OpenAI Inks Deal with Amazon to Sell AI Models to US Government Agencies

OpenAI Inks Deal with Amazon to Sell AI Models to US Government Agencies

AWS agreed on March 17 to distribute OpenAI products across its government customer base. The deal includes Amazon Bedrock in AWS GovCloud and AWS Classified Regions supporting Secret and Top Secret workloads.

Scope of Access

The partnership gives OpenAI access to roughly 3 million Department of Defense employees and civilian agencies that already use AWS infrastructure. OpenAI retains control over which models are available, and AWS must notify OpenAI before enabling especially sensitive government and intelligence customers.

Context

The deal follows OpenAI's earlier Pentagon contracts and contrasts with Anthropic's stance on refusing to support mass surveillance and autonomous weapons. While Anthropic faces a "supply chain risk" designation from the DoD, OpenAI is deepening its government partnerships through major cloud providers.