Altman says OpenAI will not go public in 2026, citing safety concerns

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in an interview released on Saturday the artificial intelligence company will not go public until at least 2027 as the industry coalesces around calls for safety measures.While speaking with Fortune’s Alyson Shontell, Altman said the timeline for OpenAI going public has been pushed back amid concerns about AI’s rapid development and the potential loss of control over the technology. Altman’s comments come after a week in which two Anthropic employees cited safety concerns as reasons for leaving the company. OpenAI also said on Friday another hacking incident occurred in May that preceded the now-infamous Hugging Face event that sparked these cybersecurity concerns in July. Recommended Stories “As we’ve said, we’re not rushing into an IPO,” Altman told Shontell. “I actually think that given everything happening with safety, this would be, right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public, and we don’t feel pressure on that. We’ve said for a long time we’ll do it when we’re ready, which is when the business is ready, when we feel ready, from a, kind of, what the moment is like in society with this technology.” “I would say not 2026, yeah,” he answered when asked about the specific timing of an IPO. “We got a lot of stuff to do. And, like, meeting this moment of what is going to be required for safety and alignment and how the industry and governments can work together; I’m happy to be able to do that as a private company.”Altman’s comment comes the same day Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei released an essay titled “We Must Pace the Frontier” that outlines a three-pronged approach to adequately regulating the industry. Altman and other AI executives responded affirmatively to Amodei’s essay, and Altman specifically said he agrees that third-party safety validators are a “great idea.” Grok CEO Elon Musk also publicly approved of the lengthy thought-leadership piece.AI GIANTS RALLY BEHIND AMODEI’S ESSAYDiscussions about AI’s hacking capabilities and a theoretical loss of human control have begun superseding debates about data center construction, which dominated AI policy conversations over the last few months. Altman said last month that AI executives have not adequately educated the public about the technology’s positive societal effects amid the backlash against the infrastructure buildout.“This has clearly been a week where a lot more people are grappling with the issues in front of us,” Altman also said in the interview. Other topics he discussed include ChatGPT’s most recent Astra model, the race to beat China in AI development, and the pressure to meet high profit expectations.