfighting,” which is present in the DOD’s post is noticeably absent in OpenAI’s post.
OpenAI’s past policies banned “military and warfare” applications entirely, but last January it changed its wording and said: “Don’t use our service to harm yourself or others.”
“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 health care, to streamlining how they look at program and acquisition data, to supporting proactive cyber defense,” OpenAI said.
The deal comes shortly after OpenAI’s Chief Product Officer Kevin Weil and former OpenAI Chief Revenue Officer Bob McGrew were officially sworn into the U.S. Army Reserve as lieutenant colonels. The CTOs of Palantir and Meta did likewise and joined the newly formed Detachment 201: Executive Innovation Corps, which is advising the Pentagon on bringing AI to the military.
This isn’t the first time OpenAI joined forces with the military. The company had entered into a partnership with Anduril Industries in December 2024 to integrate its AI software into the defense tech company’s counterdrone systems.
Meanwhile, OpenAI’s competitor Meta has also entered a partnership with Anduril, indicating a growing nexus of defense and AI. Anduril and Meta will be developing Extended Reality (XR) features for the United States military to provide warfighters with enhanced perception and enable intuitive control of autonomous platforms on the battlefield.
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There have been several other attempts to bring defense and AI technology together. The U.S. has recently renamed the AI Safety Institute to focus on combating national security risks instead of overall safety.
Rival AI developer Anthropic announced an AI model with less stringent guardrails for U.S. defense and intelligence agencies on June 5; Google removed commitments in February to not use AI in ways “that cause or are likely to cause overall harm,” and Meta started allowing the U.S. government to use its Llama AI model for “national security applications” last year.