Anthropic will offer its Claude chatbot to US lawmakers for a nominal $1 fee, as the artificial intelligence start-up battles for influence in Donald Trump’s Washington. In a deal agreed with the government on Tuesday, the group followed arch-rival OpenAI in offering its enterprise tools to the executive branch for $1 per federal agency, while also agreeing to an equivalent discount for senators, members of Congress and top judges. “We need to get widespread adoption [of AI tools] in the federal government,” said Josh Gruenbaum, the commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service, which co-ordinates procurement for US agencies. “The price is going to help uptake from agencies happen that much quicker.” The three branches of the US government generally have their own procurement processes and no agency or organisation would be obliged to use Claude under the agreement. The Claude for government product is permitted to be used by federal workers for sensitive, unclassified work. Google was also in talks with the government to offer its Gemini chatbot to federal employees on similarly cheap terms, a person familiar with the negotiations said. Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Anthropic and OpenAI deals, which will initially last one year, highlight how industry leaders are offering ever-greater incentives as they compete for widespread adoption by the government and attempt to deepen ties to lawmakers and regulators.

Full report : Anthropic signs a deal to offer Claude to US lawmakers for $1/year, following OpenAI; a source says Google is in talks to offer Gemini on similarly cheap terms.