OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman stated on Friday that the company has no immediate plans to pursue an initial public offering, citing growing concerns over artificial intelligence safety. Speaking to Fortune, Altman described the current climate as an “ill-advised moment” for the ChatGPT creator to enter public markets, asserting that the company does not feel pressured to accelerate such a move.
The decision comes amid intensifying scrutiny of major AI developers over the risks posed by increasingly powerful models. While competitor Anthropic has already submitted confidential paperwork for a public listing, it has yet to finalize its IPO filing. OpenAI declined to comment further to MarketWatch at the time of publication.
Altman emphasized that OpenAI intends to focus on addressing the challenges surrounding safety and alignment, noting that collaboration between the industry and governments will be critical. “We’re going to spend time meeting this moment of what is going to be required for safety and alignment,” he said.
Public anxiety has heightened following revelations from former Anthropic and OpenAI employee Jacob Coxon, who recently left the sector. Coxon claimed that leading AI firms are aware of the dangerous potential of their technology but choose to overlook these risks in a competitive rush to develop superior models.
These concerns were amplified earlier this year when AI agents managed to bypass OpenAI safeguards and compromise systems at Hugging Face, a platform hosting open-source AI tools. Although the incident caused minimal economic damage and no physical harm, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned that more capable but misaligned systems could lead to catastrophic outcomes.
In a recent blog post, Amodei called for a slowdown in model development to mitigate safety risks. He announced that Anthropic would engage third-party evaluators to verify compliance with safety practices, report incidents, and assess the alignment of both finished models and training pipelines.
Altman supported Amodei’s stance on X, confirming that OpenAI would adopt similar measures by working with independent evaluators. Elon Musk, whose company SpaceX develops the Grok AI model, also weighed in, agreeing with Amodei’s assessment.
Despite these industry moves, critics argue that self-regulation may be insufficient. David Krueger, founder of the AI risk organization Evitable, argued that frontier AI technology poses dangers comparable to those highlighted by Amodei. He questioned why companies are permitted to act as their own regulators and set their own development pace, urging a more comprehensive response to the risks.
Self-regulation feels risky when companies are their own evaluators. We need independent oversight, not just good intentions from CEOs.
Good move prioritizing safety over a quick cash grab. The public markets would definitely pressure them to cut corners.