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Comments (100)

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  gkoberger
  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
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  i_have_an_idea
  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.
• screye
  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.
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  csmiller
  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.
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  phillipcarter
  Sooo....why the hell is the TBPN website so InfoWars-coded?
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  operatingthetan
  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?
• elAhmo
  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.
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  huslage
  I've never heard of TBPN but it appears to be an AI sports network of some sort??
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  robotresearcher
  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.
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  clueless
  60K followers on youtube for low hundreds of millions? seems steep
• qwertyuiop_
  I hope when we look back at 2026 this is not the "Big Short moment"https://youtu.be/MesrrYyuoa4?t=235
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  simonw
  "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?
• iandanforth
  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.
• anon
  undefined
• brentm
  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.
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  _jab
  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?
• asadm
  attention is all you need
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  qwertyuiop_
  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.
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  mlinsey
  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?
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  Topfi
  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.
• hokkos
  April fools or self-dealing ?
• faangguyindia
  I thought they acquire the pirate bay.
• dana321
  The attention economy, that is the game - there isn't anything else to it now.Without attention you're nothing.
• sefrost
  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.
• talideon
  I misread that acronym as TBDN, which made me wonder why they'd bought The Beef and Dairy Network podcast...
• Philpax
  What.
• adamgordonbell
  This interview is very in-depth look at the TBPN business:https://open.spotify.com/episode/35L5nxL7VSmHIuaArgdCx1They 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.
• blueblisters
  The only logical step for Anthropic now is to buy the Dwarkesh Patel podcast
• suriya-ganesh
  since tbpn is known for their quite oblique satire. i wonder if this is some long April 1st thing.
• Atomic_Torrfisk
  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.
• brimal
  Should start a new AI company just hoping to cash in on the gold rush.
• rvz
  Perplexity preparing to acquire Quartr in response to this in three, two, one
• game_the0ry
  I have lost faith in sama and openai management.
• anon
  undefined
• tantalor
  > Technology Business Programming NetworkThis sounds like a fake podcast they would make fun of on Silicon ValleyEdit: it gets even better, "Coogan is co-founder of meal replacement company Soylent"
• kklisura
  TBPN > Prof G Pod > BG2 Pod > All-In Podcast
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  boringg
  Why though? Great for the TBPN crew.
• lovich
  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?
• wahnfrieden
  Will they maintain the hard right political angle?
• bad_haircut72
  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.
• chvid
  April fool!
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  hmokiguess
  Straight from the Bezos Washington Post playbook
• louiereederson
  TBPN seems like the media equivalent of Soylent. Oh wait...
• minimaxir
  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 independentwut
• BoredPositron
  Sam has extraordinary business sense.
• johnwheeler
  Sounds like OpenAI trying to control another narrative.
• anon
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• mertleee
  [dead]