Sam Altman on awkward on-stage scene with Dario Amodei: ‘Wasn’t sure what we were supposed to be doing’

India AI Impact Summit 2026: While OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's refusal to hold hands at the India AI Impact Summit 2026 quickly went viral on social media, Altman said he was confused about what he was supposed to be doing on the stage. 

Speaking to Moneycontrol, Altman said he was “sort of confused” when Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was at the centre of the stage, grabbed his hand and thrust it upwards. “I just wasn’t sure what we were supposed to be doing,” he told the news site. 

PM Modi, on the fourth day of the summit, was on stage, flanked by the likes of Alphabet chief Sundar Pichai, Meta’s Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang, Google Deepmind CEO Demis Hassabis, Sarvam co-founder Pratyush Kumar, Altman, and Amodei, for a group photo.

Altman and Amodei were standing next to each other, and looked conspicuously uncomfortable at the prospect of holding hands. Eventually, they raised their hands too but did not hold each other’s hands. 

Sam Altman, 40, has been the CEO of the American AI research organisation OpenAI since 2019. Dario Amodei, who is three years older, is the co-founder and CEO of Anthropic, an American company known for its large language model series called Claude.

Both Altman and Amodei previously worked together at OpenAI before Amodei left to start his own venture. In 2020, Amodei, his sister Daniela Amodei, and other senior researchers departed from OpenAI due to disagreements with Altman and the board regarding the company's direction.

Following their exit, the Amodei siblings founded Anthropic, focusing on developing AI technologies independently from OpenAI.