OpenAI strikes deal with Pentagon after Anthropic blacklisted by Trump

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said late Friday that his company had reached an agreement with the Department of Defense on the use of artificial intelligence models, shortly after President Donald Trump said the government would not work with AI rival Anthropic.

“Tonight, we reached an agreement with the War Department to place our Models in their secret network,” Altman wrote in a post. to post About X. “In all our interactions, DoW has demonstrated a deep respect for security and a desire to partner to achieve the best possible outcome.”

Altman’s post comes at the end of a dramatic week for the AI ​​industry, which has found itself at the center of a political debate over how its models can be used. Earlier in the day, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called Anthropic a “Supply Chain Risk to National Security” after weeks of tense negotiations. This label is often directed at foreign competitors and forces Department of Defense vendors and contractors to certify that they do not use Anthropic’s models.

President Trump also directed every federal agency in the United States to: “stop immediately“They all use Anthropic’s technology.

Anthropic was the first lab to distribute its models on the Department of Defense’s classified network and was trying to negotiate the terms of its ongoing contract with the agency before talks collapsed. The company wanted assurances that its models would not be used for fully autonomous weapons or mass surveillance of Americans, while the Department of Defense wanted Anthropic to agree to allow the military to use the models in all legal use cases.

Altman told employees Thursday that OpenAI shares the same “red lines” as Anthropic. In his post on Friday, he said the Department of Defense accepted the restrictions.

“Two of our most important security principles are the ban on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including autonomous weapons systems,” Altman wrote. DoW accepts these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our contract.

It’s not immediately clear why the Department of Defense agreed to feature OpenAI and not Anthropic, but government officials have criticized Anthropic for months for allegedly being overly concerned with AI security.

Altman said OpenAI will create “technical safeguards to ensure its models behave as they should” and that the company will assign staff to “assist our models and ensure their security.”

“We’re asking the DoW to offer the same terms to all AI companies, and we think everyone should be willing to accept that,” Altman said. he wrote. “We expressed our strong desire to see things move away from legal and official action and towards reasonable agreements.”

Anthropic said in a statement Friday that it was “deeply saddened” by the Pentagon’s decision to label the company as a supply chain risk. He said he plans to challenge the appointment in court.

WRISTWATCH: Hegseth orders Pentagon to designate Anthropic as supply chain risk