Altman and Amodei skip the symbolic hand raise at AI Summit 2026, putting to display the rivalry between OpenAI and Anthropic
During the high-profile AI Impact Summit at Bharat Mandapam on Thursday, a “family photo” intended to project global unity saw a visible, if subtle, rift.
Standing alongside Prime Minister Narendra Modi, several top tech leaders posed for a group photo, including Google CEO Sundar Pichai, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, and Meta Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang. While most joined hands for the shot, Altman and Amodei notably chose not to.
Watch the video here:
WATCH: OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei refused to hold hands during a unity photo-op with India’s PM Modi and other AI leaders at India AI Impact Summit. pic.twitter.com/XmSpneS9cC
— Clash Report (@clashreport) February 19, 2026
The ‘hand raise’ that didn’t happen
The summit, which has turned New Delhi into the global capital of AI for the week, is centred on India’s “MANAV” vision—a human-centric approach to technology. However, the refusal of Altman and Amodei to participate in the symbolic “unity” gesture quickly became the talk of the hallways.
In a conversational setting, one might call it “quiet resistance.” While both CEOs have been vocal about their respect for India’s AI potential—Altman even praised the country earlier in the day as a “global leader” in adoption—their refusal to join the synchronised pose signalled a clear boundary.
Why are Altman and Amodei considered rivals?
The rivalry between Sam Altman and Dario Amodei is often described as a battle for the “soul” of artificial intelligence. It isn’t just a corporate competition; it is a deep ideological split that began when the two were on the same team at OpenAI.
The rift started in 2020 when Dario Amodei, then OpenAI’s VP of Research, led a “safety-conscious” exodus of several high-level employees. Amodei and his colleagues were reportedly concerned that OpenAI’s $1 billion partnership with Microsoft was shifting the company’s focus too heavily toward commercial products at the expense of safety research. This led to the birth of Anthropic, founded as a Public Benefit Corporation to serve as a “safety-first” alternative.
While Altman believes in “iterative deployment”—putting tools in the hands of the public to learn from their mistakes—Amodei argues for “Constitutional AI,” where models are governed by a strict internal code of ethics before they ever reach a user.
The ‘Ad war’ of 2026
The rivalry reached a boiling point in early 2026 over how AI should be funded. As OpenAI began integrating advertisements into ChatGPT’s free tier to offset massive computing costs, Anthropic launched a high-profile Super Bowl campaign mocking the move.
The ads showed “clunky” AI assistants being interrupted by intrusive sales pitches, ending with the stinging tagline: “Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude.” Sam Altman fired back on social media, calling the ads “dishonest” and framing Anthropic as an elitist company that serves “expensive products to rich people,” while OpenAI focuses on providing free AI to the “billions who can’t pay.”
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