AI Rivalry on Display: Sam Altman, Dario Amodei's Awkward India Pic

Tension at India AI Summit

During the India AI India Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi, an awkward photo opportunity involving Sam Altman and Dario Amodei went viral, capturing the tension between the former colleagues.

Add Asianet Newsable as a Preferred Source

Origins of the Rivalry

Amodei was once the Vice President of Research at OpenAI, which was cofounded in 2015 by Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Elon Musk, among others. In 2021, Amodei left OpenAI over reported disagreements and soon after, co-founded Anthropic, positioning it as a safety-focused alternative in the AI race.

At the Bharat Mandapam venue of the AI summit, PM Narendra Modi, following his keynote address, had a group photograph with global tech leaders. PM Modi held hands with the leaders directly next to him--Sundar Pichai on his right and Sam Altman on his left--and encouraged the entire group to join hands and raise them in a show of collective progress. While the rest of the group joined hands, Altman and Amodei (who were standing side-by-side) pointedly avoided physical contact. Instead of clasping hands, the two opted to raise separate, clenched fists into the air.

Public Feud Escalates

This is the second such incident of the rivalrly between the two CEO's coming out in public. The AI assistants- ChatGPT created by OpenAI and Claude of Anthropic, compete with each other with the rivalry playing out at the recent commercials aired at Super Bowl game in US.

Altman's Allegations

Altman has attacked Anthropic's Super Bowl ad campaign and in a post on social media platform X, Altman called the commercials "deceptive" and "clearly dishonest." In a post on X, Altman wrote that everyone deserves to use AI and OpenAI is committed to free access. He added, "Anthropic serves an expensive product to rich people. More Texans use ChatGPT for free than total people use Claude in the US, so we have a differently-shaped problem than they do."

According to Open AI's own January estimates, they have over 700 million active weekly users, whereas Anthropic's estimates that they have around 18 million active across any month, even as the Claude AI gained rapid popularity, doubling its user base.

Further, he alleged that "Anthropic wants to control what people do with AI--they block companies they don't like from using their coding product [including us]..."

Differing Philosophies

While Anthropic says its mission is to be an AI safety and research company that builds "reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems". OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company whose "mission is to ensure that artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity". (ANI)