Anthropic’s Amodei needles Altman as rivalry hardens

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said he is “at peace” with the competitive cold war with OpenAI, even as he took pointed shots at Sam Altman. In a Bloomberg interview published Wednesday, Amodei questioned the logic of arguing with someone who lacks the same vision

Dario Amodei sounded calm about the fight—almost too calm—while letting the sharp edges show.

In a lengthy Bloomberg interview for “The Circuit with Emily Chang” published on Wednesday. the Anthropic CEO said he’s at “peace” with where the rivalry with OpenAI stands. even as “a cold war brews between two of the world’s largest AI companies.” Then he delivered the line that landed with a thud: “At the end of the day. why argue with someone when you don’t have the same vision and you don’t trust them?”.

He didn’t stop there. “The way to resolve it is you go off and do your thing, they go off and do their thing,” Amodei said. “And I am completely at peace with the idea that we’re doing things our way and they’re doing things their way.”

To Amodei, the question isn’t settled by conversation or persuasion—it’s settled by outcomes. “Ultimately, someone else will decide who was right,” he said. “We’ll see who wins in the market and we’ll see who wins in the court of public opinion. ” adding that those results “speak louder than any drama about why who left what.”.

That phrasing—about “why who left what”—is hard to separate from the backstory. As Emily Chang laid out. the “story behind why he. his sister Daniela. and nine OpenAI employees left in 2020 to start Anthropic has become Silicon Valley ‘lore.’” Once an underdog. Anthropic is now widely viewed as having overtaken OpenAI in the generative AI race.

Amodei’s exit. and the credibility questions around Altman. have drawn renewed attention after Ronan Farrow’s exposé in The New Yorker examined whether Sam Altman could be trusted. The report cited Amodei’s contemporaneous notes—notes he took about his interactions with Altman during his time at OpenAI.

Days after the exposé was published, Altman’s home was attacked. The account said Altman partially blamed The New Yorker report (without naming the publication directly), and also discussed later how Anthropic talks about OpenAI.

The scrutiny doesn’t just live on paper. In an April episode of the “Core Memory” podcast. Altman said: “I think the doomerism talk hasn’t helped.” He added: “I think the way certain other labs talk about us hasn’t helped.” Then he went directly to the point that Amodei’s latest remarks feed: “I think the way Anthropic talks about OpenAI doesn’t help.”.

Amodei acknowledged a separate flashpoint that became viral in the rivalry—when he and Altman “notably declined to join their fellow industry leaders in a show of unity” at the India AI summit. Amodei traced that moment to something less ideological and more logistical: the “extreme disorganization” of the event.

“Look, I don’t know what to tell you, OK? There was like Narendra Modi up there suddenly telling everyone to hold hands,” Amodei said of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was positioned right next to Altman and Amodei.

He didn’t address what the public saw when the moment arrived. The account notes that “Sam Altman and Dario Amodei’s hands did not make contact. At the time, the internet noticed.”

The interview also turned from theater to strategy. Asked about how the world could trust AI companies to cooperate on major AI safety issues, Amodei suggested the solution wasn’t built on goodwill—it was built on leverage and incentives.

“What I think needs to happen is that the trustworthy actors need to get together and put the untrustworthy actors in a position where they kind of have to adopt the same standards. ” he said. “With a lot of experience. I’ve learned that there are some folks who don’t do the right thing on their own. but if there’s a majority of the industry that’s doing the right thing. then I think the rest of the industry is kind of — they’re left in a position where there’s not much they can do.”.

That didn’t align with a common narrative he rejected. Amodei said the idea that “no one trusts each other” in AI isn’t true. He pointed to his own relationship with Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis.

“I’ve known him for 15 years. We’ve worked together on a number of issues,” Amodei said. “We buy compute from Google. We swap safety ideas all the time. So my view of this is that one. there are some players who are more trustworthy than others. and I think there are players outside Anthropic who I trust. who I see as trustworthy.”.

In the end. Amodei’s remarks frame the rivalry as something permanent and selective: not a matter of friendly coordination. but of competition with boundaries. He is “completely at peace” with pursuing “our way” versus “their way. ” and expects “someone else” to settle who was right—through the market and through public judgment—rather than through argument.

Anthropic OpenAI Dario Amodei Sam Altman Emily Chang The Circuit India AI summit Narendra Modi The New Yorker Ronan Farrow AI safety Demis Hassabis