$200 million xAI government contract was late addition to program

The inclusion of Elon Musk’s xAI in a set of Pentagon contracts worth up to $200 million was a late-in-the-game decision under the Trump administration.

The Pentagon last week announced multimillion-dollar contracts with four artificial intelligence companies intended to “address critical national security challenges,” including Anthropic, Google and OpenAI.

But the fourth raised questions among artificial intelligence experts: Elon Musk’s xAI.

Now, a former Pentagon employee who worked on the early stages of the AI initiative told NBC News that including xAI was a late-in-the-game addition under the Trump administration.

The contracts had been in the works for months, with planning dating to the Biden administration.

“There had not been a single discussion with anyone from X or xAI, up until the time I left,” said Glenn Parham, who took a government buyout in March. “It kind of came out of nowhere.”