OpenAI’s Altman Says No IPO in 2026, Firm to Prioritize Safety

(Bloomberg) -- OpenAI won’t go public in this year as the artificial intelligence company focuses on addressing safety-related concerns around the technology, Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman told Fortune in an interview.

Altman said this year would be an “ill-advised moment” for initial public offering and that a listing won’t take place until next year, according to a video of Fortune’s interview published on Saturday.

“I think it is unacceptable to be taking like a 10% chance of killing everybody by the end of the decade,” Altman said. “I think in this moment we are entering a new era, and we’ll likely have to — as we’ve stepped into other eras in the past — act differently to ensure that we are doing something that will ensure the idea benefits all humanity, but also ensure that no one is taking risk anywhere close to that.”

The comments come as Altman, Anthropic PBC CEO Dario Amodei and xAI Corp. co-founder chief Elon Musk on Saturday all voiced the need to slow the pace of AI development due to escalating risks from the technology for humanity — a rare moment of agreement among the leaders of three key competitors in the field. 

Anxiety about a potential existential threat posed by AI has entered the mainstream, driven in part by this week’s high-profile resignation of an Anthropic researcher over fears that his company was acting irresponsibly and that AI could “kill us all by the end of the decade.” A current Anthropic employee said the possibility of such an outcome is “>10% within the next decade” in a post on X. 

“I think a key principle that we should all agree on is that we cannot take actions that would risk losing control of the future to AI,” Altman told Fortune. 

OpenAI confidentially filed for an IPO in June, though it has said the timing for the listing remained undecided. Anthropic has been preparing for its own listing that may top SpaceX’s record-setting IPO earlier this year worth $86.2 billion, including the over-allotment option.  

OpenAI declined to comment on Altman’s remarks.

--With assistance from Shirin Ghaffary.

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