by gkoberger
13 subcomments
- I bet OpenAI genuinely believes they're using their money to help free media exist. And TBPN genuinely believes this is the right choice for economic freedom so they can continue to operate. I bet they even had a convo such as "we'll never tell you what to say," and both sides genuinely believed it.
But this never ends well. Even if there's never a conversation about it, directly, the implication is there.
I don't care about TBPN, specifically. I just really, really wish we had a better way for media to fund itself independently. (And I say this as someone who pays for some media, but not nearly enough. I don't have $10/mo for every outlet that deserves it.)
EDIT: sama basically said what I said he would: https://x.com/sama/status/2039773740586918137
by i_have_an_idea
11 subcomments
- To be honest, until a month ago, I hadn't even heard of TBPN or seen any of their content. But, seemingly, out of nowhere, they managed to get all the leaders in AI to appear in their programming.
The core of the information they present isn't much different than what you'd hear on Dwarkesh or other industry podcasts, the presentation is some weird mix of ESPN and Mad Money that I personally don't get, but maybe makes sense to a US audience.
I don't see why that is interesting to OpenAI, but maybe I'm missing something.
- TBPN, OpenClaw and Astral - that's 3 high profile acquisitions in a month. I smell a PR push to be seen as the 'good guys'.
I don't buy it. The leaked emails and actions of OpenAI's leadership point to a cynical growth machine.
The winner of this AI cycle will fund the lobbies that decide the politics of the future. OpenAI gives me a 'must escape the permanent underclass' energy. Not the energy I want from possibly the most influential people of the near future.
- Had to double check this wasn’t a late April Fools joke. Each weird acquisition or product launch feels like an implicit admission that anything like “AGI” is never coming.
by operatingthetan
8 subcomments
- I don't understand this at all. 58.2K youtube subs and under 3k views on most videos. This seems like they have barely just started?
by phillipcarter
5 subcomments
- Sooo....why the hell is the TBPN website so InfoWars-coded?
by robotresearcher
1 subcomments
- Don't overlook the penultimate paragraph:
"I'm also excited to bring their amazing comms and marketing instincts to the team. They've helped many brands market online and because they have a strong pulse on where the industry is going, their comms and marketing ideas have really impressed me. I can't wait to leverage their talent outside of the show [...]."
So there's a large acquihire component here. Maybe the dominant component.
- "airs weekdays from 11–2pm PT"
This is one of those moments where I turn out to be entirely out-of-touch with the rest of humanity, because I cannot imagine being able to spend 3 hours every day watching some livestream news show!
Is this is the younger alternative to having Fox News playing on the TV all day?
- I've never heard of TBPN but it appears to be an AI sports network of some sort??
- It really feels like OpenAI simply acquires anything AI adjacent that is trendy or allows financial analysts to argue that we just don’t understand Sam Altman’s 39D chess strategy.
by qwertyuiop_
1 subcomments
- How does acquiring a relatively unknown niche podcast align with their mission ?
Their mission statement: Our mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence—AI systems that are generally smarter than humans—benefits all of humanity.
- Maybe it's just me but as soon as something like this, that should be independent, is owned by something it reports on, it becomes something you need to automatically trust less.
- 60K followers on youtube for low hundreds of millions? seems steep
- What is TBPN? It looks like some sort of scam or parody of a podcast when I got to their site.
Even if it’s legit and I’m just old enough to not understand modern aesthetics, why would OpenAI be spending any sort of money on media at all?
- Next step: OpenAI acquires CNN for a more "open" conversation about AI.
This is genuinely sad to see; people do not have a sense of autonomy and identity, it seems.
- attention is all you need
- What is tbpn, a podcasting company? Why would OpenAI want that? How is this helping them attain profitability or further their ai market capture?
by blueblisters
2 subcomments
- The only logical step for Anthropic now is to buy the Dwarkesh Patel podcast
- Such a ridiculous set of acquisitions from OpenAI and the state of the market in general. A trillion dollar company buying 50k subscriber Youtube shows that happened to ride the hype train, while teams spend decades of their live perfecting something dreaming about a fraction of an exit.
- I have made a commitment to reduce my overly long and excessively hedged comments on here, so, if I may: What the heck. Is this a belated April fools joke?
This is not what a company on the precipice of AGI or even one that has faith in LLMs being a consistent growth driver across the industry would realistically do.
Is this a good investment financially? I don't know and seeing as I have never heard of TBPN before this post, I am not the right person to gauge that.
But any investment, be it in building your own Social Networks (Sora 2), a news show or anything else beyond model training is frankly, to me at least, a clear admission that OpenAI does not see nearly as much value in models as they have been selling investors on.
Considering the rest of the economy, that is more terrifying than any "AI will kill us" prediction.
If OpenAI believed even a tenth of what they have tried to sell investors, governments and the public on, they'd not have a penny to invest in anything akin to this, plain and simple.
by faangguyindia
0 subcomment
- I thought they acquire the pirate bay.
- With intense competition for enterprise contracts coming from Anthropic, I thought this was OpenAI's time to get _less_ memey, not more. What the hell are they thinking?
by iandanforth
0 subcomment
- First I'm hearing of them and with this ownership I'll be highly skeptical of any of their content if I do happen to watch.
