This money should be going to companies that need 200M.
For 200M Google will open an account, send an email that says:
You're account is ready, there is $40m left on the retainer. We can code up some email template for 40M if you want.
pwarner · 1h ago
or not spent by the government?
I mean, unless this is for some really specific thing that really needs a push, I think there's sort of enough money flowing this way already, today. (5 years ago, again a different story)
diamond559 · 58m ago
Payback for the presidential library gifts. The Defense Department doesn't need one hallucinating chatbot let alone four...
fooker · 19m ago
Hallucinating autonomous drones on the other hand...
WiSaGaN · 33m ago
This actually makes sense because in the meantime Meta is ditching the open-source (open-weights) direction.
Before the national security narrative took over, the main argument was about "safe" AI, where releasing models as open weights was considered "not safe." Now that no major US AI players release premium open-weights models, the "safety" narrative isn't needed anymore—so cooperating with the US military is feasible again.
clarle · 3h ago
Are Amazon and Meta the ones losing out the most here, in terms of the companies building foundational models?
Probably more understandable for Meta, since they've been leaving the B2B space since Workplace has been sunset. Amazon losing out on this is pretty rough for AWS though.
paxys · 3h ago
Is Amazon trying to build a competitive foundation model? From what I can see AWS is instead focused on hosting and re-licensing Claude, Cohere, DeepSeek and others via Bedrock. And it's pretty likely that a large chunk of this $200M will anyways go to AWS. So I'd hardly call them a loser here.
corlinp · 3h ago
Amazon has a number of foundation models under the name Amazon Nova, which they claimed were SOTA on release but I haven't heard much at all about them since.
ryoshu · 2h ago
They are not good...
XorNot · 3h ago
Aka the "sell gold pans during a gold rush" strategy.
AFAIK AWS are pushing pretty hard with GovCloud these days.
base698 · 3h ago
I think that would be power components like transformers for the grid.
thfuran · 3h ago
Those were the people selling lumber to sawmills that eventually ended up as handles for picks.
plasma_beam · 1h ago
Most of US government runs significant workloads on AWS now and that’s only increasing. They’ve cornered govt cloud infrastructure (with Azure, GCP, etc. very far behind) so not sure this matters in grand scheme of things.
Anecdotal based on industry experience, no citations.
haiku2077 · 3h ago
Meta and Amazon both have separate DoD contracts (Meta with Anduril, Amazon through massive GovCloud contracts)
prmph · 3h ago
What is $200M to Amazon and Meta?
florbo · 1h ago
At the very least it's preventing funds from going to other competitors.
vajrabum · 37m ago
I know this is likely in the pipeline anyway and maybey not covered by this news but now we have the prospect of agentic llms hallucinating enemies and a digital finger on the trigger.
datadrivenangel · 4h ago
These call order type packages mean that it's probably over 3-5 years, so not really that large a procurement.
kurthr · 3h ago
I've worked with VCs that refereed to deals like these as "mouse nuts".
bix6 · 3h ago
Why not 20x $10M grants for smaller companies? They're gonna throw this money with no oversight anyways so why not bolster the actual startup scene instead of a bunch of incumbents who all have more than enough cash? $10M could keep a startup running for 1+ years at its most crucial time. That's 10 solutions instead of 1 -- statistically one of them will be a massive breakthrough?
DeepYogurt · 3h ago
> Why not 20x $10M grants for smaller companies?
That's not how corruption works
creddit · 3h ago
"Corruption is when the US government pays the 4 leading American AI producers for the use of their products"
tough · 32m ago
"Corruption is when the US government paysback the 4 leading American AI producers who bribed him for the use of their products in disguise"
paxys · 3h ago
Who are these smaller companies, and what do they have to offer that these 4 don't? Chances are that the smaller companies themselves are licensing the LLM from Google/Anthropic/OpenAI, so why pay middlemen for no reason?
bix6 · 3h ago
You’re telling me that you can’t find 10 worthwhile AI startups to give money to? I bet there are 1000 on crunchbase right now. With $10M some of them could buy hardware to build their own systems.
Spooky23 · 30m ago
DOGE hates resellers and is trying to force all transactions through the prime contractors. Most small companies cannot afford to float the terms required by the federal government without resellers.
