While most tech executives dream of ringing the opening bell at the Nasdaq, Sam Altman is decidedly less enthusiastic. The OpenAI CEO recently made his feelings crystal clear: he has exactly "0%" excitement about running a public company.

During a December interview on the "Big Technology Podcast" with host Alex Kantrowitz, Altman delivered a remarkably blunt take when the conversation turned to a potential OpenAI IPO. Asked whether he'd take the company public before funding pressure forced the issue, Altman acknowledged multiple factors at play.

"I do think it's cool that public markets get to participate in value creation," he said. "In some sense, we will be very late to go public if you look at any previous company."

He noted the advantages of remaining private, saying, "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."

The Quote That Says It All

Then came the moment of pure honesty: "Am I excited to be a public company CEO? 0%," Altman stated flatly. "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."

Altman didn't spell out exactly what he finds annoying, but it's not difficult to connect the dots. Quarterly earnings calls, constant regulatory filings, and unrelenting scrutiny from public shareholders are all part of the package OpenAI has successfully avoided so far.

His perspective reflects a broader Silicon Valley trend toward delaying IPOs in favor of tapping deeper pools of private capital. That shift has created opportunities for platforms that allow individual investors to access private tech companies typically reserved for venture capitalists.

Operating Like a Public Company Anyway

Altman's reluctance to go public hasn't prevented OpenAI from functioning at the scale of a publicly traded megacorp. He confirmed that the company's compute resources have roughly tripled over the past year and will likely triple again in 2026 as part of its strategy to meet surging demand for AI models.

OpenAI has built a reputation for aggressive spending on model training, infrastructure, and custom silicon. When Kantrowitz brought up a projected $1.4 trillion long-term infrastructure investment, Altman didn't push back, clarifying only that such spending would occur "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," Altman explained. "If we had double the compute, we'd be at double the revenue right now."

The Profitability Question

On the subject of profitability, Altman was equally direct. "If we weren't continuing to grow our training costs by so much, we would be profitable way, way earlier," he said. The implication is clear: OpenAI is making a calculated bet on heavy investment now with monetization coming down the road.

Kantrowitz also probed about debt financing, which has raised some eyebrows among industry analysts. Altman downplayed concerns, arguing that deploying capital markets to build AI infrastructure makes perfect sense. He hinted at more creative financial structures ahead.

"There will also be other kinds of financial instruments," he said. "Lending companies money to build data centers — that seems fine to me."

The Inevitable Path Forward

So while Altman clearly isn't looking forward to facing Wall Street analysts every quarter, he seems resigned to the reality that OpenAI's trajectory will eventually lead there. Whether he finds it annoying or not may be beside the point.

With OpenAI pushing toward AGI-level models, redefining superintelligence, and developing screenless AI-native hardware devices, staying private indefinitely simply isn't realistic. The company's growth, capital needs, and shareholder count will ultimately force the issue.

When that IPO day arrives and Altman finds himself on that stock exchange balcony, don't expect him to be grinning ear to ear. He's already told us how he feels about it.