Prime Minister Narendra Modi invited leaders of major artificial intelligence companies to gather on stage at the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, presenting the meeting as part of a commitment to build more “inclusive and multilingual” AI around the world. The moment drew attention not only because of who was there, but because of a brief on-stage interaction that quickly spread online.
According to the report, Modi clasped hands with those closest to him—OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on his left and Google CEO Sundar Pichai on his right—and then beckoned 13 tech leaders to lift their hands into a chain, like a coordinated photo gesture. The display lasted only moments, but the image captured a mismatch in who joined the handshake.
Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei stood next to each other during the chain, but for several seconds they avoided contact while the other leaders held hands. They eventually put up their fists instead of clasping hands.
The episode became a visual talking point for many viewers, and was framed by the report as a symbol of rivalry in the AI industry—particularly between OpenAI and Anthropic. At the same time, the report said Altman tried to reduce the meaning of the moment.
In a video interview with Moneycontrol after the summit, Altman said, “I didn’t know what was happening,” adding that he was “confused, like when (Modi) grabbed my hand and put it up, and I just wasn’t sure what we were supposed to be doing.” The report said Anthropic declined to comment.
The interaction echoed deeper history between the two companies described in the report. It said Amodei worked at OpenAI before he and a group that included his sister, Daniela Amodei, quit to form Anthropic in 2021.
The report also tied the companies’ rivalry to their different approaches to building advanced AI. It said OpenAI released ChatGPT in late 2022, while Anthropic followed with its first version of Claude in 2023.
Their public competition also spilled into debate in the United States earlier that month, the report said, describing Anthropic TV commercials during the Super Bowl that ridiculed OpenAI for advertising its ChatGPT. It said Anthropic has centered its revenue on selling Claude to businesses, while OpenAI has opened the doors to ads as a way of monetizing the large number of consumers who get ChatGPT for free, with Altman taking to social media to criticize the commercials as dishonest.
As the summit’s broader message aimed at international AI cooperation, the viral handshake moment shifted attention to how competitors can still share a stage—yet visibly resist certain gestures—when global diplomacy meets the realities of tech rivalry.