Sam Altman has confirmed that OpenAI won't hold an IPO in 2026. In an interview with Fortune, the CEO said the current state of AI safety makes going public right now "ill-advised."
OpenAI isn't in any rush, Altman added. The company will look at an IPO once the business is ready and society has adapted to AI models at different capability levels. He also said OpenAI needs to put AI safety and alignment first, and may slow development of frontier models when AI capabilities reach a new stage. Earlier reporting suggested OpenAI had weighed pushing an IPO out to 2027, at a potential valuation of $1 trillion.
His comments land as Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has also called for slowing frontier AI development, proposing that independent evaluators get employee-level access inside companies. Altman responded: "I agree with Dario Amodei (Anthropic CEO) that we need to control the progress of frontier models. That's been a major topic of discussion at OpenAI recently. Committing to give independent evaluators employee-like access is a good idea, and we'll do it too. We'll have more to share soon."