AppNexus CEO Brian O'Kelley sat down with Business Insider at his New York headquarters recently and we asked him the same question everyone else is asking him: Will AppNexus file for an IPO?
As usual, O'Kelley was coy, neither confirming nor denying his plans. His main goal, he says, is to build a great company and he feels no pressure to sell. But AppNexus is the largest adtech company in New York — it has 500 employees — and the investors who have backed it, including Microsoft, are expected to want a return on their $141 million in funding at some point.
When pressed, O'Kelley told us that both an IPO or a buyout deal were an option:
Our aspiration is to build a company that could be public, and if the timing's right both for us and the markets and everything else then it would be a great aspiration to someday be public. But nothing in the cards today.
I don't think anyone is too big to be acquired. ... We're not too big to be acquired. I don't think we have a lot of impetus to sell.
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