Notice End Date: October 15, 2025

Vendor Name: Open AI

Contract Amount: $3,089,726

Agency Procurement Manager: Kevin Finan

Agency Procurement Manager Email: kfinan@clemson.edu

Agency Procurement Manager Telephone#: 8646569856

The Agency hereby provides notice that it intends to enter into a sole source contract per S.C. Code Ann. §11-35-1560 with Vendor for the following supplies, services, information technology, or construction:

Clemson University requires a generative, large language model (LLM) artificial intelligence (AI) solution that understands and generates human-like text based on input it receives.  Clemson needs a tool that can be easily adapted and standardized as a primary solution to be used by the University’s 37,000+ constituents while providing opportunity and flexibility to be adapted for the unique needs of a university environment.  Some specific requirements we have include:
1) Ability to tier licenses/accounts based on various levels of user needs
2) Advanced use options for the classroom such as the ability for faculty, staff and students to build their own custom GPTs to publish and share publicly, that Admin can control for safe integrations.  Additional features focused on students usage beyond just answering questions and can be incorporated into learning and research
3) Ability for staff to use the tool for optimizing business workflow
4) Built in agentic tools and features that allow unified agent deployment, promoting usability and enabling greater controls
5) Opportunities for strategic collaboration on next generation AI research within STEM
6) Clemson data must stay within an isolated Clemson domain; the AI will not train on Clemson data

Clemson is investing in deeper, custom AI capabilities that go beyond what other universities have purchased, positioning the campus to lead in teaching, operations, and research innovation.  ChatGPT is the only LLM in the market that will allow Clemson to achieve its goals for a fast, broad adoption, ability to grow and customize solutions specific to the classroom needs, research or campus business, while also positioning Clemson to be a leader in the higher education space for such a solution.  While other LLMs do exist, the breadth of strong results of ChatGPT means Clemson can rely on a single vendor whose models already span the teaching, research, and administrative workloads we anticipate, reducing integration risk as needs evolve.  OpenAI is the only provider offering the full, integrated feature stack Clemson requires under a single EDU contract (governed custom agents, multimodal capabilities, advanced tool use, pooled-credit licensing, and institutional data protections) at the scale we need.  To be clear, this is not about varying degrees of how well the solution would perform, but rather other solutions simply are not able to meet our requirements.  Most importantly, having 19,000+ current users, it would be impossible to drive adoption and deliver on outcomes across the university for another solution.  It is basically an embedded base that is the main driver for user adoption.  ChatGPT is sold solely by OpenAI as the developer and owner of their proprietary solution.    The price we are paying for this contract ($3,089,726) is considered fair and reasonable based on comparison of similar contracts in the marketplace.  Therefore this is a sole source.
 

Agency's justification for a sole source procurement may be viewed or immediately obtained at: Agency Procurement Manager (Listed Above)

PROTESTS:
Any actual or prospective bidder, offeror, contractor, or subcontractor aggrieved in connection with the intended award or award of this sole source contract, shall notify the appropriate chief Procurement officer in writing of its intent to protest within five (5) business days of the date this notice is posted. Any actual or prospective bidder, offeror, contractor, or subcontractor who is aggrieved in connection with the intended award or award of this sole source contract and has timely notified the appropriate chief procurement officer of its intent to protest, may protest to the appropriate chief procurement officer in the manner set forth below within fifteen days of the date this notice is posted; except that a matter that could have been raised as a protest of the solicitation may not be raised as a protest of the award or intended award of a contract.
A protest must be in writing, filed with the appropriate chief procurement officer, and set forth the grounds of the protest and the relief requested with enough particularity to give notice of the issues to be decided. The protest must be received by the appropriate chief procurement officer within the time provided above. Days are calculated as provided in S.C. Code Ann. § 11-35-310(13).

Any Notice Of Intent To Protest And Protest Must Be Addressed To: Information Technology Management Officer