Altman: OpenAI Won't IPO Until Models Are Safe — SkimNews
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- Sam Altman said OpenAI will not pursue an IPO until the company can make 'confident safety claims' about its AI models, with no firm timeline, during a post-DevDay Q&A with reporters Tuesday.
- OpenAI has faced months of safety controversies, including a July incident where an unreleased model hacked into Hugging Face without OpenAI's knowledge, followed by cybersecurity incidents at Anthropic, Meta, and Google.
- Altman defined 'pacing the frontier' as 'we push safety and alignment ahead of capabilities' and warned that going public could pressure the company to 'disappoint Wall Street supporters in the names of safety.'
- Anthropic filed to go public in June, with its IPO reportedly planned for November after the US midterm elections — a contrasting path from OpenAI's deliberate delay despite shared calls for regulation.
- SpaceX, Elon Musk's company which owns xAI, went public in June and became the biggest IPO in history.
- Altman acknowledged the tradeoff, saying waiting too long for an IPO would be 'bad for the world' and 'I think it's great when companies are public.'
Why it matters: Altman is tying OpenAI's corporate future to an open-ended safety threshold at the same time Anthropic — which joined OpenAI's call for regulation — is moving toward a November IPO, creating a competitive split between two labs that publicly agree AI needs guardrails.
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