Ask Sage, Inc. (B-423827)

You should not care.

Categories: Multiple Award Schedule, jurisdiction

Date: 18 December 2025

URL: https://www.gao.gov/products/b-423827

Ask Sage protested GSA’s actions under an existing Federal Supply Schedule contract with Carahsoft after GSA modified the contract to make Anthropic’s Claude for Enterprise and Claude for Government available to agencies for a nominal $1 for one year. Ask Sage argued the pricing arrangement was improper and risked vendor lock-in.

GAO dismissed the protest. The threshold problem was jurisdiction: the challenged action was a modification to an already-awarded FSS contract, which GAO generally treats as contract administration rather than a bid protest matter. Ask Sage tried to reframe the case as an out-of-scope modification, but GAO held the company lacked interested-party status to pursue that theory because Ask Sage was only a supplier or subcontractor to Carahsoft, not an actual or prospective offeror for the FSS contract itself.

The case matters mostly as a reminder that disputes over post-award schedule modifications face steep jurisdictional limits, and subcontractor competitive concerns do not by themselves create protest standing.

The protest is dismissed.

Digest

Protest challenging agency’s actions under Federal Supply Schedule contract is dismissed where issue arises under a modification to the contract and is a matter of contract administration that GAO will not review.