Sam Altman and Dario Amodei Make India Their Next A.I. Battleground

It was meant to be a simple photo op. To mark a busy day at the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi this week, a lineup of business and political leaders joined India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi onstage, raising their clasped hands in a show of unity. All but two. Standing side by side, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei chose not to hold each other’s hands. Instead, they extended their fists—a now-viral moment that neatly captured their intensifying A.I. rivalry. The two executives are battling for consumers, enterprise customers and, increasingly, global influence. Their latest battleground: India.

Both Altman and Amodei recently announced a flurry of initiatives in India, racing to win over its 1.4 billion people and fast-growing digital ecosystem. Their companies already have significant footprints there. India accounts for roughly 100 million of OpenAI’s weekly ChatGPT users and is the second-largest market for Anthropic’s Claude tools.

Tensions between Altman and Amodei have been brewing for some time. Amodei previously worked at OpenAI before leaving in 2020 over disagreements about the company’s direction. The following year, he co-founded Anthropic as a more safety-focused alternative alongside several former OpenAI colleagues, including his sister Daniela Amodei. Both startups have since become A.I. powerhouses: OpenAI is valued at $500 billion, while Anthropic is valued at $380 billion.

In India, OpenAI has a head start. The company opened an office in New Delhi last August. Anthropic announced plans to expand to the region in October. The company is now betting on the enterprise sector. A newly announced partnership between Anthropic and Infosys will focus on building custom A.I. agents for companies across telecommunications, financial services, manufacturing and software. Anthropic’s offerings, which include its popular Claude coding tool, largely cater to businesses, as opposed to OpenAI’s consumer-focused features.

Anthropic is also opening its first Indian office in Bengaluru and has hired longtime Microsoft executive Irina Ghose to manage its operations there. Other initiatives unveiled this week include training its models in several of India’s most widely spoken languages and positioning the country as a key partner in evaluating A.I.’s labor-market impact and testing model safety. “India is the world’s largest democracy and can be a partner and leader in addressing the global security and economic risks of the technology,” said Amodei at the summit.

OpenAI’s India strategy, by contrast, leans heavily on infrastructure. The ChatGPT-maker today unveiled its “OpenAI for India” initiative, aimed at expanding access to its technology nationwide. A central piece is a partnership with Tata Group’s data center business, beginning with 100 megawatts of computing capacity and eventually scaling to one gigawatt.

OpenAI also plans to expand to two additional locations in Mumbai and Bengaluru in 2026, bringing its total number of offices in India to three. In his keynote address at the summit, Altman described the country as “well positioned to lead in A.I.—not just to build it, but to shape it.”

Altman’s approach aligns closely with other major tech players drawn by India’s government-backed A.I. push. Google last year said it would invest $15 billion in an A.I. data center hub in the country. Microsoft followed with plans to commit $17.5 billion to expand its cloud and A.I. infrastructure there. Amazon has pledged $35 billion across its Indian operations through 2030.

The rivalry between Altman and Amodei has also spilled into public view. Earlier this month, Anthropic spent millions on a Super Bowl campaign poking fun at OpenAI’s decision to test advertisements in ChatGPT. Altman did not take kindly to the jab, calling his competitor “dishonest.”

As for the awkward onstage moment in New Delhi, Altman later said the non-hand-holding was not intentional but the result of confusion during the photo op. Still, the symbolism was hard to miss. The competition between the OpenAI and Anthropic chiefs is only intensifying—and India is emerging as one of its most consequential fronts.