OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has confirmed that the company will not go public this year, saying the current safety landscape around artificial intelligence (AI) makes it the wrong moment for a listing. Speaking to Fortune, 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."
No ambiguity on the 2026 timeline
When pressed by Fortune on whether a 2026 listing was officially off the table, Altman was direct about the delay. "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," he said. The remarks push back a listing that had reportedly been under consideration for this year, with OpenAI having filed confidentially for an IPO in June without committing to a firm timeline. The New York Times had reported in June that the company was weighing whether to delay a potentially trillion-dollar public offering until 2027, a timeline that Altman's latest comments now appear to confirm.
Safety concerns take priority over market pressure
Altman framed the decision as a matter of institutional focus rather than financial necessity, stressing that OpenAI does not feel any external pressure to rush toward a public listing. He indicated that OpenAI and other leading AI companies could be close to announcing a coordinated agreement to work together on safety and potentially slow the pace of AI development industry-wide, though he did not specify the exact form such an agreement might take.
Part of a broader industry reckoning
Altman's comments landed less than 24 hours after he publicly endorsed an essay by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei calling for AI companies to deliberately slow the pace of capability improvements. Responding to Amodei on X, Altman wrote that he agreed the industry needs to "pace the frontier," adding that the subject had been "a primary topic of discussions" inside OpenAI in recent weeks. The alignment between the two rival CEOs came amid a turbulent stretch for the sector, with reports of AI researchers raising alarm over the risks of rapidly advancing systems, including warnings from researchers connected to Anthropic about potentially catastrophic long-term risks, alongside bipartisan calls in Washington for stronger regulatory oversight of frontier AI.
Anthropic presses ahead with its own listing
Notably, Anthropic's own IPO plans do not appear to be affected by its CEO's public call for the industry to slow down. According to Reuters, Anthropic is expected to begin marketing its public offering as early as mid-October, with some reports pointing to a listing valuation in the range of $2 trillion. The contrast underscores that while Altman and Amodei are aligned on the need to pace AI capability development, that alignment has not translated into identical approaches to the two companies' own paths to public markets.
