Cold war on stage? OpenAI, Anthropic CEOs avoid holding hands in PM Modi's group photo at India AI Summit | WATCH

In a surprising turn of events, AI’s long-running rivalry between OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei hesitated to hold each other's hands at the India AI Impact Summit 2026 in Delhi's Bharat Mandapam with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on stage. Instead of displaying solidarity in the end, the two lifted their fists while making the chain.

The video uploaded by the news agency ANI on social media shows that when PM Modi raised fists, making a chain with other global tech leaders to show unity, Sam Altman and Dario Amodei hesitated to hold each other's hands while making the chain. Instead, both of them just raised their fists to show respect.

Rift between OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei

The rift between the tech leaders started after the founding of Anthropic, when Dario and Daniela Amodei, both former OpenAI vice presidents, with their then leader, Sam Altman, cited concerns that OpenAI was prioritising commercial interests over safety. That split set the stage for a deeper philosophical divide.

Since then, Dario has built Anthropic around a safety-first ethos, placing his company on a trajectory starkly different from OpenAI’s. Altman’s firm, meanwhile, has closely tracked its former executive—now a major rival, and has frequently criticised Anthropic.

Tensions resurfaced in early February, when the two exchanged fresh barbs after Anthropic ran a Super Bowl advertisement that appeared to poke fun at OpenAI’s decision to introduce ads in ChatGPT, a move Altman, who champions broad access over paywalls, openly pushed back against.

"Anthropic serves an expensive product to rich people," Altman said in a post on the social media platform X. "We are glad they do that, and we are doing that too, but we also feel strongly that we need to bring AI to billions of people who can’t pay for subscriptions," he added.