Mark Zuckerberg slams OpenAI- Anthropic over ‘centralisation’ of AI power

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has slammed OpenAI and Anthropic, saying the AI tools developed by the two companies could lead to the centralisation of power, limiting people’s access to the transformative technology. In an interview with The New York Times, Zuckerberg did not name his two rivals but said the companies wanted to develop AI in a controlled manner and that doing so would be like “abandoning our values” in US tech development while stifling innovation.

Taking a dig at his rivals, Zuckerberg said that discussions around AI development have become dominated by concerns about catastrophic risks and argued that there is a need for a more open approach.

“So much of the discourse from a lot of the other labs that are developing this is overwhelmingly filled with doom,” Zuckerberg said. “There needs to be a voice or several voices that are bringing realism to this debate.”

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei have previously argued that many of the most capable AI models need stronger safeguards because of the potential risks they pose. However, companies such as Microsoft, Google and Nvidia have supported developing these models more openly in order to give more developers and businesses access to the technology.

Growing divide in AI space:

Zuckerberg’s remarks come at a time when OpenAI and Anthropic have come under scrutiny for lobbying lawmakers in Washington against Chinese open-source models.

Recent AI models from Zhipu AI and Qwen have gone on to challenge notions of US supremacy in the AI race, with leading Chinese models coming close to matching the benchmark scores achieved by Claude Fable 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol.

Anthropic, in particular, has been at the centre of a backlash in Silicon Valley after it refused to sign a petition led by Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta and Palantir, asking US lawmakers not to impose any “premature restrictions” on open-weight models.

However, Amodei clarified the company’s position in a blog post earlier this week, saying that Anthropic does not want a ban on open-weight models.

“To summarize my and Anthropic’s position, we have not and are not advocating for a ban on open-weight models as a category,” Amodei wrote in a blog post. “We should instead focus on keeping powerful chips out of authoritarian hands, stopping industrial-scale distillation, and requiring safety testing of all sufficiently capable models, open and closed.”