OpenAI will not pursue a public offering this year, as the artificial intelligence firm prioritises the resolution of safety-related issues surrounding the technology, according to Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman in an interview. Altman stated that this year would be a “ill-advised moment” for an initial public offering and indicated that a listing is not expected to occur until next year, as per a video of interview released on Saturday. “I think it is unacceptable to be taking like a 10% chance of killing everybody by the end of the decade,” Altman said. “I think in this moment we are entering a new era, and we’ll likely have to – as we’ve stepped into other eras in the past – act differently to ensure that we are doing something that will ensure the idea benefits all humanity, but also ensure that no one is taking risk anywhere close to that.”
The comments arise as Altman, Anthropic PBC CEO Dario Amodei, and xAI Corp. co-founder Elon Musk on Saturday all expressed the necessity to decelerate the advancement of AI technology due to the increasing risks it poses to humanity – a notable instance of consensus among the leaders of three significant rivals in the sector. Anxiety regarding a potential existential threat posed by AI has permeated mainstream discourse, partly fuelled by the recent high-profile resignation of an Anthropic researcher who expressed concerns that his company was acting irresponsibly and that AI could “kill us all by the end of the decade.”
A current Anthropic employee said the possibility of such an outcome is “>10% within the next decade” in a post on X. “I think a key principle that we should all agree on is that we cannot take actions that would risk losing control of the future to AI,” Altman told Fortune. OpenAI submitted a confidential filing for an IPO in June, although it has indicated that the timing for the listing is still uncertain. Anthropic has been preparing for its own listing that may surpass SpaceX’s record-setting IPO earlier this year valued at $86.2 billion, inclusive of the over-allotment option.
