From a tense split to dueling IPOs: A timeline of Anthropic and OpenAI's rivalry

• Now, the two leading AI companies are marching toward hotly anticipated IPOs.
• Here’s a brief history of the AI labs’ fierce rivalry.

February 2026: Opposite sides of the Pentagon

“At the end of the day, why argue with someone when you don’t have the same vision and you don’t trust them?” Amodei said in an apparent jab at the OpenAI CEO during a lengthy Bloomberg interview for “The Circuit with Emily Chang” published on Wednesday.

Amodei didn’t offer much of an explanation for the viral moment when he and Altman refused to hold hands.

“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.

The Anthropic CEO also downplayed the narrative that the biggest names in AI don’t get along, pointing to his collaboration with Google DeepMind CEO TK.

“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.”