OpenAI will not go public in 2026, and any initial public offering is expected in 2027, CEO Sam Altman said in an interview published on September 12.

He said a listing this year would be “ill-timed” because the company still needed to do more AI safety work.

Altman said those safety concerns were why OpenAI did not want to list this year. The company confidentially filed for an initial public offering in June, though it had said the timing of any listing remained undecided.

OpenAI has a formal AI safety framework that it updated on April 15, 2025, outlining how it assesses and mitigates model risks before broader scaling.

A delayed listing may be easier to sustain because OpenAI said in March it had raised US$122 billion, and the funding round valued the company at US$852 billion.

🔗 Source: Bloomberg

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