The US Department of Health and Human Services plans a no-competition, sole-source award to keep Anthropic's Claude for its staff, saying no other AI fits its needs, according to a notice of intent reported this week. The move comes months after the Trump administration's ban on Anthropic in other parts of the government.

FedScoop notes that the Food and Drug Administration, part of HHS, began moving its Elsa chatbot from Claude to Google's Gemini earlier this year. Anthropic's discounted deal for agencies through the GSA's OneGov programme ends on October 31.

The Pentagon is still fighting in court to keep Anthropic out, which makes HHS's stance an early test of how hard it is for agencies to switch AI suppliers once staff rely on one — especially as cheap introductory government deals expire.