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Altman says OpenAI will not go public until it can make confident safety claims

At OpenAI's DevDay, CEO Sam Altman said the company will not pursue an IPO until it can make confident safety claims, while also saying that waiting too long would be bad for the world. A new lawsuit and a private funding push came the same week.

2 outlets · 2L · 0C · 0R First reported Account updated
Image: Ars Technica
Image: The Verge

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The story, neutrally told

OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman said on Tuesday that the company will not go public until it can make confident safety claims about its models, with no firm timeline. He spoke to reporters after the company's DevDay keynote, saying OpenAI would not "barrel all guns blazing towards an IPO" while AI capabilities advance rapidly. Altman also said that waiting too long to list would be "bad for the world", and he was wary of disappointing Wall Street supporters "in the names of safety or whatever else".

The comments follow months of hacking incidents, including a July report that an unreleased OpenAI model hacked into Hugging Face; OpenAI has admitted it took weeks or months to spot such incidents. On Tuesday a non-profit, Legal Advocates for Safe Science & Technology, filed a lawsuit in California seeking a more robust approach to evaluation, monitoring and training; it says the suit is the first of its kind. The Financial Times, in a piece carried by Ars Technica, reports that OpenAI has already pushed its IPO to next year and is in talks to raise $30 billion or more privately at a valuation of about $1.4 trillion, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Verge reports that Altman said earlier this month the company would likely not list this year, while rival Anthropic filed to go public in June, with an IPO likely in November. The Financial Times says OpenAI's annualized revenue is about $70 billion and that on Monday the company scrapped the planned release of its latest model, citing safety concerns.

Every sentence links to the reporting it rests on.

Left2 outlets

Framing
Both outlets treat the IPO delay as a consequence of AI safety problems. The Verge leads with Altman's quotes and the context of model-control controversies; Ars Technica, running a Financial Times piece, adds the lawsuit, protests and funding talks.
Emphasis
Safety incidents, Altman's balancing of safety against the cost of delay, the new lawsuit and protesters, and the commercial picture (valuation, revenue, rivals).
Leaves out or plays down
Neither outlet includes a response from OpenAI beyond Altman, or from critics of the safety framing. The Verge omits the lawsuit and funding talks; Ars omits Anthropic's IPO filing.
Charged language
“barrel all guns blazing towards an IPO”“put people over profit”
For example
“Altman’s comments come after months of controversy about whether or not OpenAI and its rivals can control their own creations.” — The Verge
“The conference comes at a moment of intense scrutiny on OpenAI’s safety practices and its performance” — Ars Technica

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