Who Gets Delaware's Money? The State's Top Vendors in FY2026

Every year, Delaware pays thousands of companies, universities and nonprofits — but in fiscal year 2026, one name towered over all the rest. Gainwell Technologies, the company that runs the state's Medicaid technology and claims operations, collected $3.65 billion — about 21 cents of every dollar in the state's $17.03 billion checkbook — including the single biggest check Delaware wrote all year: $121.7 million. Here are the ten names at the top of the payment list, and what each one actually is.

The top 10, ranked by real payments

This table comes straight from the State of Delaware's published checkbook: every payment issued in FY2026, grouped by the name on the check. You can search any of these names yourself in our checkbook explorer.

* Not a company — a payroll aggregate. See the next section.

Source: State of Delaware Checkbook, aggregated from all FY2026 payment records.

Two of the top three "vendors" aren't companies

Before ranking contractors, a word of caution about how the checkbook works. Employee Compensation ($3.21 billion across 132,418 payments) and Other Employment Costs/Benefits ($1.91 billion across 291,524 payments) are not businesses the state hired — they are the totals flowing through Delaware's payroll and benefits systems to the people who work for it: paychecks for the state's roughly 35,475 authorized positions, plus the employer share of health insurance, pensions and other benefits.

The state records these as payees because the money moves through centralized payroll runs rather than to individual named employees. So the honest reading of the table is this: after paying its own workforce, Delaware's largest outside vendor by far is Gainwell Technologies.

Gainwell Technologies: the billion-dollar Medicaid vendor

Gainwell runs the technology and claims operations behind Delaware Medicaid, and it is paid on a scale nothing else in the checkbook matches: $3.65 billion in FY2026, spread across 1,782 payments — an average of roughly $2 million each. One of those payments, $121.7 million, was the largest single check the state issued all year. Because Gainwell sits at the center of Medicaid claims, its total tracks the state's biggest health expense: Medicaid facility expenses were Delaware's single largest expense account in FY2026 at $3.59 billion.

The contract predates the Gainwell name. The company's predecessor, DXC, held the Medicaid work before it, and the nine-year checkbook (FY2018–2026) shows both generations of the contract: DXC Technology Services LLC collected $5.63 billion and DXC MS LLC another $2.86 billion — $8.48 billion combined — while Gainwell itself has been paid $16.42 billion over the same span. Add it up and the Medicaid systems contract is one of the most valuable relationships in Delaware state government.

Insurers, a bank, a university and a bus system

The rest of the top 10 maps neatly onto the big things state government does:

• Highmark Health Services — $777.9 million (66 payments). Administers health coverage for state employees. It has collected $5.39 billion from the state since FY2018.
• Northern Trust Company — $611.4 million (134 payments). Custody bank for the state's pension and investment money; $4.47 billion across FY2018–2026.
• CVS Pharmacy Inc. ($320.9 million) and SilverScript Insurance Company ($230.1 million) — $551.0 million combined for state employee and retiree prescription-drug benefits.
• University of Delaware — $214.5 million across 2,306 payments, the most checks of any non-payroll name in the top 10.
• Aetna — $201.9 million (86 payments), another health insurer on the state's employee benefits roster.
• Delaware Transit Corp. — $178.6 million (1,110 payments), the public corporation behind DART First State bus service.

The state's biggest shopping lists

Separate from the checkbook, Delaware also publishes its central contracts — standing, pre-negotiated agreements that any state agency, school district or local government can order from. The largest of them show what government buys in bulk: temporary staffing, office furniture and computers. The full list is browsable on the contracts tab.

In FY2026 the biggest vendor doing business under these contracts was Hertrich Fleet Services Inc. at $22.7 million, followed by Corpay Technologies and Acro Service Corp. at about $12.5 million each.