If you caught the drama last week, you know Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot went totally rogue — spewing some wildly controversial, even antisemitic, remarks.
But here’s the real kicker: despite all that, the U.S. government just handed Musk’s AI company, xAI, a $200 million contract.
And not for some side project — it's to help modernize the freakin’ Department of Defense. 🧐
Plot twist, right?
Well, that’s the fact. xAI now joins Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic as one of the companies tapped for this gig.
Now, the timing? Kinda wild — considering Grok’s still under fire for that whole “MechaHitler” mess, and the fact that the debate around using AI in military tech was already pretty heated.
Add in Musk’s track record of slashing federal contracts — especially during his stint at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which, btw, didn’t exactly win him any fans in D.C. — and yeah, it’s no surprise this move has people doing double takes. Like seriously… Where did this even come from?
Anyway, here’s what we do know: the contract announcement comes via the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO), and while the full details are hush-hush, the goal is to help the DoD build advanced agentic AI workflows across a variety of mission areas.
Alongside this, the U.S is also getting:
“Grok for Government”: yep, xAI is launching a new initiative to bring AI-powered tools and products to the U.S. government.
Through the General Services Administration (GSA), federal agencies — not just the DoD — will now be able to purchase xAI’s tech.
Expect custom AI models geared toward national security, healthcare, and science, even AI tools that can run in classified environments.
Now, to be fair, xAI did issue an apology after the Grok debacle, blaming it on a rogue update. And according to them, new safeguards are in place to make sure that kind of chaos doesn’t happen again.
Bottom line:
xAI just waltzed into the world of government contracts like it’s business as usual. Say what you want, but Musk knows how to bounce back.
Now let’s just hope Grok doesn’t go completely off the rails again. 🤞
