OpenAI delays IPO to 2027, citing AI safety priorities

OpenAI has ruled out pursuing an initial public offering in 2026, with CEO Sam Altman telling Fortune magazine that the company is prioritizing artificial intelligence safety work over a potential market debut.

"It would be an ill-advised moment to go public," Altman said, noting that OpenAI does not feel pressure to list this year given the safety challenges facing the AI industry. The ChatGPT maker had previously considered a potentially trillion-dollar IPO with a 2026 timeline, but is now expected to push that into 2027.

Why it matters

The delay signals a strategic shift as leading AI companies face mounting scrutiny over the pace of technological advancement. OpenAI's decision to prioritize safety over capital access—despite the enormous computing costs of developing advanced models—reflects growing industry and regulatory concerns about the risks of increasingly capable AI systems.

Extinction risk calculations

Altman emphasized that even a small probability of AI causing human extinction would be unacceptable, though he questioned how such risks could be accurately calculated. "Whether it's 10 or eight or six, the point is, we all have a tremendous amount of responsibility," he said, adding that companies and governments must act in ways that do not tolerate such risks.

The CEO suggested that OpenAI and other leading AI companies could be close to announcing an agreement to collaborate on safety measures and potentially slow development timelines. "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 said.

Industry coordination on safety

Altman's comments followed a call from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei for AI companies to take a more deliberate approach to advancing their technology. "We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models," Amodei wrote on X. Altman responded that he agreed with the sentiment, noting that OpenAI needed to "pace the frontier" and that the issue had been a major topic of internal discussions.

Despite these safety concerns, Anthropic itself plans to proceed with its own public listing. According to people familiar with the matter, the company is expected to begin marketing its IPO as early as mid-October and could complete the listing before the US midterm elections in November.

Capital needs remain

An eventual OpenAI listing would rank among the largest IPOs in history and provide the company with substantial capital to fund the enormous computing and infrastructure costs associated with developing increasingly powerful AI models. The delay suggests the company believes these funding needs can wait while it addresses what Altman characterized as more pressing safety and alignment challenges.

The details were first reported by The National.