Eight technology companies, including Google, Nvidia and SpaceX, have struck deals with the Pentagon to help the US military gain an edge on the battlefield.

“These agreements accelerate the transformation towards establishing the United States military as an AI-first fighting force and will strengthen our warfighters’ ability to maintain decision superiority across all domains of warfare,” the Department of Defence said on Friday.

The companies will deploy their AI technology on the department’s “classified networks” for “lawful operational use”, according to the agency.

OpenAI, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Oracle and AI start-up Reflection are among the companies that agreed to work with the Pentagon.

The agreements underscore how tech companies are expanding their work with the US military even as some workers raise concerns about the use of AI for autonomous weapons and mass surveillance. Anthropic, the San Francisco company behind the chatbot Claude, clashed with the Pentagon earlier this year over whether there were adequate safeguards around the military’s use of its technology.

The Department of Defence accused Anthropic of trying to “seize veto power” over military decisions, though the company pushed back against that characterisation. The agency labelled Anthropic a supply chain risk, and the Trump administration directed federal agencies to stop using the company’s tools, setting off a legal battle over that designation.