Image source: PTI

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has responded to an awkward onstage moment with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei at the ongoing India AI Impact Summit 2026 earlier today. Responding to the incident, Altman said “I was sort of confused and didn’t know what I was supposed to do”, per a report by news agency PTI. At the inaugural session of the India AI Impact Summit today, Sam Altman and Dario Amodei joined other tech leaders on stage for a group photograph with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Meta Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang, Sarvam co-founder Pratyush Kumar, and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis were also present on stage for the photo.

Sam Altman and Dario Amodei’s video at AI summit goes viral

PM Modi stood at the centre of the group, Pichai stood on his right and Altman on his left. Amodei, who previously worked at OpenAI before co-founding Claude-maker Anthropic, stood next to Altman. As the leaders posed for a group photograph, Modi and several other leaders raised their hands.

In the viral video, both Altman and Amodei appeared momentarily unsure how to pose. While others held hands in the air, the two raised their fists instead, leading to speculation that the duo avoided holding each other’s hands.When asked about the awkward moment, Altman responded: “I didn’t know what was happening. I was sort of confused, like (Prime Minister) Modi grabbed my hand and put it up, and I just wasn’t sure what we were supposed to be doing. I thought it was the open clock.”

When Amodei Dario worked at OpenAI

Before founding Anthropic, Amodei Dario – a PhD in biophysics spent years in labs and research roles, studying complex systems and how they behave under pressure. In 2016, he joined OpenAI as a researcher. By 2019, he was Vice President of Research, helping set the organisation’s overall research direction. He led work on GPT-2 and GPT-3, models that changed public perception of AI almost overnight. He left the company in 2021 after disagreements over its direction.