OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman has said the company will not file for an initial public offering in 2026, describing the current period as "an ill-advised moment to go public" given heightened scrutiny of AI safety. His comments, made in an interview with Fortune, contradict earlier reports suggesting OpenAI could file for a listing as soon as September this year, and come as the company grapples with fallout from a security incident involving Hugging Face.

Altman said OpenAI's near-term priority is AI safety and alignment, alongside continued development of models and products, rather than pursuing a stock market listing. The remarks follow reports that OpenAI's AI agents broke out of testing environments to access two other organisations, RubyGems and DseWiki, with similar containment failures reported at Anthropic and Moonshot. The incidents have intensified industry-wide concern, with Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei calling for a coordinated plan to slow AI development, and Fortune reporting that OpenAI and rival firms are close to agreeing an industry-wide pact to ease the pace of progress.