GSA Makes Perplexity AI Available to Every Federal Agency

The General Services Administration announced on November 19, 2025 that it had signed a first of its kind direct OneGov agreement with Perplexity AI, making the companys Perplexity Enterprise Pro for Government available to federal agencies through the Multiple Award Schedule IT. The arrangement allows agencies to access the platform for a nominal fee of $0.25 per agency for an initial 18 month term, a price the GSA described as deeply discounted and intended to lower barriers to experimentation and deployment across the government.

GSA said the OneGov agreement advances a broader strategy to streamline federal procurement by enabling agencies to buy directly from an original equipment manufacturer rather than through resellers. Procurement officials expect the model to shorten contracting timelines, reduce administrative costs and provide agencies with standardized commercial terms and support for rapidly evolving artificial intelligence tools.

Perplexitys government specific offering includes automatic zero data usage protections for requests identified as originating from government IP ranges, options for model uplift that allow agencies to access multiple frontier models, and integration capabilities with agency systems such as SharePoint and Outlook. Those features are aimed at addressing two of the governments most pressing concerns about AI, data protection and operational interoperability, while offering access to higher capacity models for agencies that require them.

The agreement also ties into the White Houses AI Action Plan, which calls for accelerated, secure adoption of artificial intelligence across federal operations and for better alignment of procurement, security and workforce development. For agencies, the Perplexity deal could offer immediate practical benefits, including faster internal access to large language model capabilities, improved document search and summarization functions, and easier connections to existing collaboration platforms.

Despite those potential gains, the arrangement raises governance and oversight questions that officials will need to manage. Centralized availability does not eliminate the need for robust agency level risk assessments, data logging and model testing to ensure compliance with privacy rules, records management requirements and sector specific security obligations. Model uplift options that expose agencies to multiple frontier models will require additional scrutiny around provenance, auditability and potential biases.

The symbolic price point of $0.25 per agency for the initial term is likely to encourage widespread experimentation, but cost is only one element of adoption. Agencies will still need to invest in integration, training and policy work to deploy AI meaningfully and responsibly. There is also the prospect of vendor concentration if the government funnels many projects through a small set of commercial suppliers, an outcome procurement reformers often caution against.

By putting Perplexity on the MAS IT schedule under a OneGov contract, the GSA has signaled a push toward more uniform, vendor direct access to AI tools for the federal workforce. The next phase will test whether operational safeguards, oversight frameworks and agency capacity can keep pace with the rapid deployment the agreement aims to enable.