After two months, Google withdraws from Pentagon's $100 million drone contest

OpenAI, Palantir, and Elon Musk's xAI are among the companies still competing for the $100 million prize in the Pentagon drone-swarm contest.

The Information reported that Google and the Pentagon have signed a broader AI deal allowing the Defense Department to use Google's Gemini models for any lawful government purpose, with no veto power for Google over how the government uses its AI.

Anthropic refused to loosen safety guardrails around autonomous weapons and surveillance; the Trump administration designated Anthropic a "supply chain risk," effectively banning it from Defense Department contracts. A federal appeals court denied Anthropic's request to block that designation earlier this month, even as a San Francisco judge issued a preliminary injunction keeping it alive for other government work. Anthropic also applied for the drone swarm contest but was not selected.

More than 600 Google employees, many from its DeepMind AI lab including directors and vice presidents, signed an open letter to CEO Sundar Pichai urging rejection of classified military contracts, arguing that the technology could be used in ways that are "inhumane or extremely harmful."

Google notified the Defense Department that it would not participate further in the Pentagon's prize challenge to build voice-controlled, autonomous drone swarms, following an internal ethics review. Officially cited a lack of 'resourcing' as the reason for stepping back. Bloomberg reported that Google was selected as one of the successful submissions weeks earlier, and that it is unclear how widely the entry was known inside the company. Google said: "After reviewing this project, we decided not to pursue a bid so we can stay focused on the initiatives where our models are most effective," and noted it evaluates hundreds of government opportunities annually.