Sundar Pichai Responds to Satya Nadella's ‘Dance’ Challenge

Competition among tech giants for dominance in the world of artificial intelligence (AI) is intensifying by the day. In this context, Google and Alphabet Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai has once again responded—this time with characteristic wit—to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s earlier statement, “We’ll make Google dance.” Pichai shared his views during a recent episode of the All-In podcast, offering candid remarks about the current state of AI competition and his counterparts at rival companies.

When asked about other leading figures in the AI industry—including Sam Altman of OpenAI, Elon Musk of xAI, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, and Satya Nadella of Microsoft—Sundar Pichai praised their capabilities. “They are all great entrepreneurs. Because of them, many innovations are possible,” he said.

He went on to remark, “I consider myself fortunate to be acquainted with all of them. Only one of them invited me to ‘dance’… the others did not,” he quipped, making a subtle and humorous reference to Satya Nadella’s earlier comment.

This is not the first time Sundar Pichai has responded to Satya Nadella’s “dance” remark. In an interview with Bloomberg last year, when Microsoft aggressively pushed its AI-powered Bing search engine, Pichai was asked whether Google had “danced” in response. He replied, “We don’t dance for someone else,” and emphasized, “We move forward on our own path,” underlining Google’s strategic direction.

What Satya Nadella Said

Previously, Satya Nadella acknowledged that Google had long held a dominant position in the search market. He stated that Microsoft’s AI-based Bing had introduced significant competition. “We brought more competition to search. With our innovations, I hope they come out to prove they too can dance. We want the public to know—we made them dance,” he challenged.