Anthropic, Gavin Newsom make deal allowing CA gov to use Claude at half price

- California Governor Gavin Newsom announced a partnership with Anthropic, the AI company behind the Claude chatbot, to make its tools available to state government agencies at half the standard price. - Anthropic was founded by former OpenAI employees and is based in San Francisco. It positions itself as a safety-focused AI company, with Claude being a direct competitor to ChatGPT. - The deal is notable because California is home to virtually all major AI labs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, Meta) and is actively shaping AI regulation — Newsom has both promoted AI innovation and vetoed broad AI safety bills. - This "first-of-its-kind partnership" lets agencies use Claude for tasks like drafting responses to public inquiries, summarizing documents, and assisting with IT support, with the stated goal of improving government services at reduced cost. - Critics have raised concerns about giving a private company access to state data and workflows, and about the potential for unelected officials to use AI in ways that affect public services without legislative oversight.