Dario Amodei’s description of the India AI Impact Summit as “extremely disorganised” has reignited debate over the handling of New Delhi’s flagship technology diplomacy event, after a clip from his Bloomberg interview spread widely on social media and drew sharp exchanges between the Congress and the BJP.
The Anthropic chief executive officer and co-founder made the comment while explaining an awkward stage moment at the February summit, where he and OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman were seen avoiding a hand-holding gesture during a group photograph with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other global technology leaders. Amodei said the episode was caused by confusion rather than personal or corporate tension, saying participants were brought on stage at the last minute, repositioned, photographed and then asked to hold hands.
His remarks were quickly seized upon by Congress functionaries, who presented the clip as evidence of poor event management at a summit that the Centre had projected as a major showcase of the country’s artificial intelligence ambitions. Amitabh Dubey, research and monitoring in-charge at the All India Congress Committee, shared the clip and highlighted Amodei’s criticism, prompting BJP leaders and supporters to accuse the opposition of selectively circulating an edited extract.
The BJP’s response centred on Amodei’s qualifying remarks. The Anthropic chief had added that he was not making a specific criticism of the country, and that international summits involving heads of state often become chaotic. BJP voices argued that this portion had been played down to create a political controversy around an event that drew some of the world’s most influential AI executives to New Delhi.
The February gathering at Bharat Mandapam was designed to position the country as a central participant in global AI governance, innovation and deployment. The summit brought together more than 100 AI leaders, CEOs and CXOs, alongside policy experts, researchers, start-up founders and representatives of major technology companies. Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, Sundar Pichai, Demis Hassabis and other senior figures were among the names associated with the event, which focused on responsible AI, access, infrastructure and Global South participation.
The viral stage clip became one of the summit’s most discussed moments. Modi had encouraged a symbolic show of unity among executives on stage, with most participants joining hands and raising them for photographers. Altman and Amodei, standing beside each other, raised their fists separately. The moment fuelled online speculation because of the competitive history between OpenAI and Anthropic, two companies at the centre of the global AI race.
Amodei previously served as vice-president of research at OpenAI before leaving in 2020 with his sister Daniela Amodei and other colleagues. Anthropic was founded in 2021 with a strong emphasis on AI safety, interpretability and what it calls constitutional AI. The rivalry with OpenAI has since expanded across products, talent, enterprise customers and public positioning on safety and commercialisation.
Altman had earlier said he was confused on stage and unsure what participants were expected to do. Amodei’s explanation now broadly supports the view that the incident reflected unclear stage direction, although his language gave the controversy a political edge.
The row also revived scrutiny of the summit’s wider execution. The event faced criticism at the time over crowd management, traffic disruption around the venue, last-minute programming changes and a few high-profile cancellations. Bill Gates did not deliver a scheduled keynote, while some participants reported logistical problems despite the summit’s scale and international visibility.
Even so, the summit delivered a platform for major AI policy signalling. The government used the event to underline its ambition to build AI infrastructure, widen access to compute capacity, promote language technologies and attract global investment. The programme also highlighted applications in healthcare, agriculture, education, public services and software development, areas where AI adoption is expected to accelerate.
Anthropic used the same period to deepen its presence in the country. The company announced enterprise partnerships and expanded plans after opening a Bengaluru office, with Amodei saying the country had become one of its fastest-growing markets outside the United States. Demand for Claude, particularly among software developers and enterprise users, has been rising as companies experiment with AI-assisted coding, workflow automation and customer-facing tools.
