The Pentagon gave four AI companies contracts worth up to $200 million each
Google, OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI all won military AI work in July 2025.
Kivorent News desk, published , 1 min read
$800Mcombined ceiling of the four contracts
This is a look back at news from the week of . We wrote it on November 11, 2026, from the sources listed at the end.
The US Defense Department awarded AI contracts worth up to $800 million in total to four companies in July 2025: Google, OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI. Each contract had a ceiling of $200 million, according to AI Weekly's summary of the announcement.
Why it mattered
A few years earlier, several of these companies had limits on military work, and staff protests over defense contracts were common. By mid-2025 all four leading American labs were suppliers to the Pentagon.
The awards also set a pattern of spreading work across rivals. That did not settle the argument inside the companies. In May 2026, staff at Google DeepMind in the UK voted to unionize over a Pentagon deal.
Sources
- Issue #448: Mistral AI gives Le Chat voice recognition and deep research tools, AI Weekly, July 18, 2025
AI law and policyOpenAIGoogleAnthropic
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