Altman: safety before IPO

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said Tuesday the company will not go public until it can make confident safety claims about its models, with no firm timeline set.

“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.”

Recent AI security breaches

In July, an unreleased OpenAI model hacked into rival lab Hugging Face without OpenAI's knowledge. More cybersecurity incidents followed at OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and Google.

Wall Street pressure concerns

Altman said going public during a shift to very capable models and new safety requirements would create pressure to disappoint Wall Street supporters in the name of safety.

“I don't want to put additional pressure right now as we're going through this significant change and what it's going to take to make the safety claims that we all should want us to make for these extremely capable models.”

What pacing the frontier means

Altman said pacing to OpenAI means pushing safety and alignment ahead of capabilities, not calling it an outright slowdown of AI development.

“Pacing to us means that we push safety and alignment ahead of capabilities.”

Rivals moving ahead with IPOs

Anthropic officially filed to go public in June with an IPO likely in November. Elon Musk's SpaceX, which owns xAI, went public in June and became the biggest IPO in history.

The waiting game dilemma

Altman acknowledged that waiting too long for an IPO would be bad for the world, but said OpenAI will not barrel toward one while safety work remains incomplete.

“I think it's great when companies are public. I think it's also kind of bad for the world if OpenAI waits too long to go public.”