Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai has reacted to a statement by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella regarding the highly competitive artificial intelligence (AI) space.
Sundar Pichai responds to Satya Nadella's "dance" invite
The Google CEO made an appearance recently in the All-In podcast, where he referred to Nadella's comment about making Google "dance" in the AI race. This is the second instance when Pichai has responded to Nadella's statement.
During the conversation, host David Friedberg asked Pichai about the competitive AI space led by prominent tech figures.
“Your competitors have active founders—OpenAI has Sam Altman, xAI has Elon Musk, Meta has Mark Zuckerberg, and Microsoft has Satya Nadella. Would you be willing to share your thoughts on these companies and their leaders?” Friedberg asked.
Pichai admitted that it's a very “impressive” group.
“These are some of the best companies led by some of the most driven entrepreneurs. Their involvement highlights how much innovation we can expect to see—these are people deeply committed to pushing progress forward,” he remarked.
Pichai smilingly added, “Look, they’re all different personalities. I’m lucky to know each of them. I think only one of them has ever invited me to a dance—not the others.”
“One of the ways you can go wrong is by paying too much attention to the noise and dancing to someone else’s music,” the Google boss had said in an interview with Bloomberg.
“I've always been clear—we know what we need to do,” he shared, emphasising Google's strong internal vision. When asked if that means he's listening to his own music, Pichai replied, “That’s exactly right.”
Satya Nadella had commented on Google’s dominance in search, and that with the launch of AI-powered Bing, he saw a shift in the competitive landscape.
“We competed today. Today we brought more competition to search,” Nadella said.
“I’ve been waiting 20 years for this.” He acknowledged Google’s scale, saying, “They’re still the 800-pound gorilla in search.”
“I hope that, with our innovation, they’ll come out and show they can dance. And I want people to know—we made them dance. That would be a great day,” the Microsoft CEO added.
Acknowledging the ever-growing competitive nature in the tech industry, Pichai has said, “There's always intense competition in this industry. The way to stay ahead is through relentless innovation.”
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