By Jeffrey A. Newman
The U.S. Government agencies are generally using FedRAMP authorized commercial clous providers to create the datacenters it is using. Defense agencies rely mostly on large hyperscale cloud platforms that hold FedRAMP High or Moderate authorizations and separate government only regions. There isn’t a single, public, consolidated list of “winners” of federal AI‑specific data center construction awards. However a few recent actions highlight who is getting big modernization and AI‑enabling work. Most named awards are for modernization of existing federal data centers or for leasing/constructing AI infrastructure on federal sites, rather than classic design‑build on government balance sheet. Here are two major winners so far (this is not a complete list):
- Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) – DISA: HPE was awarded a roughly $931 million contract by the Defense Information Systems Agency to modernize a major DISA data center, including compute, storage, and networking upgrades that support advanced analytics and AI workloads.
- Vertiv + Dell modular data centers: Vertiv and Dell are marketing “federal‑ready” prefabricated modular data centers (PMDCs) and reference using established DoD and NASA contract vehicles (e.g., CHESS ITES‑3H) to deploy HPC/AI‑capable PMDCs CONUS and OCONUS, indicating they are already being used as builders/systems integrators for DoD AI and HPC capacity.
In addition, The Department of Energy has announced four sites – Idaho National Laboratory, Oak Ridge Reservation, Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, and the Savannah River Site – for AI data center and associated energy infrastructure development on federal land. DOE has issued a Request for Information to industry to develop, operate, and maintain AI infrastructure on those sites, with a target to begin construction by the end of 2025 and operations by the end of 2027; the RFI explicitly contemplates private‑sector builders/operators but does not yet name selected developers.
The publicly reported “AI infrastructure”has not been released. The Government‑compiled master list, and many AI‑relevant data‑center projects are embedded in broader cloud or IT modernization contracts. The best recent items where the federal government explicitly links data‑center or cloud infrastructure to AI capabilities are below.
Major AI‑linked infrastructure awards
GSA AI/cloud vehicles (multiple awardees)
GSA is expanding Multiple Award Schedule and cloud vehicles with “AI‑ready” and specialized computing offerings that effectively function as shared AI infrastructure (GPU capacity, sovereign regions, etc.), but press releases name broad sets of software and cloud providers rather than discrete data‑center builders, and generally do not break out award dates by individual vendor. These vehicles are how many agencies will consume AI infrastructure over time, even though they do not look like classic one‑off construction awards. In terms of expected expenditures which have been announced, I recommend the following article that was published this summer: https://breakingdefense.com/2025/07/anthropic-google-and-xai-win-200m-each-from-pentagon-ai-chief-for-agentic-ai/
Jeffrey Newman is a whistleblower lawyer, whose law firm represents whistleblowers revealing violations of export controls, tariff evasions, money laundering, healthcare fraud and other kinds of WB cases. The firm represents individuals both in the United States and other countries. Mr. Newman and his firm also represent physicians and other healthcare providers who become whistleblowers in healthcare fraud cases. Whistleblower laws in the U.S. allow individuals anywhere with information about export control violations or tariff fraud to reveal the information under The False Claims act or through the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Whistleblower Program. The Firm’s website is at www.JeffNewmanLaw.com and attorney Newman can be reached at Jeff@Jeffnewmanlaw.com or at 978-880-4758
