OpenAI’s still looking at an IPO—but not in 2026.
On Friday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told Fortune editor-in-chief Alyson Shontell that it wasn’t the right time.
“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,” he said in an interview for Shontell’s Titans and Disruptors of Industry podcast.
Altman was referencing the outpouring of concern, fear, and chatter that emerged last week, when researcher Jacob Coxon (who’d also worked at OpenAI) resigned from Anthropic, with a very public message: AI’s makers are moving quickly and irresponsibly. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei sounded off over the weekend, and Altman told Shontell that OpenAI’s go-public ambitions are linked to safety. As she wrote on Saturday:
He added that OpenAI will go public when the business is ready and when the company is ready as it relates to “what the moment is like in society with this technology.”
When pressed on whether 2026 is off the table in favor of 2027, Altman replied, “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 even suggested that AI’s biggest names, from Amodei to Hassabis, will likely get together to discuss safety at some point.
“I’m not going to pre-announce private discussions that I think should be at some point shared as a group,” he told Shontell. “But, yeah, I think that will happen.”
All sorts of things are probably true here: The safety fears are absolutely a worthwhile conversation, and deeply valid. At the same time, I do wonder if it’s easier to talk about apocalyptic fears of the future than concerns of the present. (I’m far from the first to wonder about this dynamic.) There’s also a lot of money on the table: Investors have poured more than $180 billion into OpenAI over the years, and a much-anticipated exit appears far on the horizon.
Regardless, it’s clear that the existential fears of the AI boom have hit a boiling point. And the conversation only matters so much, of course—the action from here is what will make a difference. And what that action looks like remains unclear.
Watch Fortune’s whole interview with Altman here.
See you tomorrow,
Allie Garfinkle
X: @agarfinks
Email: [email protected]
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