OpenAI CEO Sam Altman spoke about the awkward moment he had on stage with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei during the India AI Impact Summit. Altman said that he was feeling a little uncertain about what to do next after the 'no handshake' moment that went viral on social media during a group photo with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
"I was sort of confused and didn't know what I was supposed to do," Sam Altman said.
While the tech leaders gathered at the inaugural session of the AI Impact Summit 2026, a group photograph attracted attention online. Internet users noticed an awkward moment between Sam Altman and Dario Amodei. Altman and Amodei are the CEOs of rival companies OpenAI and Anthropic PBC.
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PM Modi stood in the centre, with Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai on his right and Altman on his left. Amodei, who used to work at OpenAI and co-founded Anthropic, stood to Altman's left. When the photographs began, PM Modi and the others held hands with the people next to them and raised them up. However, Altman and Amodei did not shake hands but both raised their fists while keeping a physical distance from each other.
What did Altman say about the encounter?
While speaking in a private meeting with reporters about the issue, Altman said he felt "confused" at the moment.
"On the thing on stage, oh I didn't know what was happening. I was confused," he said.
The OpenAI CEO explained that he didn't know what to do when the photograph was taken. "Modi grabbed my hand and put it up, and I wasn't sure what we were supposed to be doing. I thought it was the open clock," he was quoted as saying by Brut India.
What is the rivalry all about?
Altman, 40, and Amodei, 43, worked together at OpenAI until 2019. However, in 2020, Amodei and his sister, Daniela, left the company along with some other senior researchers. They departed due to disagreements with Altman and the board over the company's direction, as reported by Hindustan Times.
The OpenAI board reportedly approached Amodei after they unexpectedly removed Altman in 2023. Amodei turned down the offer, and Altman was reinstated just days later. Meanwhile, Amodei co-founded Anthropic, which is currently valued at $380 billion, compared to OpenAI's $500 billion, according to a Bloomberg report.
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Recently, the two companies have been in conflict. Anthropic aimed at OpenAI with a high-profile Super Bowl ad that showed mismatched ads in AI chatbot interactions. Anthropic promised they would never include such ads. In response, Altman said he "laughed" at the ad but called it "clearly dishonest".
"Our most important principle for ads says that we won’t do exactly this; we would obviously never run ads in the way Anthropic depicts them. We are not stupid and we know our users would reject that," Altman said in a post on X. He further said that "more Texans use ChatGPT for free than total people use Claude in the US".
