Photo: OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman
OpenAI has reached an agreement with the United States Department of War to deploy its artificial intelligence models within the department’s classified network, marking a significant expansion of AI use in sensitive government environments.
The company’s Chief Executive Officer, Sam Altman, announced the development on Saturday via his X handle, describing the deal as the culmination of extensive discussions focused on safety, governance and the responsible use of advanced AI systems.
Altman said the Department of War demonstrated what he described as “a deep respect for safety” and a commitment to achieving the best possible outcome through partnership. He noted that the agreement permits OpenAI’s models to operate within secure government systems under strict guardrails and technical constraints.
“AI safety and wide distribution of benefits are the core of our mission. 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. The DoW agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement,” Altman said.
He added that OpenAI will introduce technical controls to ensure its models function appropriately within the classified environment and will deploy field engineers to support implementation and oversight. The company also confirmed that its models will run exclusively on cloud networks rather than local or edge infrastructure to maintain tighter security and operational control.
The announcement comes shortly after the company secured a $110 billion funding round, bringing its pre-money valuation to $730 billion. The funding is expected to accelerate the rollout of advanced AI tools across its platforms.
Meanwhile, the administration of Donald Trump recently issued directives affecting another AI firm, Anthropic. Federal agencies were ordered to stop using Anthropic’s software, and the Pentagon designated the company a supply-chain risk, a move that could limit its ability to do business with US government entities.
According to Bloomberg, OpenAI declined to comment on whether its services for the department would replace work previously handled by Anthropic.
OpenAI said its recent funding round also includes strategic partnerships with Amazon and NVIDIA. The company disclosed that Codex, its AI-powered coding agent, has seen weekly users more than triple to 1.6 million since the start of the year.
It added that ChatGPT now serves more than 900 million weekly active users, including over 50 million paying subscribers. More than 9 million paying business users rely on the platform for work, while startups, enterprises and governments continue to adopt its tools to transform product design, service delivery and operational management.
