Sam Altman and Dario Amodei sat down with world leaders in Evian-les-Bains as geopolitical tensions over AI access reshape the global tech landscape
The CEOs of the two most influential AI companies on the planet just had lunch with the leaders of the world’s seven largest advanced economies. That’s not a normal Tuesday, even by Silicon Valley standards.
On June 17, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei joined a working lunch at the G7 summit in Evian-les-Bains, France, alongside Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis. The agenda: figuring out how to deploy artificial intelligence safely, rapidly, and effectively. The subtext: who gets to control it, and who gets locked out.
AI gets a seat at the geopolitical table #
The meeting took place against the backdrop of US restrictions on access to Anthropic’s most advanced AI models, a policy that has frustrated European allies and fueled a growing push for what officials are calling “tech sovereignty.”
French President Emmanuel Macron personally invited Altman to the summit. France has positioned itself as Europe’s AI champion, hosting the AI Action Summit earlier in 2025 and consistently arguing that the continent needs its own path forward rather than simply importing American technology under American terms.
The Anthropic wrinkle #
Dario Amodei sat at a table with world leaders whose countries are, to varying degrees, impacted by US policies that restrict access to his own company’s products. The US government has implemented restrictions on Anthropic’s advanced models, limiting their availability to certain foreign entities. The rationale is national security. The effect is that allied nations, including G7 members, face barriers to accessing frontier AI capabilities that American companies and institutions can use freely.
What this means for the AI industry #
The Evian meeting signals that AI governance has officially graduated from a niche policy discussion to a top-tier geopolitical issue. When the CEOs of OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind are sitting with the leaders of the US, UK, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, and Canada, the stakes have moved well beyond chatbot regulations.
The European push for tech sovereignty could have real consequences for how AI companies structure their international operations. If G7 nations outside the US decide they need domestic AI capabilities that aren’t subject to American export controls, that creates market incentives for European competitors and potentially fragments the global AI ecosystem into competing blocs.
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