OpenAI puts off IPO

OpenAI will not go public this year as the ChatGPT maker focuses on growing concerns over the safety of increasingly powerful artificial intelligence systems, CEO Sam Altman said.

Altman told Fortune that 2026 would be an “ill-advised moment” for an initial public offering, with the company now looking toward 2027 at the earliest. OpenAI filed paperwork for an IPO in June.

“I think it is unacceptable to be taking like a 10 percent chance of killing everybody by the end of the decade,” Altman said in the Fortune interview.

He said the rapid development of increasingly capable models requires the industry to rethink how it balances technological progress with safety.

“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 said.

The remarks come amid an unusual convergence among leaders of three major competing AI companies over the need to slow the development of frontier models.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on Saturday called on developers to “pace” advances in model capabilities, arguing that companies need more time to ensure safety measures keep up with increasingly powerful systems.

Amodei proposed embedding independent evaluators inside frontier AI companies, greater coordination among developers on safety standards and international cooperation to manage the risks posed by advanced systems.

Altman backed the proposal, saying OpenAI would also commit to allowing independent evaluators greater access to assess its safety practices.

“Committing to having independent evaluators with employee-like access is a great idea, and we will do the same,” Altman said in a post cited by Reuters.

Elon Musk, whose xAI competes with OpenAI and Anthropic, also backed Amodei’s call.