Sam Altman says OpenAI going public in 2026 would be ‘ill-advised’
The Verge Terrence O’Brien ● Covered by 4 sources
OpenAI won’t go public in 2026, Sam Altman said. He says AI safety makes rushing an IPO a bad idea.
Based on reporting by The Verge, Terrence O’Brien — read the original for the full story.
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Sam Altman has taken OpenAI’s 2026 IPO off the table. In a 45-minute interview with Fortune, the CEO said the company is not rushing toward a public listing and that going public next year would be “ill-advised.”
The conversation ranged well beyond corporate finance. Altman talked about the Hugging Face hacking incident, recursive self-improvement, and whether it’s possible to build an AI that slips beyond human control.
His answer on that last point was blunt: yes, “absolutely.” But he also said OpenAI would take steps to stop that from happening, even if that meant pausing training. “There are risks we should not be able to incur on behalf of humanity,” he said.
That’s the tension sitting under the whole interview. OpenAI is still one of the loudest names in AI, but Altman is now openly arguing that the pace of commercialization has to bow to safety concerns. For a company often treated like a speedrun to the future, that is a notable brake pedal.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
This is the right call, and not just because Wall Street can wait. If a company keeps talking about systems that might outrun human control, then selling shares before it has a clean story on safety looks less like ambition and more like a liability preview. Silicon Valley loves to move fast; basic self-preservation should still get a vote.
Read more about this at: The Verge
