OpenAI has struck a deal to acquire TBPN, a technology-focused talk show popular in Silicon Valley, making an unexpected move into broadcasting after pledging to abandon “side quests” and focus on its core business.
The ChatGPT maker had purchased the 11-person company in a “low hundreds of millions of dollars” deal, according to a person with knowledge of the terms.
Archived at https://ghostarchive.org/archive/VfGEx
11 person company with 65,000 subscribers to their channel. Dude pays like $3000 per subscriber. Be cheaper just to pay people to listen to him.
I’ll start an anti-ai podcast and you guys all subscribe. When he offers me $3000/sub to buy me out, and shut it down, I’ll make sure he includes at least 10 compute tokens for each of you in the deal.
I bet the owners couldn’t believe their luck lmao
I doubt luck had much to do with it! This just seems like a convenient way to embezzle a few hundred million of investor money as a favour to a friend.
Meh. If I am paid to endure a bunch of openAI corporate bullshit, I don’t think I am going lower than $3,000 for the trouble.
I have never heard of this show
Me neither, I feel like all the publications talking about how it’s so popular are gaslighting me or being taken by some bullshit bottled streaming numbers
TPBN YouTube channel (their primary outlet) has 64k subscribers, averages 5k views per podcast episode. Except for the OpenAI announcement that has 13k, and all the comments are negative.
For “low” hundreds of millions of dollars. Wtf.
One of the founders is the guy who invented Soylent, and now shills nicotine pouches.
A lot more on X (320k followers and 110k views on the latest episode). And those are the livestream platforms, I’d imagine a lot of people use something like Apple Podcasts or Spotify to listen to them afterwards.
X views are really questionable though. You scroll across this in a feed, it counts as a view. (This is great for juicing your numbers if people are only familiar with other platforms’ numbers.
It’s says it’s popular in Silicon Valley. Is that where you work?
That’s where I work, and I’ve never heard of it.
It’s probably just tech bro bullshit though, pump and dump, not something actual engineers would listen to.
Never heard of it, like ever.
Seems like such a great investment, therefore. /s
Launder harder Sam you fucking dweeb.
65k YouTube subs and they paid hundreds of millions?!?
Yeah, something is getting laundered there.
Yeah this is the wildest overvaluation I’ve seen in ages. I’ve never heard of them, seems like most people here haven’t.
OpenAI must be getting pretty damned desperate to turn the AI narrative to do this.
OpenAI looking for their own Bari Weiss
YouTube subs is a bad metric for a podcast.
It literally would have been cheaper to pay every subscriber a thousand dollars to listen to him.
They may be the only company in this space as unfocused as xAI. They basically bought a podcast to use as a mouthpiece. It’s just dumb and anyone who would consider investing in this company as to doubt their leadership and decision making. What a waste of their money.
It worked with Bro Joegan
Did it? I mean, it may have bought President Pedo the couple of months he needed to win an election against a historically awful opponent, but given his 32% approval rating and being stuck in a war that was supposed to distract from the detention camps that were supposed to be a distraction from the tariffs that were supposed to be a distraction from DOGE which was supposed to be a distraction from the pedophilia, I think it’s fair to say that buying a mouthpiece isn’t a durable solution to the problem of being objectively stupid
He has made billions of dollars of the presidency and made himself everyone’s fucking problem, probably everything that he ever wanted.
But they got the republicans elected, that’s all that matters. Theybdont care about what happens after they get into power
Broprah.
Is it just me or i am so much companies acquiring/selling assets in the past 4 years??
Republicans/billionaires have the FTC hogtied, so all the mergers are practically getting rubber stamped with no restrictions. They ousted the trust busters from the agency
They will probably just run ai podcasts or something like that.
Remember when facebook bought instagram for whatever stupid amount it was and there was that audio of the instagram guys howling with laughter? Do we get one of those with this as well?
The difference being Facebook was buying an already up and coming, clearly successful business idea. Here, they’re buying a YouTube channel with basically no subscribers. So yeah, one sounds like a business decision. The other is delusions of someone who doesn’t know how to spend investor money.
I mean… that would give these unknown youtubers even bigger reason to howl with laughter than the Instagram people had
Probably insider corruption. Like the corporate sales agent or podcast employee is somehow related through friendship or blood to someone at openai.
making an unexpected move into broadcasting after pledging to abandon “side quests” and focus on its core business.
That’s exactly what they’re doing here tho…
The “core business” is hype, because hype is the only reason to use, invest in, or support current AI.
There’s nothing they can do to raise share price more than buying an existing reputable source to make it a propaganda shill.
The author is still operating under the assumption that AI can be made profitable if only they work a little harder. It’s not gonna happen, it’s a fucking boondoggle who only exists to grift investors. Once you’re roped in, you have a financial incentive to perpetuate the grift.
And now TBPN (whatever that is) has a financial incentive to tell people how great AI is
Hey does everybody remember when OpenAI killed Sora after a few months, allegedly to focus on their core product?
Seems OpenAI forgot that commitment. Wouldn’t be the first commitment they forgot.
This must be a show that only people who make their lifeways by following the scent of VC dick stank watch
Where can I sell my 43 subscriber YTP channel to him?
With those number best he can probably offer is $150k
More proof of this stellar company’s incredible jenius.