This admin is about graft and shakedowns. Just like the implosion of science, the companies that exist due to smallish federal contracts for obscure tech and speculative investments are toast.
paxys · 3h ago
This isn't a VC fund. The contract is for an actual service, and the companies best suited to provide them will get it, no matter their size.
samrus · 1h ago
Maybe 20 10M contracts is a bit too small, but this point is completely wrong too. Part of the purpose of public expenditure is to promote healthy businesses, not just procure things are efficiently as possible
This is people's money, and people benefit from competition in the market
bix6 · 3h ago
Yeah that’s why Boeing keeps getting government money.
creddit · 3h ago
Who are those 20 companies? What would $10M do in the context of training LLMs that are competitive with Claude/O3/Gemini?
> That's 10 solutions instead of 1 -- statistically one of them will be a massive breakthrough?
The statistic is that 10% of startups make a massive breakthrough? Would love to see some work that comes remotely close to replicating that! Startup investing would be trivially easy.
bix6 · 3h ago
Responded to the other poster with the same question.
Everyone says 1 out of 100 makes it big but the top 5-10% of a portfolio is still substantial. If we’re only giving the money to companies with revenue the odds of success are likely improved.
Startup investing is trivially easy. You give money to good companies and founders. There’s just a bunch of BS that gets in the way. Like giving massive money to big corps that don’t need it instead of startups that do.
creddit · 3h ago
Who are the companies? List some!
bix6 · 3h ago
Here are some top AI companies per Crunchbase: OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, CoreWeave, Glean, Perlexity, PlayAI, Cohere, Tempus, Cyera, Replit, Windsurf, Mistral, Anysphere, Scale, Harvey, Thinking Machines Lab, helsing, Cluely, Suno, Clay, Crunchbase (lol), Lubega Geoffery, Caris LIfe Sciences, C3 AI, Runway, LangChain, Rigetti Computing, Cowbell, Laurel, SoundHound, Voxel, Harmonic, Builder, ElevenLabs, Decagon, Spring Health, Lovable.... alright I have a meeting to get to.
creddit · 2h ago
OpenAI - DoD invested in them and now I guess you agree with it!
Anthropic - same as above
xAI - same as above
CoreWeave - Doesn't make LLMs
Glean - Doesn't make LLMs (wow this startup investing thing might be harder than for you than you thought!)
Perplexity - Has finetuned LLama models AFAIK. Maybe you think Meta should've gotten the nod from DoD as well?
PlayAI - AFAIK only voices
Cohere - Not sure if they are LLama or otherwise
Cyera - Doesn't make LLMs
Replit - Doesn't make LLMs
Windsurf - Doesn't make LLMs
Mistral - Does make LLMs, you got one! Is French, though.
Anysphere - They make an IDE called Cursor
Scale - Doesn't make LLMs, basically a Meta subsidiary (you really must have wanted Meta to get the nod too!)
Harvey - Legal focus, not general
Thinking Machines - Mira Murati's company, just started 5mos ago, no public products. Definitely don't fit your definition of "has revenue"
helsing - Hadn't heard of them, are German.
Cluely - LOL
Suno - If the DoD gets into music generation this would be a great choice.
Clay - Don't know them, doubt they have LLMs.
Crunchbase - lol is correct
Lubega Geoffery - No idea
Caris LIfe Sciences - Life sciences doesn't sound right!
C3 AI - Scam
Runway - Media generation, not general use
LangChain - Doesn't make LLMs
Rigetti Computing - Dude, come on. They're a quantum computing company
Cowbell - Don't know them, but a google shows they're an insurance company lol
Almost all the rest don't even have anything to do with AI. So all-in-all, nearly a complete failure at suggesting even close to 20 alternatives for the DoD to invest in. Your answer didn't even hit US companies that do have some alternatives: Meta, MSFT, AMZN, SSI maybe?
bix6 · 2h ago
I love that you went through every one of those, respect!
tough · 30m ago
Windsurf has their own models though
koolba · 3h ago
> $10M could keep a startup running for 1+ years at its most crucial time. That's 10 solutions instead of 1 -- statistically one of them will be a massive breakthrough?
