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Who the largest federal contractor is, and why there are two answers

American Factbook Research

Figures as of

Ask who the largest federal contractor is and USAspending gives a clear answer: OPTUM PUBLIC SECTOR SOLUTIONS, INC., with $19.9 billion of contract obligations in fiscal year 2026. Second is TRIWEST HEALTHCARE ALLIANCE CORP on $15.3 billion.

Now add up the rows that share a name, which is what anyone reading the table would do, and the answer changes. 6 registrations in the same hundred rows are called LOCKHEED MARTIN CORPORATION, and together they carry $34.6 billion — the largest of them on its own is $13.0 billion. Second by that reading is THE BOEING COMPANY on $24.3 billion, across 7 registrations.

Both numbers come from the same table. Neither is wrong.

Why one company is several rows

The federal government identifies the party on an award by a Unique Entity ID, and a large company holds more than one of them: separate divisions, separate acquired businesses, separate legal entities that register in their own right. The publisher reports each one as what it is, which is a registration rather than a corporation.

In the largest hundred contract registrations of fiscal year 2026 there are 5 names that appear more than once, covering 21 of the rows.

Which number this site publishes

The ranking on this site is the registrations, in the publisher's own order, with the Unique Entity ID shown beside any name that appears twice. The other figure is on the page too, because a reader who adds the rows up should not have to guess whether they were supposed to.

What the site does not do is merge them and call the result a company. An identical name is evidence that two registrations belong to one business and it is not proof: the award record carries no corporate structure, no parent, and no ownership. Merging on a name would be this site asserting something no query returned, which is the one thing it does not do.

The other question hiding inside this one

"Largest contractor" and "largest recipient of federal money" are also different questions, and the difference is larger than the one above.

Among the 100 largest recipients of federal money in fiscal year 2026 — 0 of the top ten appear in the contractor table at all. They are state health agencies, and they receive assistance rather than contracts. OPTUM PUBLIC SECTOR SOLUTIONS, INC., first among contractors, is 14th among recipients.

It runs the other way as well. All 10 of the largest contractors do appear among the largest recipients — far down, because most federal money is not a contract — and across the whole table 34 of 100 registrations are in both.

So the two lists are not different memberships. They are different orders, and one of them has a top that the other does not contain. They answer questions that sound the same and are not.

What this cannot show

  • This brief establishes that registrations sharing a name exist and what they come to together. It does not establish that they are one company: the award record carries no parent, no ownership and no corporate structure, and an identical name is evidence rather than proof.
  • Both tables are the largest hundred rows the committed extract holds, not the whole register. A company outside those hundred is outside this brief.
  • Contract obligations are commitments to pay, recorded when an award is made, and not money paid. A multi-year programme is obligated in one year and paid over several.
  • Prime recipients only. A prime contractor that subcontracts most of the work appears here for the whole of it, and its subcontractors do not appear at all.
  • The fiscal year is not over. These are obligations recorded so far and are revised after publication.

Sources

Every figure above is the recorded result of a query checked into the repository alongside this text. Continuous integration re-runs those queries and refuses the change if a number here and a number there disagree. Read the methodology, or the datasets behind it.

Published by American Factbook LLC. An independent publication.