Rivals Altman, Amodei signal distance in unforgiving global AI race

A viral moment at the India AI Summit underscored tensions between OpenAI's Sam Altman and Anthropic's Dario Amodei as both firms battle for dominance in the fast-moving AI landscape

The global contest for artificial intelligence (AI) supremacy and a brewing personal rivalry unfolded on an Indian stage on Thursday.

 

Chiefs of AI firms — OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei — stood next to each other but with a stark contrast. Even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi orchestrated a photo op urging AI leaders such as Google’s Sundar Pichai, Meta’s Alexandr Wang and others to hold each other’s hands in a symbolic display of global AI solidarity, Altman and Amodei conspicuously held their hands apart.

 

The viral moment signified an intense rivalry between the former colleagues, whose disagreements led Amodei to start his independent AI venture as Anthropic.

 

 

Amodei, a former vice president (VP) of OpenAI, left the organisation after working there for five years. The AI researcher and entrepreneur started Anthropic in 2021 along with his sister Daniela after breaking away from Altman’s OpenAI, known for its generative AI chatbot ChatGPT.

 

His concerns around the commercialisation and safety of ChatGPT have, in part, propelled Anthropic to a valuation of over $380 billion in roughly five years, compared to OpenAI’s $500 billion valuation.

 

When asked about the awkward moment on stage, Altman told the Indian press that he was “sort of confused” and didn't know what was supposed to be done. Winding the clock back may open up a few answers.

 

Earlier this month, OpenAI announced that the company was testing ads in the US while confirming that the decision would not change responses from ChatGPT. It had stated the decision would further deepen access to the technology for a broader set of users.

 

“Keeping the Free and Go tiers fast and reliable requires significant infrastructure and ongoing investment. Ads help fund that work, supporting broader access to AI through higher-quality free and low-cost options, and enabling us to keep improving the intelligence and capabilities we offer over time,” OpenAI had said in a blog post.

 

Anthropic, meanwhile, rolled out a Super Bowl ad stating that its large language model Claude would never have any ads, hinting that the presence of ads on a platform would influence the chatbot’s responses.

 

This, however, was just one of the reasons for the rivalry. Both companies are expanding their global presence as they push for developer-grade agentic workflows for software engineers. Anthropic has a Claude Code suite, whereas OpenAI's offering is known as Codex.

 

With inputs from PTI