OpenAI’s Sam Altman says it would be ‘ill-advised’ to go public in 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.