Ethan Carter
Recently, the Commerce Department’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) announced a significant agreement with leading AI companies such as Microsoft, xAI, and Google. This collaborative effort permits the government to conduct inspections of unreleased AI models prior to their public launch. Notably, similar agreements were established with Anthropic and OpenAI back in 2024.
The following is a detailed excerpt from the government’s announcement, which was made on May 5, 2026:
“Today, the Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) at the Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology announced new agreements with Google DeepMind, Microsoft and xAI. Through these expanded industry collaborations, CAISI will conduct pre-deployment evaluations and targeted research to better assess frontier AI capabilities and advance the state of AI security. These agreements build on previously announced partnerships, which have been renegotiated to reflect CAISI’s directives from the secretary of commerce and America’s AI Action Plan.”
However, this excerpt had to be retrieved from the Wayback Machine because the original announcement is currently unavailable on the CAISI website. Reuters was the first to highlight this issue, reporting that accessing the original URL leads to an error page indicating, “Sorry, we cannot find that page.” Subsequently, the link redirects users to the main CAISI page on the Commerce Department website. As of Monday night, the original URL still redirects to the CAISI homepage.
The archived announcement emphasizes that “these agreements support information-sharing,” along with “ensuring a clear understanding in government of AI capabilities and the state of international AI competition.” This highlights the government’s commitment to staying informed about advancements in artificial intelligence.
On Monday evening, Gizmodo sought comments from both the White House and the Commerce Department, but did not receive an immediate response. Updates will be provided to this article as more information becomes available.
Brandon Fletcher
