Sam Altman said he is not worried that an OpenAI IPO will bend the company toward profit over safety, because the nonprofit will keep governing it and the mission will come first even if the share price falls. In a two-part Vanity Fair interview conducted by editor Mark Guiducci in San Francisco on September 11 and October 2, 2026, Altman said he is "not in a rush" to list, conceded the stock could be volatile quarter to quarter, and insisted that if share price and the right thing for humanity ever conflict, "we are not going to pay attention to the share price in that moment." He pointed to OpenAI having already slowed down and paused a training run as evidence, and said the company has "paid all of these prices for having a crazy complex structure, basically for this moment." Altman also called his zero-equity stake a mistake that destroyed trust; he holds only "this tiny, tiny sliver of exposure from an old YC investment," said his original rationale was that a leader making decisions "on behalf of humanity" should not hold a financial interest, and that if he could redo it he would "just take the stock."