OpenAI IPO will not happen in 2026 amid AI safety fears, chief Sam Altman says

OpenAI founder Sam Altman said that the company going public now would be “ill-advised”.

LOS ANGELES - OpenAI will not go public in 2026, chief executive officer Sam Altman said in a Fortune interview published on Sept 12, citing safety concerns over artificial intelligence.

“I actually think that, given everything happening with safety, right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public, and we don’t feel pressure on that,” Altman told Fortune.

Growing numbers of US lawmakers ​are calling for new rules to govern AI systems after dire warnings from two researchers from OpenAI rival Anthropic that rapidly progressing artificial intelligence could lead to the extinction of the human race ‌in the not-too-distant future.

The warnings follow cases of AI agents going rogue to hack external systems and AI ​safety researchers quitting their companies concerned about the technology’s risks. Politicians, both Democrats and Republicans, have responded with alarm and calls for more action.

The New York Times in June reported that San Francisco-based OpenAI was considering whether to hold off on a potentially trillion-dollar IPO until 2027. At the time, shares in Elon Musk’s SpaceX IPO were tumbling after a surge that sent that company’s valuation to US$1.8 trillion (S$2.2 trillion).

When asked by Fortune whether 2026 is off the table in favour of 2027, Altman said, “I would say not 2026. Yeah, we got a lot of stuff to do, like meeting this moment of what is going to be required for safety and alignment, and how the industry and governments can work together.”

Altman also suggested that OpenAI and other leading AI companies may be close to announcing an agreement to slow AI development and work together to address safety risks, Fortune reported.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on Sept 12 urged AI companies to take a more deliberate approach to development.

“We must slow the ‌pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models,” Amodei wrote in an essay shared on social media.

Altman later posted that he agreed with the sentiment.

“I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier,” Altman wrote in a response to Amodei’s post on the X platform. “This has been a primary topic of discussions we’ve had at OpenAI in recent weeks.”

Safety concerns have not slowed down Anthropic’s own IPO plans so far. Anthropic is expected to begin marketing its initial public offering in mid-October at the earliest and complete the listing days before the US midterm elections in November, people familiar with the matter told Reuters this month. REUTERS