By TheDailyNewsHub
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has ruled out taking the artificial intelligence company public this year, saying the current moment is not appropriate for an initial public offering as the industry confronts growing concerns about the safety of increasingly powerful AI systems.
In an interview with Fortune published on Saturday, Altman said an IPO in 2026 would be “an ill-advised moment” given the safety issues surrounding advanced AI. Asked whether the company would instead pursue a listing in 2027, he did not formally commit to a date, but said clearly: “I would say not 2026.”
The decision comes amid an intensifying debate over whether AI development is advancing faster than researchers can develop safeguards capable of keeping increasingly autonomous systems under human control.
Altman also addressed concerns about the possibility of AI causing catastrophic harm to humanity. When asked about an estimate that there could be a 10 per cent chance of AI-driven human extinction by the end of the decade, he said he did not know how such a figure could be calculated.
However, he argued that even a risk at that level would be unacceptable.
“Whether it’s 10 or eight or six, the point is, we all have a tremendous amount of responsibility,” Altman said, according to Reuters. He added that companies and governments should act in a way that does not accept such levels of risk.
Altman’s remarks followed a series of warnings from researchers at Anthropic, one of OpenAI’s major competitors. Anthropic researcher Evan Hubinger recently said he believed there was more than a 10 per cent chance that AI could cause human extinction within the next decade, while former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon publicly warned that frontier AI companies were moving rapidly towards self-improving systems without adequate safeguards.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei subsequently called for the industry to slow the pace at which it develops increasingly capable AI models.
Altman has backed that position. In a post responding to Amodei, he said he agreed that the industry needed to “pace the frontier” and disclosed that slowing the development of advanced AI had already been a major topic of discussions at OpenAI.
The OpenAI chief also suggested that leading AI companies could be approaching an agreement to collectively address safety concerns and potentially slow aspects of AI development.
“We all have a tremendous amount of responsibility, and cannot let egos or incentives for profit or anything else get in the way,” Altman told Fortune.
According to Fortune, Altman indicated that discussions involving major AI companies could eventually produce a joint pact. The details of any such agreement, including which companies would participate, how a slowdown would work and how compliance would be monitored, remain unclear.
Altman also indicated that safety considerations could take priority over investors’ financial interests. Fortune reported that he would be prepared to stand up to investors if OpenAI concluded that it needed to pause or even stop AI development because the technology could not be developed safely.
The IPO decision is significant because OpenAI had been widely expected to become one of the world’s biggest technology listings if it eventually goes public. Reports earlier this year suggested that the company was considering an IPO that could potentially value it at around $1 trillion or more. Reuters reported that OpenAI had considered a potentially trillion-dollar offering, although the timing had remained uncertain.
Altman’s latest comments, however, do not mean OpenAI has cancelled its IPO permanently. They rule out a 2026 listing while leaving the company’s longer-term plans open.
The development also creates an interesting contrast with Anthropic. While Amodei has called for a slower pace of AI development and stronger independent safety oversight, Anthropic is still reportedly preparing for a possible IPO later this year.
The growing focus on AI safety comes as governments and lawmakers in the United States increasingly debate how advanced AI systems should be regulated. Reuters reported that lawmakers from both major U.S. political parties have expressed concern following incidents involving AI agents behaving unexpectedly and reports of systems attempting to hack external websites.
For Altman, the message is increasingly clear: the race to build more powerful AI cannot be allowed to take priority over ensuring that the technology remains safe and controllable.
The decision to keep OpenAI private through 2026 therefore reflects more than an IPO timetable. It signals how the rapidly growing debate over AI safety is beginning to influence major business decisions at the heart of the global AI industry.