South China Morning Post
OpenAI and Anthropic CEOs refuse to hold hands during Modi’s India AI summit photo op
South China Morning Post · Feb 20, 2026 · Collected from RSS
Summary
Once a rival, always a rival. As Prime Minister Narendra Modi kicked off the busiest day of India’s AI Summit in New Delhi, he orchestrated a photo op with 13 other business and political leaders, all standing in a line and holding each other’s hands above their heads. Well, all of them except two. Sam Altman and Dario Amodei, CEOs of rivals OpenAI and Anthropic, were positioned next to each other and, awkwardly, refused to clasp each other’s hands. Instead, they stood with their arms crossed in...
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Once a rival, always a rival.As Prime Minister Narendra Modi kicked off the busiest day of India’s AI Summit in New Delhi, he orchestrated a photo op with 13 other business and political leaders, all standing in a line and holding each other’s hands above their heads.Well, all of them except two.Sam Altman and Dario Amodei, CEOs of rivals OpenAI and Anthropic, were positioned next to each other and, awkwardly, refused to clasp each other’s hands. Instead, they stood with their arms crossed in the air, avoiding eye contact. Amodei had worked at OpenAI but left to co-found his company because he felt that OpenAI was becoming too commercially focused.The snub went viral on social media platforms in India. In a video afterwards, Altman said he “didn’t know what was happening on stage” and was not sure what he was supposed to do. An OpenAI spokesperson confirmed the authenticity of the video.The two now lead the most valuable closely held AI companies in the world, with OpenAI worth about US$500 billion and Anthropic valued at US$380 billion.
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