OpenAI will not go public this year. Sam Altman made this announcement the same week he and his former colleagues decided AI is developing too quickly. Dario Amodei called for slower development. Elon Musk presumably agreed between lawsuits. Three men who built the thing now want everyone to pump the brakes.
This is the equivalent of a meth cook asking the DEA for stricter precursor chemical regulations. You spent a decade ignoring every safety concern to beat Google to AGI. You raised billions at obscene valuations. You convinced Microsoft to write checks that made their accountants weep. Now you want a timeout.
The IPO delay makes sense if you squint. Hard to price shares when the CEO is on television saying his product might end civilization. Retail investors get confused when the S-1 includes a risk factor titled "We May Accidentally Create God." The roadshow would be incredible. Altman stands in front of Goldman clients explaining why they should invest in a company he thinks is moving too fast for humanity to survive. The pitch deck writes itself.
Amodei left OpenAI to start Anthropic because OpenAI was not safe enough. Now he runs a company doing the exact same thing but with a different logo. He calls for careful pacing while racing to ship Claude 4. This is like leaving Marlboro to start a lung cancer awareness campaign that sells premium cigarettes.
The warnings mean nothing. OpenAI will keep shipping models. Anthropic will keep raising money. Musk will keep suing everyone while building his own AI lab. They will all claim to care about safety while sprinting toward the edge.
But sure, no IPO this year. Retail traders will have to wait to buy shares in the company whose founders think it might kill them.
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