- An AI company owning a major tech podcast?
Wow, what’s next?
Ecommerce giants owning major newspapers? An aerospace company owning a microblogging platform? Startup accelerators owning tech news aggregators?
- More acquihiring for the AI gods, for they will never be satisfied until all shall bow to them.
by game_the0ry
0 subcomment
- I have lost faith in sama and openai management.
- > Technology Business Programming Network
This sounds like a fake podcast they would make fun of on Silicon Valley
Edit: it gets even better, "Coogan is co-founder of meal replacement company Soylent"
- OpenAI helps fund Axios, also, BTW.
by CompoundEyes
0 subcomment
- When does the 24 hour agent news network start? Programming by agents for humans and agents. Sora talking heads scraping articles and generating content. I’d find human to agent or agent to agent live interview segments interesting.
by throwatdem12311
0 subcomment
- lol public opinion is in the toilet so they buy a propaganda arm. Typical
by qwertyuiop_
0 subcomment
- I hope when we look back at 2026 this is not the "Big Short moment"
https://youtu.be/MesrrYyuoa4?t=235
- Good for the TBPN team! I think their genius wasn't in having the best info, it was that they made tech people feel like celebrities.
- All of the ads are gone from the stream?!
As a viewer I don’t think this is in my interest as I think they will get a lot less prestige guests now. They have interviewed some huge names recently.
by wahnfrieden
0 subcomment
- Will they maintain the hard right political angle?
- What.
- The attention economy, that is the game - there isn't anything else to it now.
Without attention you're nothing.
- I misread that acronym as TBDN, which made me wonder why they'd bought The Beef and Dairy Network podcast...
by thelastgallon
0 subcomment
- I saw the first comment "free media" and thought TBPN is The Pirate Bay Network.
by suriya-ganesh
0 subcomment
- since tbpn is known for their quite oblique satire. i wonder if this is some long April 1st thing.
by adamgordonbell
0 subcomment
- This interview is very in-depth look at the TBPN business:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/35L5nxL7VSmHIuaArgdCx1
They are intentionally making something like Bloomberg TV, with a very specific tech news audience and with some of the playbook of twitch streamers - growing via clipping -- but a look and feel of Cable news shows.
They mention squawk box on CNBC many times, as competition, in the interview and that they have no problem with filling ad inventory for their 3+ hours of programming a day.
- Perplexity preparing to acquire Quartr in response to this in three, two, one
- April fools or self-dealing ?
- Should start a new AI company just hoping to cash in on the gold rush.
by iamleppert
0 subcomment
- This has got to be a joke at this point, and at worse some kind of financial scheme for Altman friends & family. What's next? Will I wake up to an announcement OpenAI is acquiring Joe Rogan's podcast?
I thought this was supposed to be the year of "focus". They just shut down one money pit (Sora) but apparently still have money to buy some random tech podcast most people have never heard of?
At this point I don't feel sorry for them, they deserve everything that's coming for them.
- Never even heard of TBPN but congrats!
- Why though? Great for the TBPN crew.
- Sama wants to be elon without going public or before going public. Next up, underwater datacenters and more fusion energy slop
- I literally did not know TBPN existed and I am gonna forget about it in the next minute.
- This channel is less than 2 years old, <60k subs, most of their videos have low view rates... I don't get it. Is this a joke?
by amadeuspagel
0 subcomment
- Genuinely thought this would be an April Fools joke. But this is the kind of tech media we deserve for using paywall bypassers and ad blockers.
- Why could OpenAI feel the need to control the narrative?
- TBPN > Prof G Pod > BG2 Pod > All-In Podcast
- A real loss.
by QuadmasterXLII
1 subcomments
- what does tbpn even stand for?
by Atomic_Torrfisk
0 subcomment
- Shouldnt the product speak for itself? Why do you need to buy a press team.
I mean litteraly, with all the AI podcasts out there just get it to do it. It was going to take all our jobs anyways or something.
- April fool!
by louiereederson
0 subcomment
- TBPN seems like the media equivalent of Soylent. Oh wait...
by johnwheeler
0 subcomment
- Sounds like OpenAI trying to control another narrative.
- Altman just taking another step down his slow transformation into Jeff bezos.
by hmokiguess
2 subcomments
- Straight from the Bezos Washington Post playbook
- open ai acquires an somewhat media established group to push their corporate propaganda. Got it.
by doctorpangloss
0 subcomment
- who?
by bad_haircut72
0 subcomment
- calling it now that OpenAI changes strategy to instead of building actual AI / anything themselves they just raise lots of capital and buy anything promising in/around the AI space.
- From the Techmeme summary of the Financial Times (paywalled): https://www.ft.com/content/4fe4972a-3d24-45be-b9fa-a429c432b...
> Source: OpenAI bought TBPN, which was set to generate $30M in 2026, for "low hundreds of millions of dollars"; OpenAI says TBPN will be editorially independent
wut
by lexcamisa54
0 subcomment
- thought
The
- Wtf is TBPN?
- silly.
- [dead]
- [dead]
- [dead]
- [dead]
- [dead]
by BoredPositron
0 subcomment
- Sam has extraordinary business sense.