Amazon has filed a lawsuit contesting the US defence department’s decision to award a Pentagon cloud computing contract worth up to $10bn (£7.8bn) to rival bidder Microsoft.

The complaint and supplemental motion for discovery were filed in the US court of federal claims under seal, according to a spokesman for Amazon Web Services, a division of the online retail giant founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos.

The company did not explain the basis for its complaint.

The filings contain “proprietary information, trade secrets and confidential financial information” that could “cause either party severe competitive harm”, Amazon said in a court document seeking a protective order.

“The record in this bid protest likely will contain similarly sensitive information,” it said.

Last week, the US defence secretary, Mark Esper, rejected any suggestion of bias in the Pentagon’s decision to award Microsoft the contract after Amazon announced plans to challenge it.

“We believe the facts will show they [Department of Defense] ran a detailed, thorough and fair process in determining the needs of the warfighter were best met by Microsoft,” Microsoft said.

Amazon had been considered a favourite for the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (Jedi) cloud contract, part of a broader digital modernisation project at the Pentagon, before software developer Microsoft emerged as the surprise winner.

Amazon has previously said that politics got in the way of a fair bidding process. Bezos, the chief executive officer of Amazon and owner of the Washington Post, has been an outspoken critic of Donald Trump.