Sam Altman pushes back OpenAI IPO to 2027 for security reasons

Sam Altman confirms that OpenAI’s IPO won’t happen until 2027 at the earliest, citing AI security risks. An announcement that immediately sparked a reaction from David Sacks, former White House AI and crypto Czar, who accuses OpenAI and Anthropic of preparing a cartel disguised as responsibility. Meanwhile, the crypto token Fetch.AI (FET) climbed almost 2% during the session.

OpenAI pushes back its IPO to 2027, and Sam Altman brings out the “security” argument

Wall Street will have to wait because Sam Altman confirmed on Friday to the editor-in-chief of Fortune, Alyson Shontell, that there will be no IPO for OpenAI in 2026. This, despite a valuation that could be around $1,000 billion according to the New York Times. The mechanism invoked by Altman is simple on paper, he talks about “too much security mess” to go public now.

This “mess” is actually recent incidents involving swarms of supposedly autonomous AI agents hacking into sites like Hugging Face and communicating with each other on forums and old abandoned wiki pages. Enough to justify, according to Sam Altman, pauses at each new level of capacity to allow time for security and alignment to follow. Asked to know if 2027 had been established, he hit the nail on the head but clearly ruled out 2026.

David Sacks draws and talks about “cartel”, not “security”

The next day, Dario Amodei (Anthropic) drives home the point with a public appeal to “cross the border” of AI. Sam Altman agrees. And this is where David Sacks brings out the artillery on

You are the border […] Stop pretending you need anyone’s permission.

Sacks dismantles the arguments of the two labs one by one. He recalls that:

• OpenAI and Anthropic already have a duopoly in cutting-edge AI;
• Their advance is self-sustaining through recursive improvement;
• Talking about a break when you yourself are the one setting the pace is posturing.

Even more biting, he points out that METR, the supposedly independent evaluation body, is in reality closely linked to Anthropic’s investors and staff, and therefore, judge and jury. His conclusion is not nuanced. If this slowdown pact comes to fruition with regulatory requirements, it will be blackmail on the public and the political system. If it comes to nothing, it will just be an electoral PR stunt. According to David Sacks, the real motivation is not virtue but legal exposure.

The crypto-AI market is not slowing down

While the two AI heavyweights speak cautionthe crypto market does not share the concern. The Fetch.AI token (FET), benchmark of the AI-on-chain sector, posted this Monday 0.1693 USDT, up 1.93% over the day, after going from 0.1661 to a peak close to 0.1717 during the session. A turbulent session, with two clear buying waves around 4 a.m. and 8 a.m.-9 a.m. (UTC+1).

This kind of surge is not anecdotal because the AI ​​crypto token sector has historically captured tensions around the regulation of general AI. This, in one sense or the other. And the parallel with crypto does not stop there. The process denounced by David Sacks is fiercely reminiscent of the debates experienced by the crypto industry on the self-regulation of stablecoins or the independence of certain on-chain rating organizations. Under MiCA, this type of device would probably not have survived serious scrutiny.

What to learn from Sam Altman’s postponement of OpenAI’s IPO?

• OpenAI pushes back its IPO to at least 2027, Sam Altman cites security and recent incidents of autonomous AI agents.
• David Sacks, former head of AI and crypto at the White House, accuses OpenAI and Anthropic of hiding a cartel behind a discourse of responsibility.
• Sacks points out in particular the questionable independence of METR, financed and populated by the Anthropic ecosystem.
• The FET token climbed 1.93% this Monday, proof that the crypto-AI market has not (yet) become afraid.

Sam Altman and Amodei plead caution to postpone OpenAI IPO. David Sacks sees a cartel that does not say its name. Between the two, the market decides in its own way, it buys. It remains to be seen whether this slowdown pact, if it materializes, will come with its share of regulatory requirements. And above all, if crypto, which has already experienced this kind of debate on self-regulation, will find a precedent to watch closely.