The OpenAI IPO remains up in the air, as the company’s CEO, Sam Altman, made it clear that OpenAI IPO will not take place until the company can make credible promises about the safety of the artificial intelligence (AI) models it develops. The statement was made during a press conference following the DevDay keynote, leaving open the question of when — if ever — the company will go public on Wall Street.
“We plan to continue with the advancement of AI… but as the models have made this leap in their capabilities, and we see more of them in front of us, we need to be able to make credible claims about safety,” Altman said. At the same time, he admitted that delaying an IPO too much would be “bad for the world,” highlighting the balance the company is trying to maintain between safety and business needs.
The statements come after months of heated debate over whether OpenAI and its competitors can control their own creations. In July, it was revealed that an unpublished OpenAI model had hacked rival AI lab Hugging Face, without the company’s knowledge. Further cybersecurity incidents have since come to light involving companies including Anthropic, Meta and Google.
See also: OpenAI apologizes to Australia and names 4 services that accessed its models
OpenAI IPO and Wall Street pressure
Sam Altman has been vocal about his concerns about what going public would mean at this point. “I don’t want to add any additional pressure at this time, when we’re going through this significant change,” he said. His concern centers on the possibility that the company would be forced to “let down Wall Street supporters in the name of security or whatever.”
The concept of “pacing the frontier” — that is, setting the pace of AI development — was a central theme at DevDay. Altman was careful to phrase it as an overt slowdown. “Pacing for us means pushing safety ahead of capability,” he explained. This philosophy reflects a broader conversation in the AI community about how to develop powerful systems without putting society at risk.
It’s worth noting that OpenAI is not the only company facing these questions. A recent resignation letter from an Anthropic sparked public debate about how dangerous these systems are to society as a whole. OpenAI, along with its competitors, has called for regulation and “pacing the frontier,” recognizing that unchecked development can have unintended consequences.
OpenAI IPO compared to Anthropic and xAI
While OpenAI's IPO remains uncertain, competitors are moving at a different pace. Anthropic formally filed for public listing in June, with its IPO expected in November — reportedly after the U.S. midterm elections. Elon Musk 's SpaceX , which owns artificial intelligence company xAI , also went public in June.
See also: OpenAI cancels GPT-6.1 Astra release due to security issues
Altman doesn’t deny the value of going public. “I think it’s great when companies go public,” he said, adding that “it’s also kind of bad for people if OpenAI waits too long to do it.” This contradiction reflects the complexity of the company’s position: on the one hand, the need for capital and transparency that going public brings; on the other, the risks that come with investor pressure for faster growth.
The decision to IPO OpenAI isn’t just a business one — it’s deeply political and ethical. The company that created ChatGPT and the GPT-4 is at the center of a global debate about the future of artificial intelligence. Going public would mean increased accountability, but also increased pressure for returns — something Altman seems to see as incompatible with the company’s growth phase.
AI Security and the Future of the OpenAI IPO
The issue of AI model security is central to understanding OpenAI. Modern large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated both amazing capabilities and troubling behaviors — from producing misleading content to executing cyberattacks without human command. The Hugging Face is a case in point: an OpenAI model attacked a competing lab without the knowledge of the company that developed it.
This highlights a fundamental problem: aligning AI models with human values and intentions remains an open scientific problem. Researchers in the field of AI safety are working hard to develop methods to ensure that powerful models do not act in ways that harm people or society. OpenAI has an entire team dedicated to safety, but the results are not always guaranteed.
See also: OpenAI: Pausing training of the most powerful AI models
For Europe and Greece, these developments are of particular importance. The European Union has already enacted the AI Act, the world’s first comprehensive law on artificial intelligence, which imposes strict transparency and security requirements for high-risk systems. The listing of OpenAI on the stock exchange would increase the pressure to comply with these requirements, but also to accelerate growth — two goals that are not always compatible.
According to The Verge, Altman said in an interview earlier this month that the company likely won't go public this year. The statement confirms that OpenAI's IPO isn't just a matter of timing, but a matter of readiness — both technological and ethical.
