Three of the most powerful men in AI are currently steering the technology that’s rewriting how the world works — and, as it turns out, they also share something unexpectedly specific at the dinner table.
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, has said plainly that he doesn’t eat meat. In interviews about his daily routine, he’s described a simple, consistent breakfast of tea, an omelette, and toast, explaining that because he’s vegetarian, eggs are how he gets his protein in. It’s a habit rooted in his upbringing in a Tamil Hindu Iyengar family in Chennai, where vegetarianism is common, and one he’s carried with him through his rise from an engineer at Applied Materials to the top of one of the world’s most valuable companies.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, is also vegetarian — and has been since childhood, not since he became a tech executive looking for a biohacking edge. Altman has spoken about it in the context of his famously regimented health routine: 15-hour intermittent fasts, heavy weightlifting, quarterly blood panels, and a fistful of supplements including methyl B12, iron, omega-3, and vitamin D3 to cover the gaps a meat-free diet can leave. He’s also admitted to drinking protein shakes specifically to make up for the protein he isn’t getting from meat, adding that he “wouldn’t have them” if he weren’t vegetarian. Notably, Altman owns a ranch that raises cattle — a fairly on-brand contradiction for a man who has also prepared for doomsday scenarios and invested heavily in anti-ageing research.
Dario Amodei, CEO and co-founder of Anthropic, rounds out the trio — though his reason for going vegetarian has nothing to do with health optimization or cultural upbringing, and everything to do with his sister. In a joint interview about building Anthropic together, Daniela Amodei, the company’s president, explained that she became vegetarian when she was quite young, describing herself as a “classic do-gooder” who’d worked in international development and cared about equal access and opportunity worldwide. Dario, as the older sibling, says he’s usually the one who does things first — but not this time. “I became a vegetarian, and then he became a vegetarian,” Daniela said, with Dario adding that he followed roughly three years later: “It seemed convincing to me.” It’s a detail that fits the picture the two have long painted of themselves — a brother and sister who, unusually for siblings, have been close since childhood and ended up aligned on more than just how to build Anthropic.
All three men are vegetarian, though they arrived there through very different paths — Pichai through his upbringing in India, Altman as a lifelong personal choice tied to his broader health obsessions, and Amodei by following his younger sister’s lead years after she adopted the diet herself.
It’s a small but telling detail about the three men currently setting the pace for the AI race. Pichai, Altman, and Amodei disagree on plenty — from how fast AI will take jobs to whether pre-training gains are slowing down — but on this one, unexpected point, Silicon Valley’s biggest AI rivals turn out to be in complete agreement.