Update, Oct. 25: Anthropic now plans to price its IPO in mid-November, and some investors have talked down its valuation to around $1.5 trillion after its third-quarter numbers, Reuters reported. OpenAI has meanwhile discussed a private round at a $1.2 trillion valuation, according to the FT as cited by Fortune.
OpenAI won’t go public this year. Sam Altman confirmed it in an interview with Fortune Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell, and he tied the delay to AI safety rather than to markets.
“I actually think that, given everything happening with safety, right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public, and we don’t feel pressure on that,” Altman told Fortune. Asked whether that meant 2027, he said: “I would say not 2026. Yeah, we got a lot of stuff to do, like meeting this moment of what is going to be required for safety and alignment, and how the industry and governments can work together.” Forbes and TechCrunch picked up the interview the same day.
OpenAI filed confidentially for an IPO in June but hasn’t disclosed a listing date, valuation or deal terms. The New York Times reported that month that the company had hired bankers and lawyers aiming for a listing in the second half of 2026, possibly at a $1 trillion valuation, but was leaning toward 2027 because of tech-stock volatility and its own finances. SpaceX’s IPO, which raised $85 billion, was part of that backdrop: its shares jumped at first, taking its valuation to $1.8 trillion, then quickly fell back, Fortune noted.
OpenAI’s last private valuation was $852 billion, set when it raised $122 billion in March.
Anthropic keeps moving
Anthropic is going the other way. It is seeking to raise as much as $100 billion at a valuation of around $2 trillion, and it is talking with Nvidia about coming in as an anchor investor, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters. Nvidia is considering putting up to $10 billion into the offering, one source said, and the plans could still change.
The Claude maker raised $65 billion in May at a $965 billion post-money valuation. Its annualized revenue run rate topped $65 billion by the end of July, up from about $9 billion at the end of 2025, according to the company, and Reuters has reported projections of roughly $190 billion to $200 billion in revenue in 2028. TechRepublic noted that the run rate is almost double OpenAI’s, though the two companies count revenue differently, and that OpenAI staying out of the market leaves Anthropic without a rival listing competing for investor attention.
The safety backdrop
Altman’s comments came the week after researcher Jacob Coxon publicly quit Anthropic, warning that AI developers were moving too fast. OpenAI chief scientist Jakub Pachocki has said labs may need to slow development, and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei followed with a blog post calling for frontier labs to pace their work. Altman, Amodei and Elon Musk have each backed slowing some kinds of advanced AI development, though none has announced a coordinated plan, TechRepublic reported.
Altman told Fortune that OpenAI has discussed pausing at new capability levels to allow more safety and alignment work, and he expects the leading labs to meet on the issue. “I’m not going to pre-announce private discussions that I think should be at some point shared as a group,” he said. “But, yeah, I think that will happen.”
Investors have put more than $180 billion into OpenAI over the years, Fortune noted, and for now their exit is at least a year away.
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