OpenAI, pressured after DeepSeek's success, is now launching ChatGPT Gov

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is now launching ChatGPT Gov, a special version of the popular AI chatbot designed for US government agencies.

Kevin Weil, OpenAI’s CPO, says in a post on X that using ChatGPT Gov is important in a public sector like the US Federal government for “maintaining America’s global leadership in AI.”

Agencies can deploy ChatGPT Gov in their Azure cloud environments, including both commercial and government clouds, although Microsoft stopped being OpenAI’s exclusive cloud provider last week.

So, with that, OpenAI is hoping that the public sector could use AI to improve public health, infrastructure, and national security. ChatGPT Gov also gives access to the GPT-4o model and features like saving chats, custom GPTs, and an admin console to help agencies manage security & privacy.

“Self-hosting ChatGPT Gov enables agencies to more easily manage their own security, privacy, and compliance requirements, such as stringent cybersecurity frameworks (IL5, CJIS, ITAR, FedRAMP High),” OpenAI says.

“Additionally, we believe this infrastructure will expedite internal authorization of OpenAI’s tools for the handling of non-public sensitive data, the Stargate-building company continues.

The announcement came amid the buzz of DeepSeek’s success, a new ChatGPT rival from China that’s reportedly built on older Nvidia H100 GPUs and only spent $6 million in the making. It’s free and it’s cheap, which is a big jump, especially in the billion-spending AI race.

Microsoft’s bosses and executives are even taking notes and pages out DeepSeek’s success. CEO Satya Nadella, who will announce Microsoft’s latest quarterly earnings report on Wednesday, has previously praised the models and their cost-effectiveness.

But it goes deeper than just a faster chatbot. DeepSeek’s success somehow disrupted the US dominance in the tech market, with reportedly over $1 trillion lost from the stock market since its launch.