According to a Fortune interview, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman confirmed the company will not pursue an IPO by 2026, stating that going public at this time is "ill-timed" given current AI safety concerns. Altman emphasized that OpenAI is not in a rush to go public, and will consider an IPO only when its business is ready and society is prepared to adapt to AI models of varying capability levels; the company must prioritize addressing AI safety and alignment issues, and may even slow down frontier model development once AI capabilities reach a new stage.

Earlier reports indicated OpenAI had considered delaying its IPO until 2027, with a potential valuation reaching $1 trillion. Meanwhile, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei recently called for slowing down the advancement of frontier AI and proposed granting independent evaluation bodies access at the level of internal employees. Altman responded by expressing agreement, pledging that independent assessors will also be granted similar employee-level access, and stated more details will be shared shortly.