Perplexity today announced Perplexity for Government, a comprehensive initiative providing secure AI capabilities to U.S. federal agencies. The programme automatically enforces zero data usage protections for all government requests while granting access to the company's most advanced AI models at no cost to federal users.
The initiative addresses growing AI adoption challenges within the public sector, where federal employees currently rely on publicly available web tools that offer limited capabilities and inadequate data protection. Under the new programme, all requests identified as originating from U.S. government agencies will receive automatic security safeguards, ensuring that federal data is not retained for training, improving, or evaluating AI models.
"Perplexity believes that America's government deserves frontier AI capabilities that are secure by default—not by discretion," the company stated. The security protections apply to both logged-in and logged-out requests, with the company using technical measures to identify qualifying government traffic. Agencies can submit additional network ranges to ensure comprehensive coverage.
The announcement responds to the Trump Administration's AI Action Plan and Office of Management and Budget directives M-25-21 and M-25-22, which called for enhanced government and industry collaboration on public sector AI development. Perplexity already serves thousands of federal employees daily and employs government alumni across its engineering and policy teams.
Beyond the free offering, Perplexity introduced Enterprise Pro for Government, a custom enterprise platform adaptation priced at $0.25 per agency for the first 15 months. The company is pursuing deployment through government-wide vehicles including the General Services Administration's Multiple Award Schedule, aligned with GSA's OneGov strategy.
The secure-by-default approach addresses critical data protection concerns while providing federal agencies access to frontier AI capabilities typically available only through commercial subscriptions. The enterprise offering integrates with institutional knowledge systems and provides access to multiple AI model providers, reducing single-vendor dependency risks for government operations.
Perplexity's government initiative positions the company as a strategic partner for federal AI transformation while establishing security standards that differentiate it from competitors relying on public tools. The nominal pricing structure for Enterprise Pro suggests a focus on market penetration and relationship building rather than immediate revenue generation. The programme demonstrates how AI companies can address public sector requirements while maintaining commercial viability through secure, purpose-built government offerings.