Sam Altman says an OpenAI IPO in 2026 would be 'ill-advised'

While OpenAI has filed confidentially for an IPO, the company will not go public this year, according to CEO Sam Altman. Altman was interviewed recently by Fortune editor-in-chief Alyson Shontell; amid the fallout from the OpenAI-Hugging Face hack, as well as broader discussions about AI safety, Shontell asked whether OpenAI still feels pressure to “move really fast” because of its IPO plans.

“We’re not rushing into an IPO,” Altman said. “I actually think that given everything happening with safety, right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public.” Instead, he said OpenAI will go public “when we’re ready, which is when the business is ready, when we feel ready from what the moment is like in society with this technology.” Pressed on whether that rules out an IPO in 2026, Altman replied, “I would say not 2026, yeah. We’ve got a lot of stuff to do.”

The New York Times reported in June that although OpenAI had hired bankers and lawyers with the goal of going public in the third or fourth quarter of 2026, the company was leaning toward 2027 due to the volatility of tech stocks and its own financial challenges.

Why it matters

Altman tying the IPO timeline explicitly to safety concerns, rather than just market conditions, suggests OpenAI is trying to manage how a public listing would be perceived alongside the safety scrutiny the industry is currently under.