The feud between OpenAI Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei started long before the viral photo of them refusing to join hands in unity. AI’s biggest rivalry has only gotten more public this year. Ever since Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei left OpenAI in December 2020, the two startups have found themselves at loggerheads. Amodei’s feud with OpenAI Sam Altman has now expanded far beyond his icy relationship with his onetime colleague. Now, the staff for two of the world’s largest AI companies is joining the fray. “Should a loving ensouled machine God watch over humanity? Vote Anthropic,” OpenAI’s chief futurist Joshua Achiam recently wrote on X. “Should humanity be entrusted with the tools of its own progress and destiny? Vote OpenAI.” As their rivalry marches toward Wall Street and highly anticipated IPOs, it’s a good time to catch up on how Altman and Amodei went from colleagues to the face of AI’s cold war. July 2015: Decisions happened over dinner Elon Musk and Sam Altman are seen on stage together in 2015. While the pair later had their own falling-out, both were instrumental in the creation of OpenAI. In July 2015, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Altman, and a group of elite AI researchers all gathered at the swanky Rosewood Hotel in Menlo Park, California. According to The New York Times, Musk had a falling out with then-Google CEO Larry Page. Weeks later, Musk, Altman, Amodei, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, and others discussed the formation of a new AI lab to ensure Google had a worthy competitor in the AI space. Musk invited Amodei, per tech journalist Alex Kantrowitz. Their vision became OpenAI, though Amodei initially elected not to join the startup research lab. Roughly a year later, he changed his mind and joined OpenAI as “Team Lead for AI Safety.” September 2018: Amodei rises up Amodei initially declined to join OpenAI, but later reversed course. He later became a major force at the company. Amodei quickly moved up the ranks at OpenAI. In September 2018, the startup named him its research director. Altman, who cofounded OpenAI while still serving as president of Y Combinator, began to devote more time to the startup. In March 2019, Altman stepped down as YC’s leader. He then became CEO of OpenAI and led the startup’s pivot to a capped for-profit structure. In November 2019, OpenAI released GPT-2, which Amodei played a major role in developing. A month later, OpenAI named Amodei as its Vice President of Research. June 2020: OpenAI releases GPT-3 In June 2020, OpenAI began to show just how far the technology had come with the release of GPT-3, considered to be the first highly capable Large Language Model (LLM). Amodei told The New York Times that the model had “this emergent quality.” Independent researchers told the publication that GPT-3’s capabilities surprised them, even as the model still showed signs of struggle. To address safety concerns, OpenAI initially controlled access through a private beta. December 2020: Amodei goes his own way Amodei later described the decision to leave OpenAI as “It is incredibly unproductive to try and argue with someone else’s vision.” The release of GPT-3 solidified OpenAI’s standing, but behind the scenes, tensions were rising. The rifts began when Amodei successfully lobbied to keep Greg Brockman, an OpenAI cofounder, off the team that developed GPT-3, according to Keach Hagey’s biography of Altman, “The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Future.” Hagey wrote that Amodei’s stunning power within OpenAI had started to ruffle feathers. Differences continued to escalate over Amodei’s long-held views on safety, Hagey wrote, especially regarding slowing the pace of updates to prevent malicious uses of the AI models. Amodei told friends that he “felt psychologically abused by Altman,” Hagey wrote. Altman, in turn, was telling colleagues that the tension “was making him hate his job.” On December 29, 2020, OpenAI made it official. Amodei was leaving, and a “handful” of other colleagues were leaving. Amodei has since suggested that his vision became incompatible with OpenAI’s direction. “It is incredibly unproductive to try and argue with someone else’s vision,” Amodei told podcaster Lex Friedman in 2024, when asked why he left OpenAI. Early 2021: Anthropic is created Amodei, Daniela Amodei, and five other former OpenAI employees left to cofound what became Anthropic in early 2021. With seven other former OpenAI employees, Amodei founded Anthropic in early 2021. The group was extremely close and included Daniela Amodei, Dario’s sister. Daniela Amodei later said the name was chosen to emphasize their company’s focus on humans. Only one of Anthropic’s initial employees hadn’t worked at OpenAI, according to AI Business. Despite starting from scratch, Amodei said that by the summer of 2022, the company’s chatbot, Claude, had finished training. Amodei said he was worried about what the release of a powerful AI could mean. Anthropic held off on a release. “I suspect it was the right thing to do,” Amodei told Time Magazine in 2024. “But it’s not totally clear-cut.” Months later, OpenAI released ChatGPT, kicking off the AI race and making Amodei’s former employer a household name. May 2024: Amodei takes a shot … or did he? As Anthropic began to establish itself in its own right, Amodei began to use his public appearances to take what were widely viewed as implicit shots at OpenAI. During an appearance at a Bloomberg event, Amodei noted how Anthropic had kept its leadership intact. “We have 7 cofounders,” he said, Gizmodo reported. “Three and a half years later, we’re all still at the company.” While never calling out by name, OpenAI was experiencing upheaval at the time. Months earlier, Andrej Karpathy, an OpenAI cofounder, had left the company. And in November 2023, Altman was briefly pushed out of OpenAI, an effort fellow cofounder Ilya Sutskever assisted. (Sutskever later expressed regret over his role. He formally left OpenAI just days after Amodei’s jab, though there had been months of speculation surrounding Sutskever’s standing.) December 2025: ‘We don’t have to do any code reds’ Amodei appeared to poke fun at his former employer when OpenAI faced tough competition. By the end of 2025, OpenAI’s lead in the AI race was slipping. When presented with the opportunity, Amodei seized the moment to troll his rival. Journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin asked Amodei about OpenAI’s decision to declare a “code red” to marshal resources for ChatGPT amid Google’s rising strength. “We have a little bit of a privileged position where we can just keep growing and just keep developing our models, and we don’t have to do any code reds,” Amodei told Sorkin during an appearance at The New York Times’ DealBook summit. Earlier in their conversation, Amodei appeared to take another swipe at Altman when he talked about some players “who are YOLOing” by making too risky bets on future demand based on their current revenue. “Who is YOLOing?” Sorkin asked. “I’m not going to answer that,” Amodei replied. February 2026: A snarky Super Bowl ad gets a response A still from Anthropic’s ad is set to air during the Super Bowl. The ad features a scrawny man who wants to get a six-pack quickly, but a helpful trainer gives him more than just the advice he needs.

