Delhi's AI Impact Summit 2026 witnessed the presence of some of the leading brains behind the ongoing AI boom. While it was definitely a moment deserving of being framed, there was also a visible conflict that did not escape the cautious eye.
On Thursday, CEO's of Silicon Valley giants like Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic and many more attended Asia's largest AI summit. They all shared the stage with Prime Minister Narendra Modi as well. That's when the incident unfolded. During the public event, all the leaders of the AI world joined hands; however, two of the renowned CEO's chose to maintain their distance, even though it was very little. The incident fueled the controversy of rivalry within the big leagues of AI.
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OpenAI–Anthropic rivalry over AI monetisation
For a while, the internet had been increasingly showing interest in the rivalry between OpenAI and Anthropic. The difference came into light after OpenAI announced its decision to introduce advertisements on its AI chatbot 'ChatGPT'. Following this, Anthropic, the parent company of AIChatbot Claude beame vocal about not commercialising their platform.
Earlier, Anthropic also ran an ad campaign during the Super Bowl championship, targeting OpenAI's plans on introducing ads. The campaign outlined, "Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude."
OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, shared his opinion on the Anthropic ads, saying, "First, the good part of the Anthropic ads: they are funny, and I laughed. But I wonder why Anthropic would go for something so clearly dishonest. Our most important principle for ads says that we won’t do exactly this..."
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Leadership overlap within the AI industry
While the AI industry is led by a handful of people who are connected in one way or another. Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, led the creation of AI models and conducted research at OpenAI before co-founding his own company.
This difference in opinion, even in such a small group, has become quite visible in the tech world. "It is incredibly unproductive to try and argue with someone else’s vision," said Amodei in 2024 on a podcast.
