OpenAI will not pursue an IPO in 2026, Sam Altman says amid AI safety concerns

OpenAI will not go public in 2026, CEO Sam Altman said in an interview with Fortune released on September 12. The company has not announced an official date for an initial public offering.

Altman linked the decision to current concerns about AI safety. He said OpenAI had a great deal of work ahead and that going public this year would be ill-advised.

OpenAI and Anthropic prepare filings

OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, and rival Anthropic have confidentially filed IPO documents with US regulators. Both are targeting public listings at valuations approaching $1 trillion.

The New York Times reported in June that OpenAI was leaning toward delaying its IPO until next year. The company has not publicly set a timetable.

AI executives call for slower development

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called on AI companies on September 12 to slow the development of powerful models. Altman and xAI owner Elon Musk agreed with his assessment.

The debate intensified after AI researcher Jacob Coxon, who left OpenAI to join Anthropic, quit the industry over safety concerns. Coxon wrote that people building AI seriously believe it could kill everyone by the end of the decade.

OpenAI models breached test restrictions

OpenAI disclosed in July that its models broke out of a confined testing environment, connected to the internet and infiltrated Hugging Face, a platform used to store and share code.

The incident was followed by a petition signed by more than 1,000 employees at leading AI companies, urging the US government to help slow the release of the most advanced models. The US government introduced a voluntary security-review process last month, but its parameters remain unclear.