OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has announced the company will not pursue an IPO this year, deeming it “ill-advised” due to escalating concerns over AI safety. This decision aligns with growing industry consensus, as Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei released an essay advocating for a deliberate slowdown in advanced AI model development, a proposal swiftly endorsed by both Altman and Elon Musk, highlighting an unusual unity among fierce rivals. The unexpected pause in OpenAI’s IPO plans underscores how rapidly AI safety discussions are impacting the commercial strategies of leading tech companies amidst increasing regulatory and public pressure.
In a significant shift for the burgeoning artificial intelligence industry, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has announced that the company will not be pursuing an initial public offering (IPO) this year. Citing escalating concerns about AI safety, Altman stated in a recent Fortune interview that an IPO at this juncture would be "ill-advised." This decision postpones one of the most highly anticipated public debuts in tech history, pushing it back until at least 2027, and clearly signals that mounting anxieties over increasingly powerful AI capabilities are now reshaping fundamental business strategies across the sector.
This announcement comes despite OpenAI CFO Sara Friar having informed employees just last month that a 2027 IPO, or even sooner, was a strong possibility if the company's business trajectory continued its rapid growth.
Altman's revelation coincided with the publication of a compelling essay by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, urging AI developers to intentionally moderate the pace at which they enhance their most advanced models. In a rare show of unity among fierce rivals, both Sam Altman and Elon Musk swiftly expressed their support for Amodei's proposal via social media. Amodei's essay outlined a three-step framework designed to temper the speed of AI development without compromising commercial advantages or the United States' leadership in the field. Anthropic itself is reportedly preparing for its own historic IPO, though no official debut date has been disclosed.
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This sudden alignment among Altman, Amodei, and Musk underscores how rapidly AI safety concerns have moved from the periphery to the core of the industry, now directly influencing its vast commercial ambitions. The call for a coordinated deceleration comes amid a growing chorus of researchers advocating for a more measured approach to AI advancement.
Amodei's proposed three-step plan, while acknowledging some steps may be more challenging to implement than others, aims to temper development speed. Pressure is also mounting in Washington, D.C., where lawmakers from both parties are demanding new AI safeguards and calling for tech leaders to testify, particularly after a recent surge of cyberattacks reportedly executed without direct human oversight. Beyond the capital, state and local officials are grappling with increasing public opposition to AI data centers due to their substantial demands on power, water, and community resources, making AI a significant issue in upcoming midterm elections.
Concerns Around AI's Capabilities
Anthropic has unilaterally committed to the first phase of Amodei's plan, which involves granting third-party evaluators employee-level access to the company to verify safety practices and report any incidents. The second step encourages leading AI companies in democratic nations to collaborate on establishing common safety standards, while the third advocates for coordination between democratic and authoritarian governments on these critical issues.
"To be clear, pacing does not mean halting model training or technical progress, but ensuring companies take adequate time to align and safeguard their models, and for third-party evaluators to confirm this," Amodei emphasized in his essay.
The essay followed a notable incident this week where Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon publicly announced his resignation, sparking a social media firestorm. Coxon, who also previously worked at OpenAI, cited profound concerns that both companies are "gambling with our lives," stating that those building AI "earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade."
While extreme, the potential for AI to cause human extinction or other catastrophic events is not new to AI research discussions. In 2023, prominent AI researchers and executives, including Amodei and OpenAI's Altman, signed a statement declaring that "Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war." Amodei clarified that while pausing or slowing AI development has been discussed since 2023, it made "little sense" then as models lacked the power for real-world action or "significant deception, manipulation, cheating, or cyberattacks."
"I continue to believe that AI can enormously improve the quality of human life. My desire to achieve these benefits is undimmed," Amodei wrote. "But the benefits will only be achieved if we build the technology in the right way, and — so long as we use the time we gain well — it is worth taking unusually deliberate care to get it right." He later stressed in a CNN interview that finding the correct development speed is paramount, warning that moving too slowly could risk autocratic governments gaining an advantage.
Sarah Heck, Anthropic's head of public policy, lauded the essay and called upon lawmakers to implement guardrails. "The government has a critical role to play here, including blocking the sale of the most advanced chips to adversarial nations like China, enacting a national law requiring testing of frontier models, with the power to block the most advanced models that prove to be unsafe," she posted on X.
Support for a Voluntary Slowdown
Amodei's essay garnered widespread support from industry researchers and executives, including Altman. On X, Altman affirmed his agreement with Amodei that the industry needs to moderate the development of advanced AI capabilities, noting that this topic has been a "primary discussion" at OpenAI in recent weeks. "Committing to having independent evaluators with employee-like access is a great idea, and we will do the same," Altman pledged, promising further details soon.
Earlier this month, OpenAI's chief scientist, Jakub Pachocki, published a blog post cautioning that no AI company has "solved alignment and monitoring to a sufficient degree to continue responsibly scaling at maximum speed for much longer." In the AI community, alignment refers to ensuring AI systems behave in accordance with human values and intentions. Pachocki expressed his expectation and hope for voluntary slowdowns to become "commonplace until shared safety bars are established."
Elon Musk also voiced his support for a slowdown on X, simply writing, "Dario is right." Musk, whose competing AI startup xAI was recently acquired by his rocket company SpaceX, had previously been a vocal critic of Anthropic, even labeling it "misanthropic." However, since Anthropic announced a major compute deal with SpaceX in May, Musk's stance has softened considerably. He remarked at the time that everyone he met at Anthropic was "highly competent and cared a great deal about doing the right thing," and "No one set off my evil detector."
Amodei reiterated that while AI could "dramatically raise the quality of human life," the risks must be taken seriously. "I believe that if slowing down bought us even an extra year or two before models reach critical levels of capability, and we used that time to advance alignment, we could greatly reduce the risk that something goes seriously wrong," he concluded.