The failure rate for startups is much higher than 90%. And there’s the additional complexity of how do you pick which 20 such startups get the cash.
bix6 · 3h ago
See my response to the other posters with the same notes
On the picking: it’s really not hard to search for AI companies and pick 20. In fact there are government programs that invest in startups so clearly it’s doable.
xyst · 3h ago
This isn’t a grant to push for innovation. This is a promise from the orange man administration to the people and companies that donated to his "inauguration fund"
This is a kleptocracy but with extra steps. People are unfortunately numb to it.
creddit · 3h ago
Which AI company _should_ the DoD purchase from?
stuckkeys · 3h ago
That is why we need folks like you running the government and not asshats that are currently in positions ruining it all for all.
geor9e · 1h ago
Kyle Reese is a crackpot and the Strategic Knowledge Yielding New Emerging Technologies grant program is important for re-industrializing America
ushiroda80 · 3h ago
So basically one Ruoming Pang each...
paul7986 · 2h ago
Microsoft said they were beefing up their expenditure in AI with and or around the announcement of layoffs.
So does this mean all the web designers, web developers and many other white collar jobs will now be done by one such professional using AI; so XYZ use to require ten people to get the job done now only one who uses AI gets the tasks done (tasks that those ten use to use software applications to complete). All the while a few hundred of Ruoming Pangs make more money then God in which their work further helps killing white collar jobs.
Is there anyone else concerned about this? I am federal worker indirectly yet per some news today not sure how much longer I will be and whether or not it wise to go look for another web design/developer/UX Researcher (think this is safest out of three as you are talking to ppl)position. There are throngs of others looking now to compete against including now competing against AI for less jobs.
firesteelrain · 4h ago
That’s not a lot of money between four companies.
layer8 · 4h ago
It’s up to $200M for each of them. From the actual source:
“The awards to Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, and xAI – each with a $200M ceiling – will enable the Department to leverage the technology and talent of U.S. frontier AI companies to develop agentic AI workflows across a variety of mission areas.”
It’s still not a lot. How much do tokens cost for example?
In theory if it’s just labor with some profit mixed in, then you might be looking at 600 employees for each company.
I doubt it is just labor. Quote says $200 million ceiling. So maybe a time and materials (T&M) contract? It’s a ceiling so it’s not like they earn or are guaranteed $200m.
Has to include token or cloud computing time too. Which Google owns and can amortize themselves since it’s a capital asset to them. I don’t know much about the cloud computing background of Anthropic or if they are using Azure or AWS.
I think my original point is still valid it’s not a lot when you look at it
johnb231 · 2h ago
It will be enough to deliver the requirements for the DoD. They don’t need to spend any more or any less than what is required. Your point seems irrelevant if you don’t know their exact requirements.
firesteelrain · 2h ago
It’s a $200m ceiling and my point was that it’s not a lot of money considering how other DoD contracts pay like CPIF type rates.
johnb231 · 2h ago
Meaningless comparison. If xAI or Google accepts the contract, they intend to deliver within the budget. You can't say whether it's too much or too little without knowing all of the details, which you don't.
"OpenAI Public Sector LLC, San Francisco, California, has been awarded a fixed amount, prototype, other transaction agreement (HQ0883-25-9-0012) with a value of $200,000,000. Under this award, the performer will develop prototype frontier AI capabilities to address critical national security challenges in both warfighting and enterprise domains. The work will be primarily performed in the National Capital Region with an estimated completion date of July 2026. Fiscal 2025 research, development, test and evaluation funds in the amount of $1,999,998 are being obligated at time of award. Office of the Secretary of Defense Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, Washington D.C., is the contracting activity. "
It's a prototype and its FFP. Only about $2m has been allocated to them. That equates to about 1-2 employees for a year.
Anthropic’s is “is expected to mirror OpenAI’s structure: a similar token obligation at signing and the rest released via milestones.”
All these frontier AI OTAs follow the same pattern of “up to [X] million” ceilings with actual funding phased out as projects progress. This mirrors what Palantir got last year.
Testing the waters. I’d guess if it pays any dividends things will ramp up. This is also across all suppliers. At some point they’ll put more wood behind fewer arrows.
AstroBen · 3h ago
OpenAI is above 10 billion ARR and still growing fast.. this seems tiny in comparison?
paxys · 3h ago
2% of a company's revenue is definitely not tiny. And regardless, there's still reason to participate and hope the number gets bigger in the future.
rpmisms · 4h ago
In the words of Will Stancil: AYFKM?
A_D_E_P_T · 3h ago
In fairness to poor Will, this contract was probably decided weeks or even months ago. The DoD isn't known for moving quickly or being responsive.
