California Gets Claude at Half Price as the Pentagon Bans Anthropic

Anthropic has reached an agreement with California Governor Gavin Newsom to provide Claude to all state agencies and local governments at half price. As part of the agreement, Anthropic will also offer training and assistance to employees. According to Newsom, AI shouldn’t replace humans in government operations, but rather speed up processes.

Interestingly, only a few days ago, the Pentagon considered Anthropic a supply chain risk and opted for OpenAI instead, preventing its contractors from doing business with the company. This happened after Anthropic requested measures to prevent its AI from being used for surveillance or autonomous weaponry. In contrast, the Californian state government made a public statement saying that they never discussed the issue of a supply chain risk with the Defense Department.

In the US, we see two major players in the government AI sector choosing opposing sides. It seems that companies’ stances on AI ethics will decide whether they can do business with federal or state governments.