Sam Altman Confirms OpenAI Will Not Go Public This Year: AI Safety Concerns Make Now an 'Inopportune Time' for an IPO

Beating AI News Flash: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman confirmed in an exclusive interview with Fortune that the company will not hold an IPO in 2026, stating that given the current AI safety landscape, going public now is "not the right time."

Altman said OpenAI is in no rush to go public and will consider an IPO only after the business is ready and society can adapt to AI models of different capability levels. He also said the company needs to prioritize AI safety and alignment issues and may slow down frontier model development when AI capabilities reach a new stage. It was previously reported that OpenAI had considered delaying its IPO until 2027, with a potential valuation of as much as $1 trillion.

Meanwhile, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei recently also called for slowing down frontier AI development and proposed giving independent evaluators access comparable to that of company employees. Sam Altman subsequently said, "I agree with Dario Amodei (Anthropic CEO) that we need to control the progress of frontier models. This has been a major topic of discussion at OpenAI recently. Committing to give independent evaluators employee-like access is a good idea, and we will do the same. We will have more news to share soon."