Altman Scores One of the Pentagon’s Biggest AI Deals… Right After Trump Gave Him Nuclear Keys

If Sam Altman ever starts a religion, half of Silicon Valley will be tithing by the weekend. Because in the span of a single day, the OpenAI CEO (already busy trying to bottle artificial general intelligence and sell it to Microsoft) managed to win over two of the most powerful forces in American life: the energy lobby and the U.S. Department of Defense.

It started when shares of Altman’s nuclear energy startup, Oklo, popped 13% after Donald Trump signed a series of executive orders aimed at supercharging America’s nuclear energy sector. The new policies cut red tape, fast-tracked permits, and basically flung the doors open for companies like Oklo to start planting mini-reactors across the country. The market loved it. Altman’s timing was immaculate.

But “I don’t care about the money Altman” wasn’t done. Less than 24 hours later, ole Sammy boy is announcing OpenAI has secured a $200 million contract from the Department of Defense… its first official Pentagon deal, and one of the largest annual software contracts the DoD has ever handed out. Yes, the same guy whose tech once argued whether a hot dog is a sandwich now has clearance to handle national security. (At this rate, we fully expect him to be sworn in as Acting Secretary of Everything by Friday.)

The Pentagon announced the contract today, awarding OpenAI a one-year deal to develop and test “frontier AI capabilities” for both warfighting and enterprise use cases. Most of the work will be based in the Washington, D.C. area, so I guess ChatGPT is going to need a Metro card. OpenAI beat out 11 other firms for the contract. That alone would be impressive. But what makes this even wilder is that just 18 months ago, the company was better known for cranking out Buzzfeed-style quiz answers and travel plans (and half the time getting it wrong). Now it’s competing for defense dollars with Palantir and Raytheon. Let that sink in.

This latest deal falls under a new division OpenAI rolled out called “OpenAI for Government,” which consolidates all their federal partnerships under one banner… everything from ChatGPT Gov (yes, that exists), to previous work with NASA, the NIH, the Air Force Research Lab, and the Treasury.

Altman hasn’t exactly been subtle about wanting to play in the national security sandbox. Back in April, he shared a stage with OpenAI board member and former NSA chief Paul Nakasone and said, “We have to and are proud to and really want to engage in national security areas.” You know: “Let us into the war room. We’ve got models to run. I promise they won’t stall out in the middle of a national security crisis because someone generated too much anime fan art again.”

And now, here we are. Analysts at William Blair say the $200 million award is one of the biggest annual software contracts ever handed out by the Pentagon. It puts OpenAI right next to Palantir, which has spent the last two decades earning its spot at the grown-up table by building AI for drone targeting and battlefield intel. Palantir had to wine and dine the military-industrial complex for years. Altman showed up in a black T-shirt, said “let me show you something cool,” and got a keycard to the war room.

OpenAI may not be going at this alone. In December, the company quietly partnered with defense-tech firm Anduril (Peter Thiel’s other billion-dollar company of nerds) to build AI-powered anti-drone systems. So while OpenAI’s moving in on Palantir’s turf, they might also be building an alliance with the other side of the Thiel-verse (this could get interesting).

None of this is random. Altman’s clearly on a mission. In January, he stood next to Trump at the White House to announce Stargate… a proposed $500 billion AI infrastructure initiative meant to bring high-performance computing back to U.S. soil. Yesterday, his nuclear energy company got a very real shot in the arm from that same administration’s policy shift. Now, OpenAI has secured a contract that plugs it directly into the nation’s most powerful security apparatus.

I know it sounds like a joke… but we’ve seen what happens when a tech guy cozies up to Trump. The bromance heats up fast... and blows up even faster. (Just ask Elon). At this rate, don’t be shocked if Sam Altman skips the private sector altogether and announces a run for Secretary of Everything. He’s already locked down AI, energy, infrastructure, and now defense.

Sure, the $200 million Pentagon deal might not move the needle much for a company doing over $10 billion in annual revenue… but that’s not the point. This is about access, not income. It’s about wiring OpenAI directly into the command center of the American machine. And if you’re wondering what happens when the guy who built a chatbot to summarize Reddit threads gets access to nukes… don’t worry. We’re probably about to find out.

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Microsoft as mentioned in the article.