OpenAI is giving ChatGPT to the government for $1

OpenAI is positioning itself to outpace competitors like Anthropic and Google in the battle to have its AI solutions adopted across U.S. federal agencies.

The company has finalized a deal with the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) — the federal government's main procurement authority — to provide ChatGPT Enterprise access to participating agencies for just $1 per agency over the next year.

This agreement follows the GSA’s move to officially list OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic as approved AI vendors, allowing their technologies to be procured by civilian federal agencies. Their tools are now accessible through the Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) — a streamlined federal procurement channel that enables agencies to use pre-negotiated contracts rather than arranging separate deals with each vendor.

It remains uncertain whether other AI providers will match OpenAI’s steep discount, though Josh Gruenbaum, commissioner of the GSA Federal Acquisition Service, issued a public call for “other American AI technology companies to follow OpenAI’s lead and work with us.”

TechCrunch has contacted Anthropic and Google for comment.

Beyond simply offering access to ChatGPT Enterprise, OpenAI is also extending unlimited use of its advanced models for an additional 60-day trial period. Federal workers will benefit from access to a dedicated government-focused user community, along with customized onboarding and training materials designed to ease the learning curve for public sector adoption.

As always, data protection remains a key concern, particularly for agencies handling sensitive or classified information that must be shielded from model training datasets. TechCrunch has reached out to the GSA for clarification on how federal data will be secured, including whether options like on-premise deployment or private cloud infrastructure are being used to ensure the highest levels of confidentiality and compliance.