Not Even Modi Could Make Them Hold Hands: The Altman-Amodei Moment That Stole the AI Summit

The India AI Impact Summit has featured $100 billion in investment pledges, keynotes from 20 heads of state, and the largest gathering of AI CEOs in the Global South's history. But the moment everyone is talking about involves two men, two fists, and a very visible gap in a photo line.

During the opening ceremony at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi on February 19, Prime Minister Narendra Modi organized a group photo with roughly 13 tech leaders and dignitaries on stage. Modi initiated what was meant to be a unity gesture - clasping hands with the leaders nearest to him and raising them overhead before an applauding crowd. The rest of the line followed suit, linking hands in a chain. Sundar Pichai held hands. Demis Hassabis held hands. Everyone held hands.

Everyone except Sam Altman and Dario Amodei.

The Fists

Standing right next to each other in the lineup, the OpenAI and Anthropic CEOs each held hands with the person on their other side - but not with each other. Instead, both men raised clenched fists individually, creating an unmistakable break in the chain. The video, captured by ANI and picked up by Bloomberg, Al Jazeera, and every publication with a social media editor, went viral within minutes.

Sam Altman and Dario Amodei raise clenched fists instead of holding hands during a group photo with PM Modi at the India AI Impact Summit 2026

Altman later told Moneycontrol: "I was sort of confused, like when he grabbed my hand and put it up, and I just wasn't sure what we were supposed to be doing."

Dario Amodei has said nothing.

The Internet Had Thoughts

The reactions came fast and merciless.

"Nothing can make Sam and Dario hold hands, not even the Prime Minister of India," wrote one user on X. Indian lawmaker Milind Deora noted: "Everyone else locked hands. @ChatGPTapp and @claudeai kept it strictly professional." Another X user compared them to "unprepared students forced into a group project." Someone else posted: "Modi ji tried the most Indian thing to unite Sam and Dario but it didn't work."

The consensus was clear: whatever was happening on that stage, it was not confusion about choreography.

Why They Cannot Stand Each Other

The tension between Sam Altman and Dario Amodei is not corporate posturing. It is personal, and it goes back five years.

Dario Amodei was Vice President of Research at OpenAI. In early 2021, he walked out, taking his sister Daniela and several senior researchers with him to found Anthropic. The departure was driven by what Amodei saw as OpenAI's reckless dash toward commercialization - shipping powerful models too fast, prioritizing deployment over safety, and losing the nonprofit mission that originally defined the organization.

Altman saw it differently. From his perspective, broad deployment was itself a safety strategy - putting AI tools in millions of hands to build public understanding and institutional familiarity. The split was not just strategic. It was philosophical. And five years later, neither man has shown any interest in reconciliation.

The rivalry has only sharpened. Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.6 competes directly with OpenAI's GPT-5 across coding benchmarks, enterprise contracts, and developer mindshare. Both companies are reportedly planning IPOs by late 2026. They are fighting for the same customers, the same talent, and the same claim to building the future of AI.

The Super Bowl Warm-Up

The Delhi fist-raise did not come out of nowhere. Just ten days earlier, the two companies had a very public spat over Super Bowl ads.

Anthropic ran its first-ever television commercial during Super Bowl LX - a 30-second spot that mocked OpenAI's recent decision to introduce advertising in ChatGPT, pledging that Claude would remain ad-free. Altman fired back on X, calling the ad "clearly dishonest" and describing Anthropic as "an authoritarian company."

On the same day, the two companies launched competing coding tools within 20 minutes of each other. Coincidence is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

What Else Happened (and Did Not Happen) in Delhi

The Altman-Amodei moment overshadowed a summit that was already having a chaotic week.

Bill Gates pulled out of a scheduled keynote hours before he was due to speak, following renewed scrutiny over his ties to Jeffrey Epstein. Jensen Huang cancelled his appearance days before the event, citing unspecified circumstances. Hundreds of delegates were stranded without food or water during a security lockdown on opening day, and Delhi traffic forced multiple side events to start late.

When the summit did manage to produce substance, it was significant. Amodei used his keynote to predict that AI could deliver 20-25% economic growth for India, warned that the world was moving toward "a country of geniuses in a data centre," and announced Anthropic's first India office in Bengaluru. Altman announced expanded OpenAI offices and university collaborations across India.

Both CEOs, in other words, came to Delhi with real business to do. They just did not come to hold hands.

The Photo They Will Never Live Down

Corporate rivalries are usually fought through earnings calls, benchmark leaderboards, and carefully worded blog posts. They are not usually captured on video at a government summit, with the Prime Minister of the world's most populous country serving as inadvertent stage director.

But here we are. The video of two men raising fists instead of clasping hands has become the defining image of the AI industry's most important rivalry - more revealing than any benchmark score or earnings report. As one commenter put it: "Only Sundar understood the assignment."

The India AI Impact Summit runs through February 20. No further group photos have been announced.

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