Sam Altman rules out an OpenAI listing in 2026, and backs Dario Amodei’s call to pace the frontier
OpenAI has shelved any prospects of launching an initial public offering (IPO) in 2026. Speaking in an interview with Fortune broadcast on Saturday (September 12), Altman noted that ongoing debates regarding safety risks make a market debut unwise right now. CEO Sam Altman made the disclosure even as his top competitor, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, issued a public appeal urging frontier technology developers to ease their developmental pace. Wall Street analysts had spent months projecting the timing of an OpenAI public debut, with expectations pointing toward a record trillion-dollar valuation. ongoing security fallout has complicated that trajectory While an insider speaking to Business Insider in May claimed the firm had been laying the groundwork to list as soon as this month.
We’ll provide third-party evaluators with permanent, employee-level access to our systems, so that they can verify adherence to our safety measures, report on incidents, and assess models’ alignment during training.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said: We Must Pace the Frontier: I’ve written a new essay on why the AI industry should slow down, with a three-part plan for doing so. Anthropic is unilaterally committing to the first of these steps. Taking to social media platform X, Altman openly endorsed this core message: I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier. This has been a primary topic of discussions we’ve had at OpenAI in recent weeks.