Anthropic used the biggest stage available to take its most direct shot yet at OpenAI. Ahead of the Super Bowl, Anthropic revealed it was spending millions on an advertising campaign to denounce ads in AI chatbots. While OpenAI was not named directly, it was clear who the intended target was, given that just months earlier, OpenAI had said it would begin testing ads on ChatGPT. The ads featured real human actors mimicking the voice of product-pushing AI chatbots when asked questions like how to get a six-pack quickly or how to better connect with your mom. “First, the good part of the Anthropic ads: they are funny, and I laughed,” Altman wrote in a lengthy post on X.” But I wonder why Anthropic would go for something so clearly dishonest.” Altman wasn’t done. “Anthropic serves an expensive product to rich people,” he continued. “We are glad they do that and we are doing that too, but we also feel strongly that we need to bring AI to billions of people who can’t pay for subscriptions.” Days later, the companies went head-to-head again. This time, with the release of major updates to their coding-focused model within minutes of each other. February 2026: We (don’t) want to hold hands In a moment before the viral photo, Altman holds hands with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with his back facing toward Amodei A who’s who of AI and tech elite gathered in India for a major summit on artificial intelligence. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi took the opportunity to orchestrate a classic image of unity: competing CEOs with their hands raised together. (It’s something Modi has done before with other world leaders, and politicians have been doing forever.) Modi almost got his moment. While Altman held the prime minister’s hand, the OpenAI CEO didn’t grasp Amodei’s hand, who was positioned to his other side. Amodei grasped the hand of the other person next to him, but not Altman’s. The internet, predictably, had a field day. And the world got a perfect encapsulation of one of AI’s bitter rivalries. February 2026: Opposite sides of the Pentagon Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth lashed out at Anthropic when it refused to acquiesce to his demands. Anthropic refused to back down in a standoff with the Pentagon. Hours later, OpenAI struck a deal with the Defense Department, an agreement Altman later said was “definitely rushed.” “If we are right and this does lead to a de-escalation between the DoW and the industry, we will look like geniuses, and a company that took on a lot of pain to do things to help the industry,” Altman wrote on X on February 28 during an AMA on the platform centered around the deal. “If not, we will continue to be characterized as rushed and uncareful.” Amodei said he and Anthropic remained firm in their “red lines” that any usage agreement must contain safeguards against “the mass domestic surveillance of Americans and fully autonomous weapons.” The Pentagon argued that current laws prevent misuse, but the two sides ultimately couldn’t agree. Users pressed Altman on how the Trump administration treated Anthropic after talks fell apart. Namely, they asked about Hegseth’s statement that he would formally designate Anthropic as a supply chain risk, potentially banning any business with Pentagon contracts from working with Anthropic. Altman said the designation was wrong, but added that Anthropic also bore some responsibility, too. “I think it is an extremely scary precedent and I wish they handled it a different way,” he wrote on X. “I don’t think Anthropic handled it well either, but as the more powerful party, I hold the government more responsible.” Yes; I think it is an extremely scary precedent and I wish they handled it a different way. I don't think Anthropic handled it well either, but as the more powerful party, I hold the government more responsible. I am still hopeful for a much better resolution. The entire episode provided the most direct example yet of how far-reaching the rivalry has become. April 2026: Altman’s home is attacked Daniel Moreno-Gama is accused of attacking Sam Altman’s house In the early hours of April 10, a man traveled from Texas to California, where he threw a Molotov cocktail at Altman’s palatial San Francisco home. Police later arrested Daniel Moreno-Gama after a suspected attack on OpenAI’s headquarters. The incidents jolted the AI and tech community. Altman later blamed a number of factors for fueling the violence, including a critical New Yorker exposé (though he did not name the publication directly). Asked about the attack weeks later, Altman suggested Anthropic’s rhetoric contributed. “I think the doomerism talk hasn’t helped. I think the way certain other labs talk about us hasn’t helped,” Altman told the “Core Memory” podcast in an episode filmed not long after the attack, adding, “I think the way Anthropic talks about OpenAI doesn’t help.” June 2026: Dueling first steps toward an IPO Anthropic and OpenAI took steps toward widely-expected IPOs. OpenAI and Anthropic have previously released major AI model updates on the same day. In early June, their race entered a new arena: the Securities and Exchange Commission. On June 1, Anthropic released a statement saying it had confidentially filed a draft S-1 with the SEC, the first official step toward going public. One week later, OpenAI did the same thing. It remains to be seen if the companies will actually IPO within the same window. Regardless, they’ll be playing catch-up to Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Musk’s firm, which controls xAI, made its Nasdaq debut on June 12. June 2026: Amodei adds some summer shade Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said the public will have a say on who comes out ahead in his company’s rivalry with OpenAI. It’s fitting that, days after the S-1 announcements, Amodei gave a blunt answer when asked why he left OpenAI. “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. 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