Pentagon Links With 7 AI Giants After Anthropic Dispute

The Defense Department has signed agreements with seven frontier artificial intelligence (AI) companies, saying these deals will provide it with flexibility and prevent “AI vendor lock.”

The agreements with Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, Nvidia, Reflection and SpaceX enable the deployment of the companies’ AI capabilities on the Department’s classified networks, the Department said in a Friday (May 1) press release.

“The Department will continue to build an architecture that prevents AI vendor lock and ensures long-term flexibility for the Joint Force,” the release said. “Access to a diverse suite of AI capabilities from across the resilient American technology stack will give warfighters the tools they need to act with confidence and safeguard the nation against any threat.”

This announcement came about two months after the White House told federal agencies to stop using Anthropic’s AI products, escalating a dispute that started inside the Defense Department but later touched the broader government.

It was reported at the time that the White House’s decision came just ahead of a Pentagon deadline for Anthropic to agree that the military can use its models in “all lawful use cases,” a concession the company refused. Anthropic reportedly wanted contract language that would prohibit use of its models for autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance.

According to the Defense Department’s Friday press release, its agreements with the seven AI companies enable the deployment of their AI capabilities “for lawful operational use.”

These capabilities will help the Pentagon streamline data synthesis, elevate situational understanding and augment warfighter decision-making, supporting warfighting, intelligence and enterprise operations, according to the release.

The Department said in a Friday post on X that the agreements are “the latest initiative in our mandate to create an AI-FIRST WAR DEPARTMENT.”

Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and assistant to the President for science and technology, said in a Friday post on X: “We are committed to ensuring our warfighters have the best tools at their disposal.”

The Defense Department’s official AI platform, GenAI.mil, has been used by 1.3 million Department personnel who have generated tens of millions of prompts and deployed hundreds of thousands of agents over the past five months, per the Friday press release.

“Warfighters, civilians and contractors are putting these capabilities to practical use right now, cutting many tasks from months to days,” the release said.

The Defense Department announced in December 2025 that GenAI.mil was its “new bespoke AI platform” and that Google Cloud’s Gemini was the first of several frontier AI capabilities to be housed on the platform.

Google Cloud said at the time in a blog post that on GenAI.mil, the company’s Gemini for Government AI platform would support unclassified business processes for 3 million civilian and military personnel.

The Department said in its Friday press release that AI is “indispensable to national security” and that American leadership in the technology requires “a thriving domestic ecosystem of capable model developers that enable the full and effective use of their capabilities in support of Department missions.”