According to Fortune, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is “0%” excited about personally being a public company CEO, even as the company reportedly lays the groundwork for one of the largest IPOs ever. Early talks point to a potential valuation of $830 billion, with Reuters previously suggesting it could hit $1 trillion. CFO Sarah Friar is reportedly eyeing a 2027 public listing, with a filing possible in late 2026. This follows OpenAI’s complex restructuring in October, which converted it to a for-profit capped entity, gave Microsoft a reduced 27% stake, and freed the company to make deals with other cloud partners. Altman conceded that going public would eventually be necessary to raise the massive capital required to compete.
The IPO reluctance
Here’s the thing: Altman’s hesitation is totally understandable, and it’s not really about the money. He basically said being a public CEO would be “really annoying,” and you can’t blame him. Suddenly, you’re answering to a whole new set of masters—quarterly earnings calls, activist investors, intense regulatory scrutiny. Founders often lose control and influence. But he also sees the upside: letting public markets “participate in value creation” and, more pragmatically, accessing the absolutely colossal piles of cash needed to build artificial general intelligence. They’ve already stretched the private markets pretty far. So it’s a necessary evil, a trade-off between operational freedom and the war chest needed to win.
The permanent code red
And that war is heating up. The article mentions Altman recently declaring an internal “code red” after Google’s rapid Gemini 3 rollout. This wasn’t a one-time panic; Altman expects these focused, all-hands-on-deck sprints to happen once or twice a year for the foreseeable future. He likened it to the start of a pandemic, where early action has an outsized impact. It’s a page straight out of the old Silicon Valley playbook, reminiscent of Facebook’s “lockdown” periods. The goal? To create distance from rivals like Google and DeepSeek. The recent launch of GPT-5.2 was apparently expedited by this focus. So the IPO pressure exists within this constant state of competitive paranoia.
The capital conundrum
This is where the rubber meets the road. AI development, at this scale, is arguably the most capital-intensive endeavor in tech history. The compute costs alone are astronomical. Being a private company has been “wonderful” for OpenAI, allowing it to operate in relative secrecy and make long-term bets. But Altman admits they will “cross all of the shareholder limits” eventually. The $830 billion figure is mind-boggling, but it reflects the belief that the winner in the foundational model space could be the most valuable company ever. An IPO isn’t just about raising money; it’s about creating a liquid currency for acquisitions, talent retention, and partnerships. They need a permanent, massive capital engine.
The real game
So what’s the endgame? Altman’s personal dread of the public markets is a sideshow. The real story is OpenAI’s structural evolution from a non-profit to a capped-profit company, and now to a future public behemoth. Every move is about securing an unassailable position in the AI infrastructure layer. The “code reds” are tactical. The restructuring was strategic. The IPO is existential. It’s all about ensuring they have the focus, the legal structure, and finally, the money, to outlast everyone else. Whether Altman enjoys the quarterly earnings circus or not is almost irrelevant. The machine must be fed, and the public markets are the only trough big enough. You can watch his full thoughts on the Big Technology Podcast to get the vibe directly. It’s less “rah-rah, going public!” and more a resigned acknowledgment of industrial inevitability.
