OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said late Friday that his company has agreed to terms with the Department of Defense on use of its artificial intelligence models, shortly after President Donald Trump said the government won’t work with AI rival Anthropic.
“Tonight, we reached an agreement with the Department of War to deploy our models in their classified network,” Altman wrote in a post on X. “In all of our interactions, the DoW displayed a deep respect for safety and a desire to partner to achieve the best possible outcome.”
Altman’s post lands at the end of a dramatic week for the AI industry, which has found itself at the center of a political debate surrounding how its models can be used. Earlier in the day, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth designated Anthropic a “Supply-Chain Risk to National Security” after weeks of tense negotiations. The label is typically reserved for foreign adversaries, and it would force DoD vendors and contractors to certify that they don’t use Anthropic’s models.
President Trump also directed every federal agency in the U.S. to “immediately cease” all use Anthropic’s technology.
Anthropic was the first lab to deploy its models across the DoD’s classified network, and had been trying to negotiate the ongoing terms of its contract with the agency before talks collapsed. The company wanted assurance that its models would not be used for fully autonomous weapons or mass surveillance of Americans, while the DoD wanted Anthropic to agree to let the military use the models across all lawful use cases.
