xAI Was About to Land a Major Government Contract. Then Grok Praised Hitler
The chaos surrounding the Grok deal reflects the Trump administration's current focus on speed and its disregard, at times, of preexisting norms surrounding government tech procurement.
On May 15, fresh off a whirlwind trip to the Middle East with President Donald Trump, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman sent an email to the leadership team at the General Services Administration (GSA), the federal agency that manages government technology. He was inspired by Trump's desire to 'go big,' he said. 'With that in mind, I've been thinking that we need to equip the entire federal workforce with best-in-class AI tools.'
The email kicked off a swift procurement process. On May 21, OpenAI met with GSA staffers in-person to discuss a partnership, according to documents obtained by WIRED. 'We discussed identifying strategic 'top-down' initiatives, with procurement reform emerging as a promising candidate,' wrote Felipe Millon, who leads federal sales for OpenAI, in an email obtained by WIRED. 'OpenAI is prepared to dedicate resources specifically to explore how AI can effectively support and enhance this high priority area for GSA.'
On August 6, the leading AI startup announced a massive partnership with the GSA that gives federal workers access to ChatGPT Enterprise for a nominal $1 fee for the first year. The deal surprised some federal workers, who claim this amounts to a gift from a tech company and is highly unusual. 'It is not typical at all,' says one worker familiar with the procurement process who spoke with WIRED. They noted that while GSA has moved swiftly in the past to onboard new tech tools, accepting what amounts to a 'gift' from a tech firm is 'atypical.' OpenAI and GSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment from WIRED.
OpenAI says it will not use chats with federal workers as training data for future models. The company also confirmed to WIRED that federal employee chats will not be subject to the court order that requires the startup to preserve data from some consumer chats indefinitely.
In August, the US government also announced partnerships with OpenAI rivals Anthropic and Google Gemini. It also struck a deal with Box, a content management platform powered by AI. The push is part of the Trump administration's plan to modernize the federal government with an increased reliance on AI tools. It comes on the heels of the president's AI Action Plan unveiled last month, which calls for less regulation and an increase in AI adoption across the government.
'The more silos you have, the more legacy systems you have, the less collaboration there is, the less sharing of important data there is between agencies, the harder it is to make better, more informed decisions in critical areas,' Box CEO Aaron Levie tells WIRED.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
One company that was supposed to be part of the GSA announcements was Musk's xAI, according to sources with knowledge of the discussions.
In early June, GSA leadership met with the xAI team for a two-hour brainstorming session 'to see what opportunities may exist for automation and streamlining,' according to an email obtained by WIRED.
The session appeared to go well. After it ended, GSA leadership continued to push for the agency to roll out Grok for internal use. 'We kept saying 'Are you sure?' And they were like 'No we gotta have Grok,'' one employee involved with the discussions tells WIRED.
The conversations went far enough that xAI was added to the GSA Multiple Award Schedule, which is the agency's long-term government-wide contracting program, by the end of June, according to documents obtained by WIRED. The move would have allowed federal agencies to buy Grok through Carahsoft, which is a technology reseller and government contractor.
Then, in early July, Grok appeared to go off the rails, spewing antisemitic hate, praising Adolf Hitler, and parroting racist conspiracy theories on X. Some GSA staffers were surprised that the incident did not appear to slow down the procurement process. 'The week after Grok went MechaHitler, [GSA leadership] was like 'Where are we on Grok?'' the same employee claims. 'We were like, 'Do you not read a newspaper?''
Then GSA leadership appeared to abruptly change course. Shortly before GSA was set to announce its partnerships with OpenAI, Anthropic, Google's Gemini, and xAI last week, staff were instructed to remove xAI's Grok from the contract offering, two sources with knowledge tell WIRED. Two GSA workers involved with the contract believe xAI was pulled because of Grok's antisemitic tirade last month.
xAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from WIRED.
The announcements for GSA's partnerships with OpenAI and Anthropic, meanwhile, happened so quickly that 'it wasn't even clear who to send the $1 to or how,' one GSA source tells WIRED.
And while OpenAI and Anthropic have released tools exclusively for government use, neither company has cleared the regulatory hurdles necessary for agencies to buy directly from them. Specifically, they haven't been approved through FedRAMP, a GSA-led program that ensures the safety of private cloud services through intense security screenings. There are, however, carveouts within the implementation memo to allow for products that have not been FedRamp-approved to be brought into government in a research and development capacity.
'It was irresponsible of the administration to issue an executive order that required such a fast turnaround to get those implementation memos out,' because it meant that the government was unable to consult with the significant number of stakeholders that they would otherwise have, says a former White House official who spoke to WIRED on the condition of anonymity.
The Trump administration has wasted no time bringing AI into government. One of the first executive orders signed by Trump prompted agencies to reverse any rules inhibiting the growth and dominance of American AI, kicking off a mad dash amongst administration leaders to find new ways to incorporate the tech into everything. At the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Mehmet Oz has suggested replacing some frontline health workers with AI avatars. Representatives of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) used AI to find regulations to slash and write code. In June, US spy chief Tulsi Gabbard spoke at an Amazon Web Services summit about having used AI tools to review classified documents related to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. (When released, the files turned out to contain the Social Security numbers and additional private information of hundreds of living people.)
An April memo at the Department of Veterans' Affairs instructed staff to compile documents outlining rules and regulations and how they should be applied at the agency. These, according to the memo, would be reviewed by AI 'to narrow the field of documents requiring further reviews,' and possible recission. In a June Veteran Affairs draft memo obtained by WIRED, the agency claims that 'within the next 1 to 3 years, most computer-based tasks at VA will be automatable.' That includes having 'AI-powered digital assistants' engage with veterans online to complete benefit and health care transactions, the document says.
Earlier this year, GSA started rolling out its own government chatbot called GSAi, encouraging workers to incorporate the tool into their daily workflows. Speaking at a government tech conference in July, GSA chief data scientist and chief AI officer Zach Whitman said that the next step in GSAi's deployment would be to integrate it with the agency's own data sources so it could use up-to-date data.
Vittoria Elliott contributed reporting.
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