OpenAI on Tuesday announced a new tailored version of ChatGPT designed for US government agencies, a product launch that comes as the industry is still reeling from the breakout of a cost-efficient Chinese AI startup and as President Trump has urged tech companies to stay ahead of the competition.
OpenAI says the new service, ChatGPT Gov, is meant to streamline the government’s access to its models. And it will give staffers the ability to better manage their own security and compliance as agencies handle sensitive data.
“By making our products available to the U.S. government, we aim to ensure AI serves the national interest and the public good, aligned with democratic values, while empowering policymakers to responsibly integrate these capabilities to deliver better services to the American people,” the company said in a statement unveiling the new tool.
OpenAI says the special version of ChatGPT gives government agencies many of the same capabilities as its ChatGPT enterprise tool, including custom chatbots that employees can build and share, and access to GPT-4o, OpenAI’s flagship model.
The move further cements OpenAI’s partnership with the US government, positioning its technology as a key asset for maintaining American tech leadership.
Last week, OpenAI was among a handful of tech companies backing a new $500 billion AI project, announced in a splashy unveiling by President Trump on his second day in office. Dubbed the Stargate Project, the new AI company will be co-led by OpenAI and SoftBank, with key initial technology partners Arm (ARM), Microsoft (MSFT), NVIDIA (NVDA), and Oracle (ORCL).
The launch of ChatGPT Gov arrives just a day after the Chinese upstart DeepSeek roiled Wall Street and the tech world. On Monday, the surging popularity of DeepSeek’s new R1 model, which launched to the top of app download charts, prompted a market rout for many of AI’s biggest players. Nvidia (NVDA), the chip maker at the heart of the AI boom plummeted 17%, alongside losses from other chip and tech names.
The team behind DeepSeek claims to have built the innovative model for a fraction of the cost of other popular AI assistants. And without the computing power of the most advanced chips available to US firms.
The broader implication of DeepSeek’s success is that it undermines the model of massive investment that American tech giants are pursuing in the AI arms race. But some analysts have questioned whether DeepSeek has disclosed the true cost of R1’s development, and if DeepSeek actually has more advanced chips than initially thought.
