President
Donald Trump said on Thursday that he’s seriously considering looking at a
Pentagon contract that’s said to be worth up to $10 billion for
Microsoft or
Amazon.
“I never had something where more people are complaining,” Trump said, adding that he’s going to take a close look at it.
“We’re getting tremendous complaints from other companies,” Trump said in a press pool at the White House during a meeting with the prime minister of The Netherlands. “Some of the greatest companies in the world are complaining about it.” He named Microsoft,
Oracle and
IBM.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment
The Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, contract was originally supposed to be awarded in September 2018. The cloud-computing deal could be announced as early as next month, the Pentagon told CNBC.
Since April, Microsoft and Amazon have been the only remaining competitors contract after IBM and Oracle were ruled out by the Defense Department. The contract, known as JEDI, is viewed as a marquee deal for the company that ultimately wins it, particularly as Microsoft and Amazon are aggressively pursuing government work for their expanding cloud units.
Business from the CIA in the U.S. has been a big boon for Amazon Web Services.
AWS and Microsoft are the only companies that meet the minimum requirements for the contract, Defense Department spokesperson Elissa Smith told CNBC in April.