The Government's $1 AI Deals Expire Sept. 30. GSA Still Has Not Said What Replaces Them.

Three of the most consequential software deals in the federal government expire in six weeks, and the government has not publicly said what comes next.

Under the General Services Administration's OneGov purchasing strategy, agencies have been able to buy OpenAI's ChatGPT Enterprise for $1 per agency per year, Anthropic's Claude for Enterprise and Claude for Government across all three branches for $1, and Google's Gemini for Government for $0.47 per agency. GSA announced the OpenAI deal on August 6, 2025 and the Anthropic deal on August 12, 2025; Google followed later that month. The distributor pages agencies actually order from — Carahsoft holds the schedule contracts for all three — carry the same end date on each offer: September 30, 2026.

The scale is not theoretical. Birgit Smeltzer, director of GSA's Office of IT Products, said in May that "more than 120 orders have been placed against" OneGov's AI offerings, reaching "about 3.4 million across government." GSA puts total OneGov savings above $1.6 billion.

What GSA has actually said

Speaking at a federal AI forum in Reston, Virginia, on August 13, Smeltzer said some manufacturers "have already agreed to extend some of the limited-time offers, and some are looking at producing new offers for us." She did not say which vendors, which offers, or when anything would be announced. She said the AI offers alone saved $1.4 billion — and that prices will "eventually increase." GSA did not respond to repeated FedScoop requests for comment on renewal plans.

The publicly posted terms are thin but not silent. Carahsoft's Gemini page states that "at the end of the promotional period, customers must renew at a per user price." Its OpenAI page states subscriptions do not renew automatically and pricing is based on the number of users in tiers. Its Anthropic page gives no renewal preview at all — only the September 30 expiration. The government knows the discounts end. It does not appear to know, publicly, what the replacement price is.

The bill arrives after the habit forms

Jessica Tillipman, associate dean for government procurement law studies at George Washington University Law School, argued in a 2026 paper — "Twenty-Five Cent AI: The Hidden Costs of Promotional AI Deals" — that the nominal price is the point. Promotional pricing, she wrote, is "a nominal cost that makes the transaction sound exciting and low risk, while the true economics, such as lifecycle costs, operational dependency, and reduced negotiating leverage, arrive later."

Her framing is that the lock-in is behavioral rather than strictly technical. "When the promotional period ends, the cost of switching isn't limited to the price of licensing an alternative platform," she wrote. "It's the disruption of unwinding months of institutional dependency." At a George Mason University webinar this month she put it less formally: "Right now, if you told me I had to destroy my Claude account that has my projects in it, I would weep." She also points to Federal Acquisition Regulation 3.501, the "buying-in" rule, which warns against below-cost entry pricing.

GSA's leadership makes a version of the same argument in reverse: acting Federal Acquisition Service Commissioner Laura Stanton said fragmented purchasing "limits the government's buying power" and costs negotiating leverage — the case for OneGov. Tillipman's counterargument is that the discounts already spent that leverage. Outgoing federal Chief Information Officer Greg Barbaccia told FedScoop in December he expects vendors to price renewals off promotional-period usage data: "I don't think it's going to be $1. I think it'll be transparent at least."

The API question, and a protest that never got a hearing

One structural criticism predates the expiration by a year. In August 2025, Ask Sage — a government AI platform vendor — filed protests at the Government Accountability Office against the OpenAI and Anthropic agreements, and later the Google one. Its then-CEO, former Air Force and Space Force chief software officer Nicolas Chaillan, argued the deals violated commercial pricing rules, circumvented competition, ran through a reseller rather than the manufacturers, and lacked required security authorizations. He also argued the $1 price bought interface access, not the model access agencies need to build automation: "GSA is misleading government agencies and government employees by making it look like it is the federal version of the models."

GAO dismissed the protests in December 2025 without ruling on any of it. It found Ask Sage was not an "interested party" with standing because it was not a bidder, and that the agreements were modifications to a Carahsoft schedule contract — contract administration, outside GAO's bid protest authority. That is a procedural dismissal, not a finding that the allegations were wrong, and not a finding that they were right. The merits have never been adjudicated.

The Anthropic complication

One of the three deals carries an additional legal cloud. On February 27, 2026, President Trump directed federal agencies to stop using Anthropic technology, and GSA announced it was removing Anthropic from USAi.gov and its Multiple Award Schedule. On March 26 the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California issued a preliminary injunction pausing that directive, and on April 3 GSA withdrew its announcement and restored Anthropic "to the status quo in effect prior to February 27, 2026," per the agency's own statement. Agencies that standardized on Claude face a renewal negotiation while the underlying litigation is unresolved.

What happens if the tools just go away

The failure mode that worries governance specialists is not agencies paying more. It is agencies paying nothing and users continuing anyway. A Thomson Reuters Institute analysis found roughly 27% of government professionals report using AI tools their organization has not sanctioned, against 34% across all industries. Losing a sanctioned, logged tool does not remove the workflow it created.

There is precedent for the other direction, too. GSA's OneGov agreement with Microsoft lets agencies opt in through September 2026 with discounts available for up to 36 months on certain products; the Department of Veterans Affairs separately signed a five-year Microsoft enterprise agreement worth roughly $4.65 billion. Discounted entry followed by long-term enterprise commitment is the pattern the AI deals may now follow.

What to watch

Between now and September 30: whether GSA names specific extensions rather than describing them generally; whether any renewal publishes a per-user price before agencies must commit; whether API and model access is priced separately from seats; and whether agencies that built workflows on these tools have a documented exit path. GSA says more AI offers are coming. As of this writing, the terms are not public.