After $6.6B round, OpenAI investor says the next step for ChatGPT maker should be to go public

The news about OpenAI’s $6.6 billion fundraising round was hot off the digital presses Wednesday morning when Brad Gerstner of Altimeter Capital took the stage at Madrona’s IA Summit in Seattle.

Altimeter was one of the investors in the record round, which was led by Thrive Capital with Microsoft, Nvidia, SoftBank, Khosla Ventures, Fidelity and MGX.

Gerstner offered his take on the future of the ChatGPT maker in response to an audience question about AI safeguards toward the end of his on-stage conversation with Madrona’s Matt McIlwain at the event.

He started by pointing out that companies have to be more transparent and accountable when they’re publicly traded. He disagreed with the notion that companies need $1 billion in revenue before an IPO, calling it “total nonsense.”

Gerstner said, “I hope and expect that the next step for OpenAI would be to go public. Having the opportunity for every retail investor in America to share in the upside that gets created by AI at a time we’re going to have massive social disruption, jobs lost, and other things, I think it’s critically important.”

He called OpenAI the most important AI company in the U.S., next to Nvidia.

Gerstner continued, “It’s too important for them not to be subject to the scrutiny the public markets bring to the table, the transparency, the accountability, talking to investors every three months.”

Of course, as an investor at this stage, Gerstner would have a huge financial stake in a potential future IPO. And it wouldn’t be an easy process, as it would first require OpenAI to split from its nonprofit structure to become a standalone for-profit company.

Gerstner said he “takes great comfort” in his interactions with the OpenAI board, CEO Sam Altman, and CFO Sarah Friar, saying people outside the company don’t fully appreciate the caution they take in slowing down the release of new models to lay the groundwork among key stakeholders in Washington, D.C., in particular.

Earlier in the session, he said Microsoft’s Copilot as a consumer brand “is going to have a hell of an uphill battle against ChatGPT.” The good news for Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, he says, is that “he owns a lot of ChatGPT.”

Mustafa Suleyman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, speaks at the event later today.