Data story · Counted 11 November 2026
373 federal contracts mention AI in fiscal 2026. Defense holds 65% of the dollars.
USAspending lists 373 fiscal 2026 contract awards whose text contains "artificial intelligence".[1] A keyword match is not a count of AI work: it finds the phrase, not the purpose.
$500.1 million
obligated in fiscal 2026 on those awards, across 27 agencies and 300 recipients.[1]
Five agencies hold 91.0% of the dollars: Defense 65.0%, Homeland Security 7.8%, Health and Human Services 7.6%, Treasury 5.5% and Commerce 5.2%.[1]
The count barely moves from year to year: 372 awards in fiscal 2024, 388 in fiscal 2025 and 373 in fiscal 2026, 3.9% fewer than the year before.[1]
By agency
| Awarding agency | $ millions | Share | Awards in the list |
|---|---|---|---|
| Defense | 324.9 | 65.0% | 208 |
| Homeland Security | 39.0 | 7.8% | 22 |
| Health and Human Services | 37.8 | 7.6% | 22 |
| Treasury | 27.5 | 5.5% | 18 |
| Commerce | 25.9 | 5.2% | 26 |
| General Services Administration | 14.6 | 2.9% | 7 |
| Veterans Affairs | 12.8 | 2.6% | 21 |
| Labor | 6.3 | 1.3% | 4 |
| National Science Foundation | 2.5 | 0.5% | 2 |
| Agriculture | 2.5 | 0.5% | 1 |
| 17 other agencies | 6.3 | 1.3% | 42 |
The largest recipients
| Recipient | $ millions | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Enlighten, LLC | 85.1 | 17.0% |
| ECS Federal, LLC | 48.3 | 9.7% |
| Carahsoft Technology Corp. | 19.4 | 3.9% |
Together the three hold 30.6% of the dollars; the other 297 recipients share the rest.[1]
Data: agencies-fy2026.csv · awards-by-year.csv
How it was counted
- One search on USAspending's public API: the keyword "artificial intelligence", contract award types A to D (purchase orders, delivery orders, definitive contracts and blanket purchase agreement calls), each federal fiscal year.[1]
- Award counts are USAspending's own count for each year. Dollars are the fiscal 2026 obligations it reports by awarding agency, added up.
- Two checks passed: the award list has 373 rows, the same as the count, and the agency amounts and the recipient amounts add up to the same total within a dollar.
Limits
- The keyword search matches the phrase in an award's text fields, not the contract itself. AI work described in other words is missing, and some matches mention AI in passing.
- Grants and other assistance are not included: contracts only.
- The figures still move as agencies report: the same search on 15 October 2026 found 352 fiscal 2026 awards and $435.9 million.
- Nothing here says what the contracts are for or how well they went.
More on the federal AI picture: 3,611 uses of AI on the federal list · AI in the public sector.
Sources
- USAspending.gov, the official source of federal spending data, API version 2: award counts, the award list and obligations by awarding agency and by recipient, keyword "artificial intelligence", contract award types A to D, counted by this site. Read 11 November 2026. The same search can be run at usaspending.gov/search.