USAi is no longer free for federal agencies, website update says

The General Services Administration has updated its website to state that federal agencies must now pay a 'platform fee plus passthrough usage costs' to use USAi, the government's artificial intelligence platform that was previously free. GSA did not respond to requests for comment on the new pricing. Meanwhile, other GSA AI offerings through OneGov deals with OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic are expiring at the end of this month, with some manufacturers agreeing to extend limited-time offers, according to GSA official Birgit Smeltzer.

USAi is no longer free for federal agencies, website update says Federal agencies will now have to pay to use the government’s artificial intelligence platform USAi, according to an update posted to the General Services Administration’s website https://www.gsa.gov/artificial-intelligence/buy-ai this week. Previously provided at no cost to government employees, USAi now costs a “platform fee plus passthrough usage costs,” the website says. GSA did not respond to a request for comment or specifics about the new pricing by the time of publication. Other GSA AI offerings through OneGov https://fedscoop.com/tag/onegov/ deals — like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude — are expiring at the end of this month https://fedscoop.com/onegov-ai-deals-expiring-whats-next/ , with no clear plan forward yet, at least publicly. Recently, https://fedscoop.com/gsa-onegov-ai-deals-some-extensions-new-offers/ a GSA official said some manufacturers with OneGov deals, including AI companies, have “already agreed to extend some limited-time offers, and some are looking at producing new offers.” “We continue to work very closely with the original equipment manufacturers to get extension of those offers, or maybe get new offers in place,” Birgit Smeltzer, director of the agency’s Office of IT Products, said at a GovCIO Media & Research event in August. “We look very much at what makes sense for the government and what may not have taken flight so much,” she continued, “and put some offers out there that work for our agencies.”