Washington, DC – OpenAI, the global developer of ChatGPT, announced a formal strategic contract with the US General Services Administration (GSA).
Under the agreement, OpenAI will provide the GSA with its latest AI models
at a 50% discount compared to standard commercial pricing.
OpenAI latest innovations
This announcement, made on the 10th of this month, outlines a new 27-month partnership,
running from the 1st of next month until December 31st, 2028.
Under the terms of the agreement, government entities will gain access
to the company’s latest innovations, most notably the GPT-6 Astra model.
They will also receive the advanced AI-powered cybersecurity tool, Daybreak Blue.
This will come with a complete waiver of the basic user fees, which were previously $15 per user per month.
A shift in pricing and competitive strategies
This agreement represents a significant shift from the previous pilot contract the company signed last August.
Under that pilot contract, the company provided its federal services for a nominal fee of just one dollar per year.
The company highlighted the significant achievements of its technologies within the public sector over the past year.
These include reducing the time required to review health literature
at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from months to just 30 minutes,
cutting document digitization time at the Georgia Department of Internal Revenue from two weeks to 15 minutes,
and enabling nuclear fusion research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to be completed in a matter of hours instead of months.
Increasing the ChatGPT user base
On an operational level, the new contract aims to expand the beneficiary
base to include not only the federal government but also local and state governments.
Additionally, it includes Native American autonomous governments.
This aims to increase ChatGPT’s user base from approximately one million current
government employees to nearly 23 million public service workers in the United States.
This move coincides with a fierce competition among technology giants to offer preferential deals to the US government.
In the same vein, it is expected that this shift will prompt competing companies like Google, Microsoft, and xAI to revise their pricing strategies.
Meanwhile, Antropic is facing increasing government restrictions due to its legal disputes and its designation as a high-risk entity in the supply chain.
