Featured Image Credit: Anna Moneymaker / Staff / Getty
Even though Elon Musk might not be flavor of the month for President Donald Trump, there's no escaping the fact that the tech overlord has some pretty impressive innovations at his disposal right now.
Like when Musk threatened to pull his SpaceX Dragon rockets from service during his falling out with the POTUS, there are worries that the American government needs Musk just as much as he needs his billions of dollars from government contracts.
Although there have been rumbles about Elon Musk's net worth taking a beating if his government contracts are axed, he's just landed a lucrative one thanks to his controversial Grok chatbot.
The world's richest man has promoted his artificial intelligence chatbot as having a cheeky side and not being afraid to answer “spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems."
Advert
Unfortunately for Grok, its rebellious streak has seen it land itself in some unfortunate situations.
After being accused of becoming obsessed with white genocide in May 2025, Grok has now been embroiled in a scandal where it made a series of posts praising Adolf Hitler.
Musk has since spoken out and claimed that Grok was 'tricked' into making these remarks, but for some, that doesn't excuse the fact that it referred to itself as 'MechaHitler'.
Alongside Musk seemingly trying to move on from the debacle and promising there will be continued improvement, Grok has just landed a $200 million deal to modernize the Defense Department.
xAI is joined by other AI juggernauts like Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI in the award, although there are obvious concerns given Grok's outbursts.
The contract was announced by the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) and didn't give much else away, other than how these companies will help the DoD “develop agentic AI workflows across a variety of mission areas."
Announcing 'Grok for Government', xAI explained: "Under the umbrella of Grok For Government, we will be bringing all of our world-class AI tools to federal, local, state, and national security customers.
Last week: Grok called itself "mechahitler"
— stavroula pabst (@stavroulapabst) July 14, 2025
This week: "Grok for Government" scores $200 million DoD contract
what could go wrong? https://t.co/7qk1SIS330
“These customers will be able to use the Grok family of products to accelerate America – from making everyday government services faster and more efficient to using AI to address unsolved problems in fundamental science and technology."
Other departments will also be able to purchase tools from the General Services Administration (GSA) schedule, with xAI expanding into custom models. The company plans to work on new products for government customers, like "custom models for national security and critical science applications available to specific customers."
The DoD’s chief digital and AI officer, Dr Doug Matty, said: "Leveraging commercially available solutions into an integrated capabilities approach will accelerate the use of advanced AI as part of our joint mission-essential tasks in our warfighting domain as well as intelligence, business and enterprise information systems."
Still, the announcement coming just days after Grok told users to pass it the mustache and refer to it as Hitler, there are a few raised eyebrows that it could soon find itself embedded in some crucial state systems.
