OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman on Thursday acknowledged an awkward onstage moment with rival AI firm Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei during a group photograph with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi.
“I was sort of confused and didn’t know what I was supposed to do,” Altman said hours later, recounting the incident at the summit’s inaugural session.
The episode unfolded at Bharat Mandapam after the opening ceremony, when several global technology leaders joined Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a photo opportunity. Those on stage included Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Meta’s Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang, Sarvam co-founder Pratyush Kumar, and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis.
PM Modi stood at the center, flanked by Sundar Pichai on his right and Altman on his left. Amodei, a former OpenAI executive who later co-founded Anthropic, stood beside Altman. As cameras flashed, the Prime Minister and other leaders raised their clasped hands in a gesture of unity.
Altman and Amodei appeared momentarily unsure of how to respond. While others held hands and lifted them, the two eventually raised their fists instead.
“I didn’t know what was happening. I was sort of confused, like (Prime Minister) Modi grabbed my hand and put it up, and I just wasn’t sure what we were supposed to be doing. I thought it was the open clock,” Altman said.
Altman, 40, and Amodei, 43, previously worked together at OpenAI until 2019. In 2020, Amodei and his sister Daniela, along with several senior OpenAI researchers, left the company amid disagreements over its direction. The group went on to establish Anthropic.
Since then, competition between OpenAI and Anthropic has intensified into a broader commercial and strategic rivalry. Anthropic earlier ran satirical Super Bowl advertisements that mocked OpenAI’s reported plans to introduce advertising into ChatGPT.
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