Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's AI summit in New Delhi took an unexpected turn when OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei awkwardly avoided hand contact during a group photo. The moment, captured as Modi gathered 13 tech leaders for a staged hand-clasp, quickly went viral on social media.

Altman and Amodei, standing side by side, initially refused to hold hands, instead raising their fists in an apparent display of rivalry. The two AI executives have a complicated history - Amodei previously worked at OpenAI before co-founding Anthropic in 2021 with his sister Daniela. Their companies now compete directly, with OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude battling for market share in the generative AI space.

The awkward interaction highlighted the intense competition between the two San Francisco-based firms. OpenAI released ChatGPT in late 2022, while Anthropic launched Claude in 2023. The rivalry recently spilled into public view when Anthropic aired Super Bowl commercials mocking OpenAI's move toward digital advertising in ChatGPT. While Altman downplayed the incident as confusion about the photo op, the moment served as a visible reminder of the deep divisions in the rapidly evolving AI industry.