President Donald Trump is not interested in allowing the federal government to do business with tech entrepreneur Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence (AI) company, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on July 23.
During a White House press briefing on Wednesday, Leavitt was asked whether Trump supports federal agencies contracting with Musk’s company, xAI.
“I don’t think so, no,” Leavitt said.
But last week, the company, alongside Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI, scored a $200 million contract with the Department of Defense to boost the agency’s adoption of artificial intelligence.
When asked whether the president wanted to cancel the contract, Leavitt said she would discuss it with Trump.
All four companies were awarded contracts with the same $200 million ceiling from the Defense Department’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office to advance the Pentagon’s adoption of AI.
The same day the contracts were awarded, xAI announced a new series of AI products for the U.S. government, referred to as Grok for Government.
Last year, Musk stepped into the political arena and decided to endorse Trump, donate to his campaign, and act in an advisory capacity. Trump then tapped him to lead his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which recommended a series of federal worker layoffs and steep cuts to multiple agencies.
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