The White House Allegedly Directed Federal Employees to Implement Grok Immediately

The White House seems to have directed the leaders at the General Services Administration (GSA) to add xAI’s Grok chatbot to the approved vendors list “ASAP,” according to an email from agency leadership earlier this week, which WIRED has obtained.

“Team: Grok/xAI needs to be reinstated on the schedule ASAP per the WH,” states the email from Josh Gruenbaum, the commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service. “Can someone connect with Carahsoft on this immediately and confirm, please?” Carahsoft is a prominent government contractor that resells technology from third-party companies.

“This should include all their products that we had previously (3 & 4),” the email continued, likely referring to Grok 3 and Grok 4. The subject line of the email read “xAI add Grok-4.”

Sources indicate that Carahsoft’s contract was updated to include xAI earlier this week. As of Friday morning, Grok 3 and Grok 4 both appear on GSA Advantage, an online marketplace for government agencies to procure products and services. Following some internal evaluations, any government agency can now implement Grok for federal employees.

The White House and GSA did not respond to WIRED’s request for a comment.

This email follows the collapse of a planned partnership with xAI earlier this summer after Grok received widespread criticism for praising Hitler and expressing other antisemitic views on X, as previously reported by WIRED.

In June, xAI employees met with GSA leadership for a two-hour brainstorming session to explore how the Grok chatbot could be utilized by the government. Federal employees were taken aback by their leaders’ push for a contract with a company promoting an uncensored chatbot that has a record of unpredictable behavior. In early July, Grok, integrated into Elon Musk’s social platform X, appeared to go off course and began praising Hitler. As a result, GSA leadership removed Grok from the Multiple Award Schedule, which is GSA’s long-term government contracting platform, according to agency sources. When GSA announced exciting partnerships with OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google earlier this month, xAI was completely left out.

xAI is Elon Musk’s AI startup. Musk, who also leads the social network X alongside several other companies, played a significant role in President Donald Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). He stepped back from his public role at DOGE this spring after a major disagreement with the president. Several of his associates continue to advocate for DOGE’s cost-cutting and AI-centric agenda within the government.