OpenAI is moving into an unexpected industry: media.
The San Francisco AI giant just bought TBPN, a tech talk show that’s gone viral among Silicon Valley insiders, it announced Thursday. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Jordi Hays and John Coogan host the two-man talk show, which streams for three hours every weekday. It has garnered attention as a must-watch for tech bros, thanks to interviews with tech leaders like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Palantir CEO Alex Karp. It has a lighter, highly online tone — for example, by turning the AI talent wars into pro sports drafts.
“This is not an April Fool’s joke; that was yesterday,” TBPN cohost John Coogan joked on the show on Thursday.
“The TBPN team has built something special,” Fidji Simo, CEO of AGI Deployment at OpenAI, said in a statement. “It’s a real-time window into what’s happening in AI. It brings together the people building the technology with leaders across every industry, figuring out how to use it for work and everyday life.”
“We’re excited to bring TBPN to OpenAI and keep growing it as an independent place for companies to share ideas, launch new things, and have honest conversations about where this is all going,” Simo added in the statement.
The acquisition is part of a new OpenAI communications strategy. Simo wrote in OpenAI’s announcement that the standard communications playbook “just doesn’t apply” to the company.
Buying TBPN — which stands for Technology Business Programming Network — gives OpenAI a more direct voice in online commentary about AI. TBPN will be part of OpenAI’s Strategy org, reporting to its chief global affairs officer, Chris Lehane.
“This acquisition brings a team with strong editorial instincts, deep audience understanding, and a proven ability to convene influential voices across tech, business, and culture,” Simo wrote in the announcement.
OpenAI says TBPN will continue to make its own programming, guests, and editorial decisions. However, TBPN as an organization will assist OpenAI with communications and marketing outside the show.
The risk to TBPN is that its association with OpenAI could hamper the show’s ability to get guests from OpenAI competitors, said John McCarus, a recruiter focused on the creator economy.
“It’s probably going to limit them to some degree,” he said. “They must have decided what OpenAI was bringing them was big enough to not have access to what OpenAI might compete with.”
The TBPN hosts said the show has never considered itself a journalistic outlet, but rather as a place where industry leaders can talk about and contextualize technology.
“We were never in the scoop industry,” Coogan said on the show on Thursday.
The move also comes as the AI companies that dominate online discourse increasingly move into branding and content.
Anthropic, for example, has begun selling merch and has tripled the size of its communications team in the past year. Big AI players like Anthropic and Microsoft are seeking help from creators to make their products and services look cool.
It’s led to an increase in middlemen, with agencies like The Drive Agency and Underscore Talent stepping up their work with tech talent and Reign Maker Group launching a new management firm, Kernel Management, for tech creators, with YouTuber Tech with Tim.
“Creators working with brands is not new,” McCarus, the creator economy recruiter, said. What’s new is that TBPN is steeped in the tech and AI universe.
“They’re building new products all the time,” he said of OpenAI. “It really helps them to have people talk about them accurately who are respected. And now they’re in a competitive environment.”
Having TBPN could help OpenAI direct the conversation around AI at a time when its value is being heavily debated, said Reza Izad, a partner at Underscore Talent. He questioned how widely TBPN’s influence will carry for OpenAI, though.
“This is the hottest thing in Silicon Valley, and it has Wall Street clout, but it’s not mainstream clout,” Izad said.
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