Palantir CEO Alex Karp reckons OpenAI will never IPO mainly due to the huge amount of liability it carries

Date:
Wed, 23 Sep 2026 10:27:16 +0000

Description:
Karp thinks liability could push AI labs like OpenAI toward Washington rather than Wall Street, with their planned IPOs never materializing.

FULL STORY ======================================================================Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Threads Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter Palantir CEO Alex Karp says frontier AI labs may end up nationalized because of the potentially unlimited liability they carry When asked how those risks could be disclosed in an S-1 IPO filing, Karp challenged the premise itself, saying: Youre assuming that there will be an S-1. His argument centers around the assumption that large AI-related liabilities ultimately require government intervention at some level, even as OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman ruled out an IPO in 2026, citing AI safety concerns Palantir CEO Alex Karp has cast doubt on whether the frontier AI labs will ever reach the public markets.

A widely shared post on X by Guillermo Flor summarized Karp as saying OpenAI will never IPO, that there may be no S-1 in play, and that nationalization is the only real exit because the liability exposure from frontier AI is so
large that "no public market could potentially absorb it." His comments brought renewed focus on OpenAI and Anthropic, both of which have recently pledged to prioritize AI safety and "pacing the frontier" of development but have both released new versions of their AI models this week (GPT-6 Sol,
Luna, and Opus 5.5). Latest Videos From TechRadar Watch full video here: A case made by focusing on potential liabilities The comments come from Karp's September 17 appearance on CNBC's Squawk on the Street. In a transcript of
the segment published by RealClearPolitics , a host asks how the liability Karp has been describing would be written into an S-1, and what the risk factors would sound like.

Karp's answer was one that sent shockwaves in an industry already pricing in potentially two trillion-dollar IPOs in the near future: "You're assuming
that there will be an S-1. Okay. Maybe there will be." You may like Something has gone completely wrong: Palantir CEO Alex Karp slams OpenAI, says AI industry is "effing insane" OpenAI giving the U.S. government a piece of the company might not be a public windfall OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is worried about AI being controlled by just a few powerful players

He argued that the only way to handle that liability is to ask the government to nationalize said frontier labs, adding that companies often lead you to a conclusion rather than stating what they want outright.

The truth may be more complex: OpenAI confirmed on June 8 that it had confidentially submitted a draft S-1 to the SEC, while noting that some of what it wants to do is "likely easier as a private company." Anthropic made its own confidential submission a week earlier. Are you a pro? Subscribe to our newsletter Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed! Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.

Neither company, however, has issued a public S-1 registration statement, using existing regulations to keep its financials private for now. OpenAI
also pushed back its own timetable before Karp's statements. In an interview published by Fortune on September 12 , Sam Altman said, "right now would be
an ill-advised moment to go public," confirming there would be no listing in 2026 and citing safety and alignment work. Not entirely an honest AI broker This is not a new position for Palantir's CEO; in June, Benzinga reported
that he spent six months privately warning AI executives about nationalization, telling an interviewer, "The momentum is on the side of people who want to nationalize them."

He also has a commercial interest in the argument , as Palantir sells
software built on the premise that enterprises keep their data in-house, and in an August CNBC interview, Karp argued that businesses should control their own models and lean less on the frontier labs' token-based business model. On September 17, per Stocktwits, he again pointed to open models as a way for companies to keep control of their data.

His position rests on the belief that frontier labs carry liability only the government can absorb, that their appetite for regulation partly aims to
limit that exposure, and that investors expecting blockbuster listings may be misreading the risk. Whether the delayed OpenAI IPO eventually culminates in some form of nationalization, regulatory oversight, or both remains to be seen.

What is certain, however, is that both Anthropic and OpenAI need billions of dollars to keep training their models and meet compute commitments in the
near future, and they might turn to a source that seemed unlikely to some in the industry less than half a year ago: the US federal government. Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds.



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