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Pentagon Gives $9B in Cloud Contracts to Google, Oracle, Microsoft and Amazon

The four tech giants are tasked with building out cloud computing networks for the US military.

Alix Langone Former Reporter
Alix is a former CNET Money staff writer. She also previously reported on retirement and investing for Money.com and was a staff writer at Time magazine. Her work has also appeared in various publications, such as Fortune, InStyle and Travel + Leisure, and she worked in social media and digital production at NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt and NY1. She graduated from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY and Villanova University. When not checking Twitter, Alix likes to hike, play tennis and watch her neighbors' dogs. Now based in Los Angeles, Alix doesn't miss the New York City subway one bit.
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The Defense Department on Wednesday announced that the Pentagon is divvying up $9 billion in cloud contracts between Google, Oracle, Microsoft and Amazon.

The contracts were awarded to the four tech companies to help build out the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability, or JWCC, which will streamline cloud computing for the US military across the globe. The companies are tasked with creating cloud networks that will "provide enterprise cloud capabilities for the Defense Department at all three security classifications: unclassified, secret and top secret," the department said earlier this year.

Dividing the contracts between four companies helps the Pentagon avoid having to rely on a single company for all of its cloud computing needs, which mitigates the risk of any potential network disruptions or outages. Previously, the Pentagon faced legal challenges in 2019 from Amazon and Oracle after awarding Microsoft a $10 billion contract for its Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud, or JEDI, but ultimately canceled the contract.

"The purpose of this contract is to provide the Department of Defense with enterprise-wide, globally available cloud services across all security domains and classification levels," the Defense Department said in a statement. The contracts are expected to last until June 2028.