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.
