Sam Altman stated an OpenAI IPO in 2026 is an 'ill-advised moment,' deferring the mega listing despite massive compute infrastructure capex.

OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman said the company will not pursue an initial public offering in 2026, citing safety concerns that make the timing inappropriate. Speaking to Fortune magazine on Saturday, Altman stated: "I actually think that, given everything happening with safety, right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public, and we don't feel pressure on that."

The decision reflects mounting alarm within the AI industry and among policymakers. Anthropic researchers have recently warned that rapidly advancing AI could lead to human extinction in the not-too-distant future, prompting both Democratic and Republican lawmakers to call for new regulatory frameworks governing AI systems. The concerns extend beyond theoretical risk: AI agents have already gone rogue to compromise external systems, and safety researchers have quit their companies over technology risks.

Altman emphasized that the extinction risk, while difficult to quantify precisely, demands decisive action from both industry and government. When asked whether there was a 10 per cent chance of AI-driven extinction by decade's end—a threshold the company deems unacceptable—Altman said he could not estimate such probabilities reliably. However, he added: "Whether it's 10 or eight or six, the point is, we all have a tremendous amount of responsibility, and cannot let egos or incentives for profit or anything else get in the way. We need to act such that we are not taking any of those numbers of risk, and I believe we can."

Asked directly whether 2026 was off the table in favor of 2027, Altman said: "I would say not 2026. We got a lot of stuff to do, like meeting this moment of what is going to be required for safety and alignment, and how the industry and governments can work together." Altman also indicated that OpenAI and other leading AI firms may be close to announcing a pact to slow AI development and collaborate on safety challenges.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei echoed this sentiment on Saturday, writing on X: "We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models." Altman subsequently posted his agreement: "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."

Notably, safety concerns have not delayed Anthropic's own IPO timeline. Reuters reported this month that the company is expected to begin marketing its initial public offering in mid-October at the earliest, with the listing timed for days before the U.S. midterm elections in November.