The House’s Technology Spending Had 2 Winners

econews. The U.S. House of Representatives recorded 484 ChatGPT charges of exactly $21.20 during the year ending March 31, while separately announcing the purchase of 6,000 Microsoft Copilot licenses through a centrally negotiated agreement.

The purchases reveal two routes into one of the country’s most consequential workplaces. OpenAI spread through recurring decisions made by individual congressional offices. Microsoft secured a far larger institution-wide rollout through traditional enterprise procurement.

For OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman, the charges form part of a broader push to turn ChatGPT into a routine tool for public servants. OpenAI said in February that more than 9 million paying business users relied on ChatGPT and described customers as beginning with individual productivity before expanding the technology across departments. The company has also launched OpenAI for Government, developed ChatGPT Gov, and offered ChatGPT Enterprise to participating federal executive agencies for $1 per agency for one year.

“Helping government work better and more reliably is an important part of bringing the benefits of AI to everyone, and we are encouraged by strong adoption of ChatGPT among congressional staff,” an OpenAI spokesperson told Inc. “We work closely with Congress and the Congressional Management Foundation to help train staff to use ChatGPT effectively and responsibly, consistent with House and Senate guidelines, so they can better serve their constituents and the country.”

An Inc. analysis of four quarterly House disbursement datasets identified 798 OpenAI or ChatGPT transaction lines from April 1, 2025, through March 31, 2026, totaling a net $100,580.40. Of those, 484—nearly 61 percent—were for exactly $21.20, an amount consistent with ChatGPT Plus’s $20 monthly price with Washington, D.C.’s 6 percent tax.

The repeated charges totaled $10,260.80, only about 10 percent of identifiable OpenAI spending. They do not represent 484 offices or users; many appear to be monthly renewals for the same accounts.

ChatGPT wins offices

ChatGPT was the clear choice among separately identifiable chatbot purchases. Anthropic’s Claude appeared in 37 transaction lines totaling $13,160.45. Elon Musk’s xAI appeared once, in a $300 software purchase by Representative Troy Nehls’s office. CNBC reported that ChatGPT appeared in at least 71 member offices.

“These numbers appear to show that for individual subscriptions, beyond the enterprise Copilot licenses, a majority of offices through Q1 of 2026 were choosing OpenAI,” Marci Harris, CEO and co-founder of POPVOX, a civic technology company that separately analyzed congressional AI spending, told Inc.

The visible purchases reflect decentralized choices by individual offices, but not necessarily informal use of consumer accounts. House guidance prohibited free generative-AI plans for official work because they lacked required privacy protections, Harris said.

The technology is being used for substantive work. Representative Julie Fedorchak said her staff built a searchable ChatGPT database containing legislation and materials from constituents and outside groups. It generates briefing memos and saves staff “dozens and dozens of hours every week,” she told CNBC.

OpenAI also received early institutional exposure. A House retrospective says the chamber distributed licenses for an approved AI tool to 200 staffers in June 2023 and collected more than 200 use cases. House reports identify ChatGPT Plus as the product used in that early working-group effort. OpenAI later participated in training for senior congressional staff.

Copilot arrives at scale

Microsoft followed a more traditional enterprise sales route. The House purchased 6,000 Copilot licenses for member, committee, leadership, and institutional offices. Copilot is integrated into Outlook, Teams, Word, and Excel, and offices must create internal usage policies before opting in. The House has not publicly disclosed the agreement’s cost or how many licenses are active.

The split is not entirely OpenAI versus Microsoft. Microsoft remains OpenAI’s primary cloud partner and holds a license to its models and products through 2032. Microsoft 365 Copilot continues to use OpenAI models while also offering some Anthropic models. Public House materials do not specify which underlying models are enabled in its deployment. 

The same bottom-up and top-down approaches are colliding across corporate America. Gallup found that 52 percent of U.S. employees now use AI in their work at least occasionally, while 47 percent say their organization has formally integrated AI tools. Writing, research, and problem-solving remain the most common uses—closely resembling the work congressional offices described. 

The expense records cannot establish which system congressional staff use most. They exclude AI bundled into broader software agreements, purchases obscured by credit card reimbursements, and tools developed internally.

“Looking only at the Statements of Expenditures will be insufficient to understand AI adoption in the House of Representatives and could be potentially misleading,” Daniel Schuman, executive director of the American Governance Institute, a nonpartisan nonprofit focused on strengthening and modernizing American government, told Inc.

Schuman said the House should regularly disclose which tools are available, their costs, usage figures, and representative use cases.

The records nevertheless reveal two ways to reach a major institutional customer. OpenAI established a visible foothold through recurring office-level purchases. Microsoft sold the House a centrally managed platform that could reach thousands of staff at once.

The House must publish its April-to-June spending report by August 29. It may show whether the recurring ChatGPT subscriptions persisted as Copilot rolled out. However, Microsoft’s deployment could remain largely hidden inside broader enterprise spending.

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