California Governor Gavin Newsom on June 29 announced a statewide agreement with Anthropic that opens access to Claude for every state agency — and every city and county that opts in — at a 50 percent discount, alongside free workforce training and technical assistance from Anthropic engineers.
The deal makes Claude the first AI productivity tool available through California’s new Statewide Information Technology Shared Services (SITeS) portal, managed by the California Department of Technology. Officials described it as the first agreement of its kind for any US state government.
Which Agencies, and What For
Several departments are named in the initial rollout. The California DMV will use Claude to cut customer wait times and improve service delivery. The Department of Healthcare Services will integrate it into internal workflows for the state’s Medicaid program. The California Department of Technology and CalOES — the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services — will deploy Claude Security and Claude Code for cybersecurity defense, covering vulnerability scanning and patch generation.
A state-specific interface called Poppy, built on Claude, will give employees pre-built query templates for common government tasks: document drafting, information analysis, and summarization. Claude is also being integrated into Engaged California, the state’s platform for gathering public input on policy.
Scale and Governance
By extending the same discounted pricing to cities and counties that opt into SITeS, the deal could reach well beyond the state’s roughly 230,000 agency employees.
“We need to make sure our teams have access to the best modern tools,” said Government Operations Secretary Nick Maduros. Anthropic’s Head of Americas, Kate Jensen, described the partnership as consistent with the company’s approach of “building AI responsibly and in service of people.”
The agreement marks one of the broadest government AI rollouts in the United States to date, covering every state agency rather than isolated pilot programs.