DOGE Delayed Deals, Says Nutanix

Donald Trump’s DOGE cost-cutting unit has made it harder to do business with the US federal government, according to private cloud contender Nutanix.

Speaking on the company’s Q4 2025 earnings call, CFO Rukmini Sivaraman said “Some of the personnel changes and additional reviews that we’ve seen in the U.S. Fed seem to continue and have resulted in longer deal cycles and some increased variability overall in that particular vertical for us.”

The Register asked Nutanix CEO Rajiv Ramaswami if the Trump administration has changed procurement practices and he said that’s “one hundred percent” the case, and named DOGE as the source of “a lot of people changes and budget cuts” that have made it harder to sell to the Feds. The DOGE cost-cutting unit was was not an official Congress-approved governmental agency, but rather a task force established through an executive order from President Trump, and was informally led by South Africa-to-US immigrant Elon Musk before the two had a public falling out. The group, which was staffed in large part by young and often inexperienced volunteers associated with Musk, was accused of acting quickly and often recklessly, and did not end up delivering anywhere near the originally promised cost cuts.