Most people fantasize about ringing the Nasdaq bell someday. Sam Altman is not most people.
The OpenAI CEO says he has “0%” excitement about the idea of running a public company — and in fact, he expects it to be “really annoying.” That was his blunt assessment during a December episode of the “Big Technology Podcast,” hosted by Alex Kantrowitz, as the conversation turned to whether OpenAI might pursue an IPO in the near future.
Asked if he’d take OpenAI public before funding pressure required it, Altman replied, “There’s like a whole bunch of things at play here. I do think it’s cool that public markets get to participate in value creation… in some sense, we will be very late to go public if you look at any previous company.”
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He added, “It’s wonderful to be a private company. We need lots of capital. We’re going to, you know, cross all of the sort of shareholder limits and stuff at some point.”
Altman’s outlook mirrors a growing trend across Silicon Valley: delaying IPOs in favor of deep private capital. That shift has opened the door for platforms like Fundrise, which lets individuals invest in private tech companies traditionally backed only by VCs. Their venture fund was built around the very idea Altman’s describing — long-term bets on companies that may operate privately for years while scaling quietly in the background.
But then came the real quote of the episode: “Am I excited to be a public company CEO? 0%,” Altman said. “Am I excited for OpenAI to be a public company? In some ways, I am. And in some ways, I think it’ll be really annoying.”
He didn’t elaborate on what exactly he finds annoying about the process, but it’s not hard to imagine it’s the usual mix of earnings calls, regulatory filings, and the never-ending scrutiny of public shareholders — all things OpenAI has thus far avoided.
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That aversion to going public hasn’t stopped OpenAI from operating at the scale of a megacorp. Altman confirmed that the company’s compute resources have roughly tripled in the past year, and will likely triple again in 2026 — part of its plan to keep pace with demand for AI models across enterprise and consumer use cases.
OpenAI has long been known for spending aggressively on model training, infrastructure, and custom silicon. In fact, Altman didn’t dispute a projected $1.4 trillion long-term infrastructure investment number brought up in the interview, saying only that it would be “over a very long period of time.”
“Our revenue grows even a little bit faster than [compute], but it does roughly track our compute fleet,” he explained. “If we had double the compute, we’d be at double the revenue right now.”
Still, when pressed on profitability, he said, “If we weren’t continuing to grow our training costs by so much, we would be profitable way, way earlier.” But OpenAI is betting big: training now, monetizing later.
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Kantrowitz also asked about debt entering the picture — something that’s raised eyebrows among analysts. Altman downplayed the concern, arguing that building AI infrastructure is a reasonable use of capital markets and suggesting that more creative financial models are likely on the way.
“There will also be other kinds of financial instruments,” he said. “Lending companies money to build data centers — that seems fine to me.”
So while Altman is not looking forward to becoming the guy answering to Wall Street every quarter, he seems to accept that OpenAI’s path will eventually lead there — annoying or not.
And with OpenAI already pushing toward AGI-level models, redefining what superintelligence means, and planning screenless AI-native hardware devices, it’s clear that staying private won’t be sustainable forever. Whether he likes it or not, the IPO bell might be waiting.
But if he ends up on that stock exchange balcony, don’t expect him to smile too hard.
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This article OpenAI’s Sam Altman Says ‘0%’ Chance He’s Excited To Be A Public Company CEO —’In Some Ways, I Think It’ll Be Really Annoying’ originally appeared on Benzinga.com
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