OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, will not go public in 2026, CEO Sam Altman has confirmed, amid speculation over a potential listing. The company is targeting a valuation of at least $1 trillion, but Altman said OpenAI will enter the public markets when the business is ready and the broader societal moment around increasingly powerful AI is appropriate.
In an exclusive interview with Fortune, Altman said that, given everything happening around AI safety, “right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public.” He added that OpenAI has “a lot of stuff to do” on safety and alignment and to determine how the AI industry and governments can work together.
OpenAI’s decision comes against a backdrop of growing concerns over the safety of frontier AI development and mounting pressure from US lawmakers and policymakers for stronger AI safeguards, including calls to pause Anthropic’s planned IPO. Altman echoed Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s call to “pace the frontier”.
“I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier. This has been a primary topic of discussions we’ve had at OpenAI in recent weeks,” Altman said. He added that “committing to having independent evaluators with employee-like access is a great idea, and we will do the same. We’ll have more to share soon.”
We Must Pace the Frontier: I’ve written a new essay on why the AI industry should slow down, with a three-part plan for doing so.
Anthropic is unilaterally committing to the first of these steps. We’ll provide third-party evaluators with permanent, employee-level access to our…
— Dario Amodei (@DarioAmodei) September 12, 2026
Amodei’s statement was also supported by Elon Musk, CEO of xAI, Demis Hassabis, co-founder of Google Deepmind, Andrej Karpathy, co-founder OpenAI along with other tech leaders. However, French-American computer scientist and AMI (Advanced Machine Intelligence) Labs Founder/Chair Yann LeCun mocked Amodei’s stance, suggesting that such warnings could be a marketing stunt.
Altman warned that AI progress could go badly in two ways. The first, he said, is that “we could lose control of the future to AI.” The second is that society could end up with “too much concentration of power.” He warned that if an extraordinarily powerful AI were controlled by one person or company and used to impose its worldview on everyone else, the result could be “extremely dystopian.” Avoiding both threats, he said, requires a “narrow middle path.”
The concerns are not limited to OpenAI. At Anthropic, AI safety researcher Jacob Coxon resigned over concerns about the race toward self-improving AI, warning that AI labs were “gambling with lives.” His warning was echoed by Alignment Science Lead Evan Hubinger, who said researchers believe AI could potentially kill all humans and that he personally puts the probability at more than 10% within the next decade.
Coxon’s departure was followed by political pressure over Anthropic’s planned public offering, with David Sacks, chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, calling for it to be paused until the claims could be investigated. Senator Bernie Sanders also praised Coxon and said he would soon introduce legislation to ban superintelligence and pause AI development.
Altman has stressed that “when we talk about ‘pacing’, we do not mean ‘stopping’,” adding that AI progress has been rapid and will continue. He also said government support will be particularly important for international coordination on AI.
The world deserves confidence that American companies developing increasingly capable AI will act responsibly, especially as the trajectory of progress has steepened. Every frontier lab must deliver on this, and there is no reason any of us should come to work if we cannot.
We…
— Sam Altman (@sama) September 14, 2026
Altman said the company also formulates explicit safety cases ahead of frontier reinforcement-learning runs expected to significantly increase a model’s capabilities.
Altman also called for shared standards around misalignment, monitoring and safety, saying other AI companies should develop their own approaches and that the industry should work together on stronger safety measures.
With OpenAI ruling out a 2026 listing despite targeting a valuation of at least $1 trillion, and Anthropic facing calls to pause its planned IPO, the next question is whether growing safety concerns surrounding frontier AI will also affect Anthropic’s potential $2 trillion IPO valuation.
The developments are likely to draw close attention on Wall Street, where investors are increasingly watching how the AI industry balances rapid growth, lofty valuations and mounting safety concerns.
Also Read: Anthropic Resumes External Testing Following July Claude Hacks
