OpenAI’s Sam Altman says it would be ‘ill-advised’ to go public in 2026
Sam Altman says OpenAI will not IPO in 2026, calling it 'ill-advised' given safety concerns and market conditions.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stated the company will not go public in 2026 despite having confidentially filed for an IPO. He cited AI safety considerations and societal readiness, saying 'right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public.' The New York Times previously reported OpenAI had hired bankers and lawyers targeting a Q3/Q4 2026 listing but was leaning toward 2027 due to tech stock volatility and financial challenges.
- Altman explicitly ruled out a 2026 IPO for OpenAI
- Cited AI safety climate as reason an IPO would be 'ill-advised'
- OpenAI had confidentially filed for IPO and hired bankers
- Company leaning toward 2027 due to stock volatility and financial challenges
Full article231 words · extracted from techcrunch.com · click to collapse
In Brief
Posted:
1:19 PM PDT · September 12, 2026
While OpenAI has filed confidentially for an IPO, the company will not be going public this year, according to CEO Sam Altman.
Altman was interviewed recently by Fortune editor in chief Alyson Shontell; amidst the fallout from the OpenAI-HuggingFace hack, as well as broader discussions about AI safety, Shontell asked whether OpenAI still feels pressure to “move really fast” due to 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 insisted that 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.” When pressed on whether that means the IPO isn’t happening 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.
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Text extracted automatically; images, tables and formatting may be missing. Original: https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/12/openais-sam-altman-says-it-would-be-ill-advised-to-go-public-in-2026/