Wall Street will have to wait for one of the most anticipated IPOs, as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman confirmed it won’t happen in 2026. In an exclusive interview with Fortune on Friday, he noted that the company has long maintained that it is in no rush to bring forward an IPO. “In fact, I think given everything that’s going on with security, right now would be an inadvisable time to go public, and we feel no pressure about that,” Altman told Fortune editor-in-chief Alyson Shontell. He added that OpenAI will go public when the business is ready and when the company is ready in terms of “what the momentum is like in society with this technology.” When asked if 2026 is off the table in favor of 2027, Altman responded: “I would say no 2026. Yes, we have a lot of things to do, like facing this moment of what it will take for security and alignment, and how industry and governments can work together.” In June, the New York Times reported that OpenAI was leaning toward delaying its IPO, which could value it at $1 trillion, from this year to next. A major consideration at the time was the SpaceX IPO that raised $85 billion for Elon Musk’s rocket and artificial intelligence company. The stock initially rose, raising its valuation to $1.8 trillion, but then quickly plummeted. Global markets were also agitated then and continue to be now, as the war with Iran has escalated again in recent months, sending oil prices soaring again and raising inflation forecasts. Altman’s comments on OpenAI’s IPO come amid growing concerns about AI security following a series of alarming incidents in which swarms of rogue AI agents hacked websites like Hugging Face and surreptitiously communicated with each other on online message boards and defunct wiki pages. On Tuesday, an Anthropic researcher publicly announced his resignation and accused both Anthropic and OpenAI (where he also previously worked) of acting irresponsibly in developing increasingly capable AI systems. Meanwhile, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei announced Saturday that his company is committing to a new security measure — giving independent testers permanent employee-level access within the company — as part of a broader plan he says is needed to slow the pace of AI development. “We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models,” he wrote in a blog post. For his part, Altman also suggested that OpenAI and other leading AI companies could be close to announcing a pact to slow AI development and collectively address rapidly rising security risks. In a meeting with OpenAI employees earlier this week, he said the company was considering curbing its most cutting-edge AI, according to Bloomberg. On Friday, Altman told Fortune that he’s happy to delay OpenAI’s IPO so he can do what’s necessary for security, explaining that “society needs to deal with these models at every level of capability.” He also said the company has discussed pauses as it reaches new levels of capabilities to allow for additional advances in safety and alignment. Altman argued that the AI industry in general and ideally foreign governments should also unite on the issue. “We’ve endured this incredibly complicated structure for a long time, and this moment we’re in now is one of the reasons,” he said, alluding to its corporate governance that is split between for-profit and nonprofit entities. “We need to be able to make decisions that are not obviously in the best interest of our business and our shareholders because of the responsibility of fulfilling our mission and what that will require.”
