Just a couple hours after Trump announced the federal government was cutting ties with Anthropic for refusing to grant the Pentagon full access to its tools Friday, Sam Altman announced OpenAI received the contract instead, which includes the safeguards Anthropic was denied.
As NPR reports, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced on social media Friday evening the company signed a contract with the Department of Defense, reportedly worth $200 million, allowing the agency to utilize OpenAI’s tools in the Pentagon’s classified system, with the exception of autonomous weapons and mass surveillance.
“Two of our most important safety principles are prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous weapon systems,” Altman said on social media. “The DoW agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement.”
Tonight, we reached an agreement with the Department of War to deploy our models in their classified network.
— Sam Altman (@sama) February 28, 2026
In all of our interactions, the DoW displayed a deep respect for safety and a desire to partner to achieve the best possible outcome.
AI safety and wide distribution of…
Anthropic requested the same stipulations, according to a statement, which prompted President Donald Trump to announce the Pentagon was cutting ties with Anthropic Friday, as CNN reports.
“Anthropic understands that the Department of War, not private companies, makes military decisions. We have never raised objections to particular military operations nor attempted to limit use of our technology in an ad hoc manner,” he said, per NPR, adding that domestic mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons are uses that are “simply outside the bounds of what today's technology can safely and reliably do.”
Per NPR, Secretary Pete Hegseth called Anthropic a “supply chain risk” to national security. Hegseth also said Anthropic was blacklisted from working with the US military or its contractors, and all contractors will be required to prove their work doesn’t utilize Anthropic's products.
Emil Michael, the Pentagon's undersecretary for research and engineering, told NBC News Thursday that federal law and Pentagon policies already prohibit use of AI for domestic mass surveillance and autonomous weapons.
“At some level, you have to trust your military to do the right thing,” Michael said.
CNN reported Friday that Altman expressed support for Anthropic's stance, and he reportedly voiced concern directly to the Pentagon about Hegseth's handling of the situation.
“For all the differences I have with Anthropic, I mostly trust them as a company, and I think they really do care about safety, and I’ve been happy that they’ve been supporting our war fighters,” Altman said.
Altman said OpenAI will send its deployed engineers to the Pentagon to ensure safety protocols are followed, and the Pentagon was reportedly onboard.
“We also will build technical safeguards to ensure our models behave as they should, which the (Department of War) also wanted,” Altman wrote.
He also said the company is advocating for the same parameters to be granted to his colleagues, per CNN.
“We are asking the DoW to offer these same terms to all AI companies, which in our opinion we think everyone should be willing to accept,” Altman wrote. “We have expressed our strong desire to see things de-escalate away from legal and governmental actions and towards reasonable agreements.”
NPR reports that Anthropic plans to legally challenge the supply chain security risk designation, a label typically used for companies with direct connections to foreign adversaries.
“We believe this designation would both be legally unsound and set a dangerous precedent for any American company that negotiates with the government,” the company said in its statement.
Anthropic also objected to being added to the Pentagon’s blacklist, saying the company tried “in good faith” for months to reach an agreement.
Nevertheless, CEO Dario Amodei said the company's valuation and revenue have grown since it stood firm against Trump.
WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 22: Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, delivers remarks at the Integrated Review of the Capital Framework for Large Banks Conference at the Federal Reserve on July 22, 2025 in Washington, DC. The conference brings together experts to discuss regulatory policy and the implications on the financial system (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
