White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday she does not think President Trump supports federal agencies contracting with Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence (AI) company.
“I don’t think so, no,” Leavitt said.
Asked if Trump would then want the government to cancel a recently announced contract with Musk’s AI venture, Leavitt said she would talk to the president about it.
The comments come roughly a week after Musk’s company, xAI, scored a contract for up to $200 million with the Department of Defense, alongside three other major tech firms.
xAI, Anthropic, Google and OpenAI all received contracts with the same ceiling from the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office to help boost the agency’s adoption of advanced AI.
That announcement came on the same day xAI unveiled a suite of AI products for U.S. government customers, which it refers to as Grok for Government.
Trump and Musk have been locked in a bitter feud since the Tesla CEO departed his role as a special government employee at the end of May. Musk has criticized Trump’s signature policy bill and floated the idea of starting another political party, while Trump has suggested he could harm Musk by canceling federal contracts with his businesses, such as SpaceX.
