State Strikes Anthropic Deal With Poppy Expansion Close Behind

The state of California has made a deal with Anthropic to provide the company’s AI tool Claude to state agencies at half price.

Under the newly minted deal, the state won’t be the only one with lower-cost access to the productivity assistant; counties and cities will also be able to get in on the action.

Claude will be the first AI productivity tool made available for purchase through the California Department of Technology’s recently launched Statewide Information Technology Shared Services (SITeS) portal.

“CDT is partnering with departments across the state to leverage the state’s purchasing power to make it easy to procure new tools, fast and for the best price,” State CIO Chris Given said in a press release. “Our work on SITeS is just one way we are reducing barriers for state employees to gain access to the tools they need.”

Claude is already in use across portions of state government, specifically the California Department of Technology (CDT) and the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services for cybersecurity operations, as well as the Department of Motor Vehicles and Department of Health Care Services, where it's being used for customer service and internal workflow improvements, respectively.

The tool will, according to the governor’s office, be used in a “wide range of tasks, including drafting and summarizing documents, analyzing information, supplementing day-to-day work and improving services for Californians.”

“As state employees, our goal is to provide our fellow Californians with the best possible service,” Government Operations Agency Secretary Nick Maduros said in a press release. “To do that, we need to make sure our teams have access to the best modern tools, including Claude and other emerging technologies.”

The deal comes as CDT is preparing for a broader release of its own in-house AI tool, Poppy, in July.

Claude was one of the 10 generative AI models used to build the Poppy platform, which officials have said will be rolled out to the rest of the state’s workforce. What is unclear at this stage is how exactly the tools will fit in relation to each other.

Poppy was designed and built to meet employee efficiency needs, CDT Deputy Chief Technology Officer Chaeny Emanavin recently said during a Code for America lightning talk. The tool provides staff with access to the various models and their ideal use cases for the projects they are working on.