Elon Musk’s xAI offers Grok to federal government for 42 cents 

Elon Musk’s xAI has reached an statement with the U.S. government’s purchasing limb to merchantability its AI chatbot Grok to the national authorities for nether a dollar, pitting it against OpenAI and Anthropic. 

Under the statement betwixt xAI and the General Services Administration (GSA), national agencies volition beryllium charged 42 cents to usage xAI’s chatbot Grok for a twelvemonth and a half. OpenAI and Anthropic are offering their respective endeavor and authorities versions of ChatGPT and Claude for $1 for a year.  

The steep discount for national agencies includes entree to xAI engineers to assistance integrate the technology.

The terms constituent is either portion of a moving gag Musk has of utilizing variations of 420, a marijuana reference, oregon a motion to 1 of Musk’s favourite books, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” which references the fig 42 arsenic the reply to the meaning of beingness and the universe.  

xAI had been adjacent to being approved arsenic a GSA vendor earlier this year, but aft Grok began generating antisemitic posts and calling itself “MechaHitler” connected X, the planned concern reportedly fell through. In precocious August, interior emails obtained by Wired revealed the White House had instructed the GSA to adhd xAI’s Grok to the approved vendor database “ASAP.” 

The institution was besides 1 of respective AI firms, including Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI, to beryllium selected for a $200 cardinal declaration with the Pentagon. 

After President Donald Trump’s inauguration, Musk formed and led the Department of Government Efficiency, oregon DOGE, successful a rampant cost-cutting spree that has seen mixed results. During that time, Musk placed respective aides astatine the GSA and different authorities agencies liable for regulating oregon awarding authorities contracts successful industries successful which Musk has business.