Who is Dario Amodei, US CEO who refused to hold Sam Altman’s hand on AI summit stage?

Dario Amodei is the co-founder and CEO of Anthropic, the company behind the large language model series Claude.

Published on: Feb 19, 2026, 14:32:03 IST

By Sanya Jain

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An awkward moment occurred at the India AI Summit stage this morning when Sam Altman and Dario Amodei, CEOs of rival AI firms OpenAI and Anthropic, refused to hold hands for a group photograph. The incident has exploded on social media and set “Dario Amodei” trending on Google in India. (Also read: Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei avoid holding hands while on stage with PM Modi. Awkward moment goes viral)

Dario Amodei (R) and Sam Altman (L) share the stage at the India AI Impact Summit in Delhi on February 19, 2026 (AFP)

Who is Dario Amodei?

Dario Amodei is an American artificial intelligence researcher and entrepreneur. He is the co-founder and CEO of Anthropic, the company behind the large language model series Claude.

Amodei has a contentious history with OpenAI founder and CEO Sam Altman. He spent over four years at OpenAI before leaving the startup to launch Anthropic.

While at OpenAI between 2016 to 2020, Amodei went from team lead of AI safety to Vice President of Research. He led the development of large language models like GPT-2 and GPT-3.

Before joining OpenAI, he worked at Google Brain as a Senior Research Scientist (until July 2016), and as a Research Scientist at Baidu.

Early life and education

Dario Amodei earned his doctorate degree in biophysics from Princeton University as a Hertz Fellow, and was a postdoctoral scholar at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

He obtained his Bachelor’s degree in Physics from Stanford University in 2006, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Amodei was born in San Francisco in 1983. His father Riccardo Amodei was an Italian-American leather craftsman, while his mother Elena Engel worked as a project manager for libraries.

He has a younger sister Daniela, who also quit OpenAI in 2021 to launch Anthropic along with other senior members of OpenAI.

Dario Amodei trends on Google

Google Trends data shows search interest in Dario Amodei rising this morning

On Google, search queries for Dario Amodei rose sharply this morning after he refused to hold hands with Sam Altman for a picture.

Google Trends data shows that in India, search interest in Amodei started rising around 9:46am. It continued to rise steadily after that. Related queries included “Sam and Dario”, “Sam Altman and Dario Amodei” and “Dario Amodei vs Sam Altman”.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sanya Jain
Sanya Jain is an Assistant Editor with Hindustan Times Digital. She has nearly a decade of experience in covering offbeat stories that speak to the everyday experience -- from viral videos to human interest copies that spark a conversation. Her interests stretch across business, pop culture, social media trends, entertainment and global affairs. Before joining Hindustan Times, Sanya spent two years with Moneycontrol and five years with NDTV. She holds an undergraduate degree in English literature from St Stephen’s College, Delhi, and a master’s in journalism from the Xavier Institute of Communications, Mumbai. Sanya has a sharp eye for spotting emerging trends and finding newsworthy angles in viral content. She writes about a wide range of topics, from business leaders and social issues to everyday people and internet trends. She enjoys speaking to content creators, newsmakers and entrepreneurs and turning their experiences and stories into engaging, relatable articles.Read More

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