Anthropic cuts Claude prices for US government by 40%
What's the story
Anthropic, a leading artificial intelligence (AI) company, has announced a major expansion of its services to the US public sector. The company is offering a 40% discount on its AI solutions for government agencies. The move comes as part of an expanded agreement with the General Services Administration (GSA) and is aimed at making Anthropic's products more accessible to federal, state, local, tribal and territorial authorities.
Cost savings
Flexible pricing model to reduce financial burden
Anthropic's discounted AI services, which include Claude Enterprise, Claude for Government, and its application programming interface (API), could save US taxpayers up to $1 billion.
The company says agencies will only pay based on their actual usage of these services.
This flexible pricing model is expected to reduce the financial burden on departments that are exploring AI tools within limited budgets.
Usage statistics
Rapid growth in AI adoption across government agencies
Anthropic's AI services are already being used by around 500 federal, state, and local government organizations.
The company said weekly active users of Claude for Government have increased eightfold since February.
It also claimed usage across federal civilian agencies has grown about 20-fold over the past year.
These numbers have not been independently verified.
Security features
Claude for government now available via Amazon, Google Cloud
Anthropic is also highlighting the security arrangements it offers to public-sector customers.
Claude for Government became generally available on September 30, with FedRAMP High authorization and capabilities similar to Anthropic's commercial products.
Agencies can access Claude through Amazon Bedrock and Google Cloud's Vertex AI, both of which have FedRAMP High authorization.
Ongoing dispute
Anthropic's AI technology and military tensions
The expansion of Anthropic's AI services comes amid a major disagreement with the US military over how its technology should be used.
Earlier this year, the Pentagon sought broader access to Claude and asked Anthropic to remove safeguards that the company considered necessary to prevent mass surveillance and autonomous weapons use.
However, Anthropic refused, arguing that its systems shouldn't be deployed without restrictions in those areas.