OpenAI will not go public in 2026, according to CEO Sam Altman, who says the company still has important work to do on AI safety and alignment before pursuing an initial public offering.
In an interview with Fortune, Altman described the current moment as unsuitable for an IPO. He said OpenAI does not feel pressure to list quickly and that a public offering should happen only when both the business is ready and society is prepared for the capabilities of increasingly advanced AI systems.
Alignment—the effort to keep AI models operating within human intentions and values—is central to that assessment. Altman also pointed to the need for wider cooperation between the AI industry and governments, suggesting that financial-market timing will not be the only condition behind a future listing.
The comments arrive as scrutiny of the race between OpenAI and Anthropic has intensified, including warnings from researchers who have worked on frontier AI models. OpenAI has separately connected the pace of its future models to safety progress when discussing GPT-6 Astra.
Altman confirmed that 2026 is off the table, but did not commit OpenAI to an IPO in 2027. For investors awaiting one of the AI sector's most closely watched potential listings, the remaining question is whether the company can meet its own safety and alignment threshold on a timetable that supports a later debut.
