Sam Altman Weighs An $830B–$1T IPO And Admits Running A Public Company Could Be 'Really Annoying'
- - Sam Altman Weighs An $830B–$1T IPO And Admits Running A Public Company Could Be 'Really Annoying'
Casey B. RennerJanuary 11, 2026 at 5:01 AM
0
A potential mega IPO is coming into focus, but enthusiasm for life as a public-company CEO appears limited.
"Am I excited to be a public company CEO? 0%," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on the "Big Technology Podcast." "Am I excited for OpenAI to be a public company? In some ways, I am, and in some ways I think it'd be really annoying."
He told host Alex Kantrowitz that while public markets can play a role in value creation, leading a public company comes with trade-offs he does not find appealing.
Don't Miss:
The AI Marketing Platform Backed by Insiders from Google, Meta, and Amazon — Invest at $0.85/Share
Sam Altman Says AI Will Transform the Economy — This Platform Lets Investors Back Private Tech Early
Valuation Talk Heats Up Ahead Of Possible IPO
OpenAI has not filed for an IPO, but talk about its potential valuation has picked up, The Wall Street Journal reported last month.
Internal estimates have reached as high as $1 trillion, and OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar is targeting a 2027 listing with a possible IPO filing in late 2026, Reuters reported in October.
Altman said on the podcast that he does not know whether OpenAI would go public in the near term and declined to discuss fundraising plans or valuation details. If realized, those valuation ranges would place OpenAI among the most valuable private companies discussed ahead of a public listing.
Trending: 7 Million Gamers Already Trust Gameflip With Their Digital Assets — Now You Can Own a Stake in the Platform Before the Raise Ends 1/19
Capital Needs Behind A Potential IPO
"It's wonderful to be a private company," Altman said on the podcast. "We need lots of capital. We're going to cross all of the shareholder limits and stuff at some point."
He added that access to capital is a key consideration as OpenAI scales, even though no formal decision on an IPO has been announced.
Founded in 2015 as a nonprofit focused on artificial intelligence research, OpenAI later created a capped-profit arm to attract investment and in October completed a recapitalization that structured its commercial business as a public benefit corporation. Its nonprofit parent, the OpenAI Foundation, retains governance control of the for-profit group and holds an equity stake valued at about $130 billion.
The move also changed OpenAI's relationship with Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), reducing its ownership to about 27% and updating governance, intellectual property, and cloud partnership terms.
See Also: Missed Tesla? EnergyX Is Tackling the Next $200 Billion Opportunity — Lithium
Code Reds Signal Competitive Pressure
Competition continues to shape OpenAI's operations. According to an internal memo first cited by The Information, Altman told OpenAI employees he was declaring a "code red."
The move followed Google's rollout of its Gemini 3 model, a large language model that powers Google's generative AI tools across products such as Search, which the company said was deployed into Search within a single day.
"We view those as relatively low-stakes, somewhat frequent things to do," Altman said, referring to internal "code red" responses to competitive developments.
He pointed to a similar move earlier this year involving DeepSeek, a Chinese AI startup whose open-source language models drew attention for rapidly improving performance at low cost.
During that period, OpenAI released several product updates, including its GPT-5.2 model and a new image-generation system.
OpenAI CEO of Applications Fidji Simo reportedly told journalists last month the model had been in development for months and was not accelerated solely by competitive pressure, though additional resources during the code red helped.
Read Next: Buffett's Secret to Wealth? Private Real Estate—Get Institutional Access Yourself
Image: Shutterstock
"ACTIVE INVESTORS' SECRET WEAPON" Supercharge Your Stock Market Game with the #1 "news & everything else" trading tool: Benzinga Pro - Click here to start Your 14-Day Trial Now!
Get the latest stock analysis from Benzinga:
MICROSOFT (MSFT): Free Stock Analysis Report
This article Sam Altman Weighs An $830B–$1T IPO And Admits Running A Public Company Could Be 'Really Annoying' originally appeared on Benzinga.com
© 2026 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
Source: “AOL Money”
