OpenAI's Altman rules out 2026 IPO, citing AI safety priorities

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the company has no plans for an initial public offering in 2026, citing safety concerns tied to the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence.

In an interview with Fortune on Friday, Altman said, “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.”

Asked whether 2027 might be a more likely target, Altman responded, “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 said OpenAI would pursue a public listing once the business and the company were ready, taking into account “as it relates to what the moment is like in society with this technology.”

Altman said OpenAI and other major AI companies may be approaching an agreement to jointly slow AI development and address safety risks.

He told Fortune he was ready to postpone an IPO to meet safety requirements, saying, “society needs to contend with these models at each level of capability.”

He said OpenAI has considered slowing development when its systems reach new capability levels, giving researchers more time to advance safety and alignment, while arguing that the AI industry and foreign governments need to coordinate on the issue.

Altman also cited OpenAI’s corporate structure, made up of nonprofit and for-profit entities, saying, “We have put up with this incredibly complicated structure for a long time, and this moment that we’re in now is kind of why. We need to be able to make decisions that are not obviously in the interest of our business and our shareholders for the responsibility of fulfilling our mission and what that’s going to require.”

Separately, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said Saturday that the company would roll out a new safety measure giving independent evaluators permanent, employee-level access inside Anthropic. The step is part of a wider push to slow AI development.

Earlier in the week, Bloomberg reported that Altman told OpenAI employees the company was weighing slowing development of its most advanced AI systems.