Sam Altman says OpenAI won’t go public until its models are safe

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a press Q&A after the DevDay keynote that the company would not go public before it could make reliable commitments on model safety, and had no firm timetable. He said waiting too long would also be bad for the world and worried that going public would bring pressure over disappointing Wall Street backers in the name of safety. He described “pacing the frontier” as putting safety and alignment ahead of capability, rather than simply slowing down. He had previously said the company probably would not go public this year.