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'Didn't know what…': What Sam Altman said on his awkward exchange with Dario Amodei on stage
Altman, 40, and Amodei, 43, have worked together at OpenAI till 2019.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Thursday opened up on the awkward onstage moment with rival AI firm Anthropic's CEO Dario Amodei at the India AI Impact Summit.
"I was sort of confused and didn't know what I was supposed to do," Sam Altman said, hours after his ‘no handshake’ moment with Dario Amodei during a group photograph with Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier in the day went viral.
While the tech leaders gathered at the inaugural session of the of the AI Impact Summit 2026, the group photograph sparked interest online as internet users noted an awkward encounter between Sam Altman and Dario Amodei. Altman and Amodei are CEOs of rivals OpenAI and Anthropic PBC.
PM Modi was at the centre, with Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai on his right, and Altman on his left. Amodei, who previously worked at OpenAI and later co-founded Anthropic, was standing to Altman's left.
As the photographs began to be taken, PM Modi and the others held the hands of the people to their sides and held them up. However, there was no handclasp between Altman and Amodei, who both raised their fists, while maintaining a physical distance between them.
What did OpenAI CEO Altman say about the encounter?
While speaking in a closed-door meeting with reporters on the issue, Altman said he was “confused” during the moment.
“On the thing on stage, oh I didn't know what was happening. I was confused,” he said.
The OpenAI CEO said he was uncertain on 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,” he told reporters
What is the alleged rivalry between Altman, Amodei?
Altman, 40, and Amodei, 43, have worked together at OpenAI till 2019. However, the latter and his sister, Daniela, left the company in 2020 along with some otger senior researchers at OpenAI following disagreements with Altman and the board over the direction the company was headed in, PTI reported.
Amodei had been reportedly approached by the OpenAI board after it suddenly ousted Altman in 2023. Amodei declined the offer, and Altman was reinstated as the lead days later. Amodei, meanwhile, co-founded Anthropic, currently valued at $380 billion in comparison to OpenAI's $500 billion, according to a Bloomberg report.
However, the two companies have been at loggerheads recently, with Anthropic targeting OpenAI with a high-profile Super Bowl ad, which depicted out of place advertisements in AI chatbot interactions. Anthropic promised to never have 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.”
