OpenAI's Sam Altman Wishes His Company Was Public, Sometimes

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said, reacting to media reports about initial public offer of his company that there is no date in his mind but eventually, it will happen, according to a Fortune article.

"We don’t have a date in mind. We don’t have a board decision to do this or anything like that. I just assume it’s where things will eventually go," Altman said, as quoted by Fortune.

Reuters reported that OpenAI is planning to go public by 2026 or 2027 with a valuation of $1 trillion. Altman refuted such claim and posed a rhetorical question why people write such things at the BG2 podcast.

OpenAI was a non-profit organisation, which was recently restructured as a for-profit public benefit organisation last week. This transition will support OpenAI to access funds easily, subsequently paving the way for an IPO, Fortune reported.

Despite no clear timeline for going public, Altman sometimes wishes that OpenAI was a public company. He would enjoy telling critiques of OpenAI that they could go short on its company's shares and see them get burned on that, he said, as quoted by Fortune.

“One of the rare times it’s appealing is when those people are writing these ridiculous 'OpenAI is about to go out of business'," Altman said.

BG2 Podcast host and Altimeter Capital founder Brad Gerstner asked Altman about the inequality in reported revenue of $13 billion and pledged $1.4 trillion to invest in computing infrastructure.

He replied that OpenAI is earning more revenue than that. He joked if Gerstner would like to sell OpenAI's shares, then he would find him buyers, Fortune reported.

Gerstner's Altimeter Capital has invested an undisclosed amount of $6.6 billion in OpenAI, as per information in Fortune.

Altman then projected that revenue of OpenAI will grow steeply. Its flagship product ChatGPT will continue to grow and the developing consumer device business will take off, Fortune reported.

He did not respond to Fortune's request for a comment.