At the G7 summit's AI working lunch in Évian-les-Bains, France, the public seating chart laid bare America's dominance over AI technology. The tech sector had 12 seats total, and the US claimed five of them with OpenAI's Altman, Anthropic's Amodei, DeepMind's Hassabis, Scale AI's Alexandr Wang, and Salesforce's Benioff. In contrast, other participating nations—including the UK, France, Germany, Japan, India, and Canada—were relegated to supporting roles, each receiving just a single token representative from their homegrown AI champions. The glaring imbalance in technological influence was literally on display at the table.
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The seating arrangement among the three biggest players hinted at subtle political favoritism. OpenAI CEO Altman sat to Trump's right, and Google DeepMind chief Hassabis was placed to Trump's left—prime positions radiating political influence. Meanwhile, Anthropic founder Amodei, whose company had just been hit with a US model export ban, was sidelined, seated far across from Trump, next to French President Macron, who was loudly protesting America's supply cut-off.
In leaked photos from the event, Altman beams while Amodei looks grim. The consensus among observers is that the G7 lunch seating wasn't just about etiquette—it marked the moment frontier AI giants formally entered the room where geopolitical power is decided. And the seat order was a clear reward or punishment from Washington based on each company's political compliance.