OpenAI will not pursue an initial public offering in 2026, CEO Sam Altman said, arguing that the company should prioritize artificial intelligence safety and alignment work before moving toward a public listing as revealed during an interview with Fortune.
Altman said OpenAI currently feels no pressure to become publicly traded and characterized the present environment as an inappropriate time to undertake an IPO given the safety questions surrounding increasingly capable AI systems.
The comments provide greater clarity around OpenAI’s near-term capital markets plans after previous reports suggested the company had been evaluating the timing of a potentially enormous public offering.
Asked whether a 2026 IPO was effectively off the table in favor of 2027, Altman specifically ruled out 2026 but did not commit to a listing date for the following year.
His comments were closely tied to concerns about increasingly powerful AI models. Altman said that even hypothetical estimates suggesting a meaningful probability of AI contributing to human extinction should be treated as unacceptable rather than as an ordinary business risk.
He also indicated that OpenAI has substantial work ahead involving safety, alignment and cooperation between the AI industry and governments.
Altman suggested that leading AI developers could also be moving toward an agreement intended to address safety risks and potentially moderate the pace of frontier AI development.
The comments came as Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei separately called for AI companies to take a more deliberate approach to advancing model capabilities. Altman subsequently said he agreed with the broader idea of pacing development at the frontier.
For OpenAI, postponing an IPO would leave the company reliant on private capital and strategic financing arrangements while it continues investing heavily in computing infrastructure, model development and safety research.
