By Saritha Rai
Publication Date: 2026-02-20 02:59:00
Saritha Rai
Once a rival, always a rival.
As Prime Minister Narendra Modi opened the busiest day of India’s AI summit in New Delhi, he arranged a photo op with 13 other business and political leaders, all standing in a row and holding their hands over each other’s heads.
Well, all but two.
Sam Altman and Dario Amodei, chief executives of rivals OpenAI and Anthropic, sat next to each other and awkwardly refused to touch each other’s hands. Instead, they stood with their arms folded in the air, avoiding eye contact.
Amodei had worked at OpenAI but left to co-found his company because he felt OpenAI was too commercially focused.
The snub went viral on social media platforms in India, including X. In a…
