Sam Altman's Latest Pitch To Cozy Up With The Us Government: Chatgpt Gov

Sam Altman's OpenAI launched ChatGPT Gov, which is meant to exclusively serve government agencies.

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• Sam Altman's OpenAI launched ChatGPT Gov on Tuesday, designed exclusively for government agencies.
• OpenAI said the product will enhance security and help the government "boost efficiency."
• The news comes as DeepSeek roils the AI industry and Altman becomes increasingly close to Trump.

OpenAI launched ChatGPT Gov on Tuesday, a version of its flagship product marketed specifically for government agencies. The announcement may associate the company — and its CEO, Sam Altman — more intimately with President Donald Trump's administration.

According to a blog post on the OpenAI website, the new product allows agencies to "more easily manage their own security, privacy, and compliance requirements" and that the infrastructure will accelerate how quickly OpenAI is authorized to handle "non-public sensitive data."

Agencies will be able to use ChatGPT Gov in their own secure Microsoft Azure commercial cloud or Azure Government cloud, the post continues. Microsoft is a major investor in OpenAI.

ChatGPT Gov comes as Altman aligns himself more closely with Trump, personally and professionally. He was among the many tech leaders and billionaires to attend Trump's inauguration. Last week, Trump announced Stargate, a $500 billion AI joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank, to build out the US' AI infrastructure.

Stargate also set off a public, high-profile spat between Altman and Elon Musk, Trump's self-described "First Buddy," whose own AI company, xAI, was not included in the project.

Since 2024, more than 90,000 employees across government agencies fed more than 18 million messages into ChatGPT, according to OpenAI's blog post. Still, the government has not yet committed to using ChatGPT Gov, and the White House referred Business Insider to Trump's executive order on AI safety when asked about the new product.

A spokesperson for OpenAI told BI in an email that the product has been in the works for a long time, and the company believes government adoption of AI is key to keeping America's edge in the sector.

The blog post says that the government can "boost efficiency and productivity" by using AI, echoing the wording around the mission of the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, which Trump recently tasked with upgrading the federal government's IT systems.

OpenAI's announcement comes amid a period of profound turbulence in the AI sector after the Chinese startup DeepSeek released a new AI model that it says is cheaper to run than competitor models, including ChatGPT. It sparked a $1 trillion market sell-off and shot up to number one on Apple's app store.

Trump said that DeepSeek should be a "wake-up call" for tech industries; Altman himself said that the new product presents an "invigorating" competition. He promised to release new "better models" in response.

With assistance from Ana Altchek.