Vembu: OpenAI and Anthropic free to slow AI race any time they choose

Sridhar Vembu, the founder of Zoho, has argued that artificial intelligence giants OpenAI and Anthropic have the freedom to decelerate their development without any outside force compelling them to keep pushing ahead. Nobody, he said, is pointing a gun at them.

The remarks come as Zoho, the Chennai-headquartered software company, marks its thirtieth anniversary. To coincide with the milestone, the firm has launched Zia Chat, an AI-powered conversational interface built to unify information, data and workflows drawn from across a range of business applications.

The product signals Zoho's ambition to position itself firmly within the rapidly evolving enterprise AI landscape, even as its founder questions whether the industry's leading players are exercising sufficient judgment about the speed of their own progress.