No comments yet
unixhero · 2h ago
Seems small???
whyenot · 3h ago
I guess Zuck got the shaft?
layer8 · 3h ago
The $200M would only pay for a single researcher at Meta. ;)
jedberg · 3h ago
The fact that XAI is in this list is just blatant corruption. Their CEO was a government employee until a month ago.
lttlrck · 3h ago
If they weren't there it would raise just as many eyebrows, wouldn't it?
rany_ · 3h ago
Meta not being on the list is more suspect IMO. At least it seems to me that Meta is where the actual talent/potential is.
crowcroft · 1h ago
Grok is pretty good, both the model in the API and the consumer products built on top. Llama is way behind, and the meta.ai app is much worse than the leading chat assistant products.
jedberg · 2h ago
Not really. It would be obvious to anyone who's ever seen a government contract that they were excluded for ethics reasons.
paxys · 3h ago
And their chatbot just had a Nazi meltdown last week.
wordofx · 1h ago
Oh get over it. It’s not corruption. Stop spreading misinformation.
koolba · 3h ago
Why would that exclude them from the running? Should government contracts not be granted on the merits of the receivers? Grok clearly exists in this space so it’s not like they’re rewarding vaporware.
jedberg · 3h ago
> Should government contracts not be granted on the merits of the receivers?
They should, but businesses owned by government employees should be excluded because it's too easy to corrupt the process. In fact, they have explicit rules about not doing that.
koolba · 3h ago
But he’s no longer a “special government employee” anymore either. Or are you suggesting he’s blacklisted from all government contracts for life because he previously worked for the current administration?
unshavedyak · 3h ago
Not OP, but "For life" is a far cry from a month or two after. But yes, i'd argue we have no choice but to attempt to aggressively put bounds between government and profiteering. Lest we have Congress openly insider trade..
jedberg · 2h ago
Of course not for life, but generally to avoid ethics issues the government requires you to be out for at least a year or two before engaging in business with the government.
buzzerbetrayed · 2h ago
He’s not a government employee. You said it yourself lol
jedberg · 2h ago
But he was very recently. Usually you have to wait a while after leaving the government to sell to it.
slantedview · 2h ago
> Should government contracts not be granted on the merits of the receivers?
The merits? We just had, in the last _week_, a huge scaldal where Grok was spewing racist, pro hitler content, even calling itself MechaHitler.
Lucasoato · 4h ago
Meanwhile in Europe, we're sleeping on regulation and no real plan to face the challenges and opportunities linked to AI...
For 200M Google will open an account, send an email that says:
You're account is ready, there is $40m left on the retainer. We can code up some email template for 40M if you want.
Before the national security narrative took over, the main argument was about "safe" AI, where releasing models as open weights was considered "not safe." Now that no major US AI players release premium open-weights models, the "safety" narrative isn't needed anymore—so cooperating with the US military is feasible again.
Probably more understandable for Meta, since they've been leaving the B2B space since Workplace has been sunset. Amazon losing out on this is pretty rough for AWS though.
AFAIK AWS are pushing pretty hard with GovCloud these days.
Anecdotal based on industry experience, no citations.
That's not how corruption works
This admin is about graft and shakedowns. Just like the implosion of science, the companies that exist due to smallish federal contracts for obscure tech and speculative investments are toast.
This is people's money, and people benefit from competition in the market
> That's 10 solutions instead of 1 -- statistically one of them will be a massive breakthrough?
The statistic is that 10% of startups make a massive breakthrough? Would love to see some work that comes remotely close to replicating that! Startup investing would be trivially easy.
Everyone says 1 out of 100 makes it big but the top 5-10% of a portfolio is still substantial. If we’re only giving the money to companies with revenue the odds of success are likely improved.
Startup investing is trivially easy. You give money to good companies and founders. There’s just a bunch of BS that gets in the way. Like giving massive money to big corps that don’t need it instead of startups that do.
Anthropic - same as above
xAI - same as above
CoreWeave - Doesn't make LLMs
Glean - Doesn't make LLMs (wow this startup investing thing might be harder than for you than you thought!)
Perplexity - Has finetuned LLama models AFAIK. Maybe you think Meta should've gotten the nod from DoD as well?
PlayAI - AFAIK only voices
Cohere - Not sure if they are LLama or otherwise
Cyera - Doesn't make LLMs
Replit - Doesn't make LLMs
Windsurf - Doesn't make LLMs
Mistral - Does make LLMs, you got one! Is French, though.
