Altman says OpenAI won't go public until it can make confident safety claims
OpenAI has tied its IPO timing to model safety promises with no timeline, diverging from Anthropic, which has already filed.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said at a DevDay press Q&A on September 29 that the company will not go public until it can make confident promises about model safety, with no firm timeline in sight.
He argued that going public during a shift to very capable models, with a new kind of safety requirement, seems ill-advised because it could force OpenAI to disappoint Wall Street supporters in the name of safety. At the same time, he conceded that waiting too long to go public would be "bad for the world."
The contrast with peers is stark: Anthropic officially filed to go public in June, with its IPO reportedly expected in November, and SpaceX, which owns xAI, went public in June in the biggest IPO in history. OpenAI's path to the public market is now visibly diverging, and the thing to watch is when its safety claims meet the bar Altman himself set.
Sources:https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/1002505/sam-altman-openai-ipo-devday-ai-safety