The AI race is ongoing as Anthropic follows in OpenAI’s footsteps by making its Claude chatbot available to the federal government for a mere $1 annually. The San Francisco-based firm is the newest contender to introduce its primary LLM to Washington, seeking to win the approval of President Donald Trump’s administration. This revelation comes shortly after OpenAI’s comparable arrangement to deliver ChatGPT to the General Services Administration at the same nominal cost.

As reported by the Financial Times, the Claude agreement stipulates that federal agencies are not obligated to utilize the chatbot, and its application will be limited to sensitive yet unclassified operations. Recently, Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI have received authorization to provide their chatbots to the US government. Google is reportedly pursuing a similar arrangement to present its Gemini AI to federal entities at a lowered price.

Josh Gruenbaum, the commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service, indicated that the aim is to foster widespread usage of AI tools within the federal government. Multiple federal agencies have begun testing AI tools, with the Pentagon awarding $200 million in contracts to Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, and xAI. Wired covered the deployment of AI in agencies such as the GSA and HUD to pinpoint redundant regulations, although the outcomes have been varied.

Gruenbaum noted that there is no formal preference for one AI provider over another. Nevertheless, President Trump has proclaimed that the White House will not interact with what it labels “woke AI,” alluding to chatbots viewed as advancing partisan biases or ideological viewpoints.

Disclosure: Ziff Davis, the parent company of Mashable, initiated legal action against OpenAI in April, alleging copyright infringement in the training and operation of its AI systems.