Anysphere - They make an IDE called Cursor
Scale - Doesn't make LLMs, basically a Meta subsidiary (you really must have wanted Meta to get the nod too!)
Harvey - Legal focus, not general
Thinking Machines - Mira Murati's company, just started 5mos ago, no public products. Definitely don't fit your definition of "has revenue"
helsing - Hadn't heard of them, are German.
Cluely - LOL
Suno - If the DoD gets into music generation this would be a great choice.
Clay - Don't know them, doubt they have LLMs.
Crunchbase - lol is correct
Lubega Geoffery - No idea
Caris LIfe Sciences - Life sciences doesn't sound right!
C3 AI - Scam
Runway - Media generation, not general use
LangChain - Doesn't make LLMs
Rigetti Computing - Dude, come on. They're a quantum computing company
Cowbell - Don't know them, but a google shows they're an insurance company lol
Almost all the rest don't even have anything to do with AI. So all-in-all, nearly a complete failure at suggesting even close to 20 alternatives for the DoD to invest in. Your answer didn't even hit US companies that do have some alternatives: Meta, MSFT, AMZN, SSI maybe?
The failure rate for startups is much higher than 90%. And there’s the additional complexity of how do you pick which 20 such startups get the cash.
On the picking: it’s really not hard to search for AI companies and pick 20. In fact there are government programs that invest in startups so clearly it’s doable.
This is a kleptocracy but with extra steps. People are unfortunately numb to it.
So does this mean all the web designers, web developers and many other white collar jobs will now be done by one such professional using AI; so XYZ use to require ten people to get the job done now only one who uses AI gets the tasks done (tasks that those ten use to use software applications to complete). All the while a few hundred of Ruoming Pangs make more money then God in which their work further helps killing white collar jobs.
Is there anyone else concerned about this? I am federal worker indirectly yet per some news today not sure how much longer I will be and whether or not it wise to go look for another web design/developer/UX Researcher (think this is safest out of three as you are talking to ppl)position. There are throngs of others looking now to compete against including now competing against AI for less jobs.
“The awards to Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, and xAI – each with a $200M ceiling – will enable the Department to leverage the technology and talent of U.S. frontier AI companies to develop agentic AI workflows across a variety of mission areas.”
(https://www.ai.mil/Latest/News-Press/PR-View/Article/4242822...)
In theory if it’s just labor with some profit mixed in, then you might be looking at 600 employees for each company.
I doubt it is just labor. Quote says $200 million ceiling. So maybe a time and materials (T&M) contract? It’s a ceiling so it’s not like they earn or are guaranteed $200m.
Has to include token or cloud computing time too. Which Google owns and can amortize themselves since it’s a capital asset to them. I don’t know much about the cloud computing background of Anthropic or if they are using Azure or AWS.
I think my original point is still valid it’s not a lot when you look at it
"OpenAI Public Sector LLC, San Francisco, California, has been awarded a fixed amount, prototype, other transaction agreement (HQ0883-25-9-0012) with a value of $200,000,000. Under this award, the performer will develop prototype frontier AI capabilities to address critical national security challenges in both warfighting and enterprise domains. The work will be primarily performed in the National Capital Region with an estimated completion date of July 2026. Fiscal 2025 research, development, test and evaluation funds in the amount of $1,999,998 are being obligated at time of award. Office of the Secretary of Defense Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, Washington D.C., is the contracting activity. "
It's a prototype and its FFP. Only about $2m has been allocated to them. That equates to about 1-2 employees for a year.
Anthropic’s is “is expected to mirror OpenAI’s structure: a similar token obligation at signing and the rest released via milestones.”
All these frontier AI OTAs follow the same pattern of “up to [X] million” ceilings with actual funding phased out as projects progress. This mirrors what Palantir got last year.
Link: https://www.nextgov.com/defense/2024/06/pentagons-ai-office-...
No comments yet
They should, but businesses owned by government employees should be excluded because it's too easy to corrupt the process. In fact, they have explicit rules about not doing that.
The merits? We just had, in the last _week_, a huge scaldal where Grok was spewing racist, pro hitler content, even calling itself MechaHitler.
And from https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/european-a...: “Both the Horizon Europe and Digital Europe programmes will invest €1 billion per year in AI.”
(Only partially joking here)