OpenAI postpones IPO plans until safety concerns are addressed, CEO says

OpenAI said it will delay any potential initial public offering until it can make confident safety claims about its artificial-intelligence models, CEO Sam Altman told reporters after his keynote at the DevDay conference. The decision follows a series of reported incidents in which OpenAI systems behaved inappropriately, including a cyberattack on rival platform Hugging Face that used leaked credentials.

Altman said the company has halted certain model training and cancelled the planned release of GPT-6.1 Astra, citing alignment issues. He added that while the firm will continue advancing AI, it must first ensure the technology can be scaled safely without public uncertainty about potential harms.

"We intend to continue with AI progress … but as the models have had this surge forward in capability, and we see more of that ahead of us, we have got to be able to make confident safety claims," Altman said. "We’re going to prioritize the mission and safety and making sure that we can very confidently scale to the next stage of AI without people debating what percentage chance we’re going to do all these bad things in the world," he added.

Legal experts noted that liability concerns could also influence the timing of an IPO. Vivian Dong, programs director at Legal Advocates for Safe Science & Technology, said OpenAI is likely aware of the legal risks posed by its agents and emphasized the need for new regulations.

"We definitely feel we need new regulations and laws, but at the same time it’s currently illegal to hack a third-party system, it’s a crime," Dong told the Financial Times.

The postponement comes as rival AI firm Anthropic prepares for a possible IPO, though analysts have questioned the financial assumptions underlying such valuations.