ChatGPT gets one step closer to widespread government use

OpenAI has cleared another critical hurdle to selling its ChatGPT tool directly to the federal government. 

As of Tuesday, ChatGPT is listed as “in process” on the FedRAMP Marketplace, an online repository that tracks where companies stand in the FedRAMP security review process. While federal agencies can issue their own approvals to use technology platforms, FedRAMP is the government’s primary security review program and is designed to clear widespread cloud-based technologies for use across federal agencies. 

The review began Tuesday, per the FedRAMP site. 

OpenAI received prioritized authorization through 20x, a person familiar with the matter told FedScoop. It’s the first company to receive this prioritization, which, in effect, eliminates the need for companies to find federal agencies to sponsor them for review. At one point, OpenAI had engaged USAID, its first enterprise customer, about helping them with the process, FedScoop previously reported, but the agency was mostly shuttered in the early days of the second Trump administration. 

The General Services Administration created the prioritized review for AI cloud services just last month, FedScoop also previously reported. GSA did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.

AI companies are moving to deepen their relationship with the government — and fast. In recent weeks, several AI companies — including OpenAI and Anthropic — have announced highly discounted access to their products through the General Services Administration, which is also making these tools available through a new platform called USAi. Several sources have told FedScoop that this pricing appears to be a bid to push federal agencies to move faster with internal approval processes. 

Companies like Google and Microsoft, which already have extensive cloud businesses with the government, are also trying to promote their AI tools to federal agencies. Without independent FedRAMP approval, companies like Anthropic and OpenAI have typically had to work with these kinds of pre-reviewed cloud providers to bring their tech to government customers.

Notably, xAI was supposed to be included in an initial set of AI partnership announcements — and was added and then removed — from a Carahsoft offering through GSA. The White House subsequently told GSA to add the offering back in, Wired previously reported, and Grok, xAI’s large language model chatbot, is now listed again.