Elon Musk's Grok AI to be used by US government at a price of 42 cents per agency — Trump admin joining Meta, OpenAI in recent trend of AI govt contracts

Grok, xAI's flagship chatbot, has become an officially sanctioned part of United States government operations. xAI and the United States inked a deal on Wednesday that guarantees the use of Grok across the federal government for $0.42 per agency, per the government's press release.

The newly reskinned "Grok for Government", based on the Grok 4 and Grok 4 Fast models, is available for all federal agencies effective immediately. The deal lasts for 18 months, terminating in March 2027, and is the longest AI contract yet signed by the government.

Elon Musk's xAI also offers step-up models focused on higher-security classifications for unknown dollar amounts on a per-agency basis. At all levels of access to Grok for Government, xAI has pledged a "dedicated engineering team" and agency training programs to support governmental Grok and encourage its most efficient use at all times.

Grok joins Meta, OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic in the list of major AI companies that have been contracted by the U.S. government in the last week. The Government Services Administration (GSA) has been moving quickly with its "OneGov" initiative, based on securing a wide field of AI agents, chatbots, and tools for government workers to boost productivity and efficiency.

"Widespread access to advanced AI models is essential to building the efficient, accountable government that taxpayers deserve," said Federal Acquisition Service Commissioner Josh Gruenbaum in the GSA press release. All other new OneGov LLM deals were also signed for incredibly low price tags, with Meta undercutting the bunch with a zero-dollar deal with the U.S. government.

This partnership with Grok may come as a surprise for many reasons. Elon Musk, the personality and CEO behind xAI, had a very well-documented and highly contentious falling out with President Donald Trump. The pair began the year as fierce political allies, with Musk heading up Trump's "DOGE" office for governmental cuts, including those that effectively killed the Biden-era CHIPS and Science Act. But that relationship fractured as Musk stepped down from the government and resulting in a public fallout on social media.

That xAI is signing deals with the U.S. government under the watch of both Trump and Musk signals to some that the rift between the two may be mending. Musk had begun to walk back his more abrasive takes on the president in recent months, and the pair have been seen together in public.

GSA's acquisition of Grok as an option for federal workers has attracted its own share of controversy. Civil rights groups signed petitions requesting the Trump administration bar Grok from government, citing the occasional ideological bent of Grok's responses as a violation of Trump's own AI Action Plan. That plan requires AI used by government to be "neutral, nonpartisan tools that do not manipulate responses in favor of ideological dogmas."

Grok's X account famously began calling itself "MechaHitler" for a few days in July, accompanied by a slew of other posts praising the German Nazi Party during World War 2 and calling for anti-Semitic action. xAI has since "addressed these responses" and assures users they will not happen again.