OpenAI has signed an agreement with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to sell its AI products to the U.S. government for classified and unclassified work.
AWS confirmed the deal to TechCrunch. The Information first reported.
The partnership comes after OpenAI signed an agreement with the Department of Defense that allows the military to use its AI models inside classified networks. This was a victory amid a conflict between Anthropic and the Department of Defense (DOD). Anthropic has since been designated a supply chain risk by the Department of Defense for failing to back away from allowing its technology to be used for mass surveillance of Americans or to power fully autonomous weapons. Anthropic sued the Department of Defense in response.
OpenAI’s deal with AWS brings the AI giant into Anthropic’s home turf. Amazon has invested at least $4 billion in Anthropic, which is why Anthropic uses AWS as its primary cloud provider. Claude models are integrated into Amazon Bedrock, AWS’s AI platform for enterprise and government customers, and Claude is one of the most deeply integrated frontier models into AWS GovCloud for public sector use.
This partnership will not only help OpenAI support the Department of Defense through new contracts, but also expand the AI company’s footprint in the federal government by allowing it to serve multiple government agencies through its existing cloud infrastructure on AWS. AWS, a leading cloud provider for U.S. government agencies, has agreed to distribute OpenAI products across its public sector customer base, an AWS spokesperson told TechCrunch. According to an OpenAI spokesperson, this includes Amazon Bedrock for government cloud environments such as AWS GovCloud and AWS Classified Regions for classified and classified workloads.
An OpenAI spokesperson told TechCrunch that the company’s models will be made available through AWS, but that the company maintains control of the technology by deciding which models are made available. AWS must also notify particularly sensitive government agencies, including intelligence community customers, before enabling them. OpenAI coordinates deployment terms, security requirements, and operating conditions directly with customers, but specific deployments may require additional safeguards.
The partnership could open up more business contracts, as companies often view government contracts as a sign of trust and confidence.
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This article has been updated with comments and more information from OpenAI and AWS.
