California Governor, Gavin Newsom, struck a deal with Anthropic that gives every state and local government agency access to Claude, Anthropic’s AI assistant, at half the normal price.
Aside from the discount, the agreement includes training and support from Anthropic directly.
State employees will use Claude to draft documents, sort through information, and handle tasks that currently eat up hours of their time.
Newsom explained, “AI should not replace the human work of government,” he said. “It should help our workers move faster, solve problems more effectively, and deliver better results for Californians.”
In other words, this is about making the jobs people already do a little easier.
California State
Back in March, Newsom signed an executive order pushing California to speed up its use of AI in government, but with guardrails.
He was direct about the contrast with Washington at the time. “While others in Washington are designing policy and creating contracts in the shadow of misuse, we’re focused on doing this the right way,” he said.
Anthropic vs. the Pentagon
While California is rolling out the welcome mat for Anthropic, the federal government did the opposite.
Earlier this year, Anthropic and the U.S. Department of Defense got into a serious dispute. The Pentagon wanted a contract that would let it use Claude for any lawful purpose.
Anthropic refused, wanting clear rules about mass surveillance and autonomous weapons all laid out.
But Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, said no. Therefore, the Pentagon walked away and signed a deal with OpenAI instead.
Things only got worse and the federal government went on to label Anthropic a “supply-chain risk.”
That designation blocks Anthropic from working with any other Pentagon contractors.
Does California Care?
Apparently not much. California’s Chief Information Officer, Chris Given, told POLITICO that the supply-chain risk designation “just didn’t come up” during negotiations.
Even though the federal government effectively blacklisted Anthropic, California’s top tech official says it wasn’t even part of the conversation.
