OpenAI CEO Sam Altman [AFP]
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman [AFP]

OpenAI will not go public this year, CEO Sam Altman has declared.

Altman said there is still too much work to be done on AI safety and alignment to pursue a listing now. "The core principle we should all agree on is that we must not take actions that risk ceding control of the future to AI," he said.

Altman made the remarks in an interview with Fortune magazine published Saturday (local time). "Given what is happening around safety, this is an ill-advised moment to go public," he said. "We don't feel pressure to do this."

Asked whether OpenAI was pushing its IPO plans from 2026 to 2027, Altman said flatly: "It won't be 2026." He added that there is much left to do — resolving challenges around safety and alignment, and working out how industry and government can collaborate.

OpenAI filed a confidential IPO application with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in June and has been working through the listing process since then.

Altman said he considers it unacceptable "to tolerate roughly a 10 percent chance that everyone dies by the end of 2030."

"We are entering a new era right now," he said. "Just as we have stepped into other eras before — to ensure ideas benefit all of humanity and that no one bears disproportionate risk — we will likely need to act differently."

His remarks came as concerns about AI safety were mounting. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei also published a blog post that day warning of AI's potential dangers and calling for a slowdown in development.

Altman was joined in supporting Amodei's position by Elon Musk, co-founder of xAI — a rare show of consensus across the AI industry.

Altman also signaled that OpenAI and other major AI companies are close to announcing a joint agreement to slow AI development and address safety risks together, Fortune reported.


cheon@heraldcorp.com