OpenAI has spent the previous couple of weeks seemingly attempting to refocus on utilizing AI for enterprise as a substitute of what execs dubbed “aspect quests,” dumping its AI video generator and its plans for an adult-themed chatbot. So this week, in fact, the corporate introduced it is leaping into the media enterprise.
OpenAI mentioned it was acquiring Technology Business Programming Network, higher generally known as TBPN, which runs a 3-hour present streamed on weekdays that delves into the largest subjects — and brings within the largest names — in tech enterprise.
(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET’s guardian firm, in 2025 filed a lawsuit towards OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in coaching and working its AI methods.)
OpenAI mentioned it added TBPN to “assist create an area for an actual, constructive dialog in regards to the modifications AI creates,” Fidji Simo, CEO of AGI deployment at OpenAI, wrote in a message to employees shared by OpenAI. Simo mentioned the corporate additionally wished to reap the benefits of TBPN’s advertising prowess. “They’ve a powerful pulse on the place the trade goes, their comms and advertising concepts have actually impressed me,” Simo mentioned.
TBPN launched in October 2024 and has been in comparison with ESPN in the way it covers tech — two guys at a giant desk with information, evaluation, commentary and banter about subjects resembling AI, crypto, startups and the protection trade. The present’s two hosts and co-founders, Jordi Hays and John Coogan, have had a few of tech’s largest names in studio — OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, entrepreneur Mark Cuban and Salesforce’s Marc Benioff, to call some.
The present is streamed stay from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. PT Monday via Friday on YouTube and X from the Ultradome, a studio on a Hollywood movie lot. The present has 70,000 viewers every day and appears set to make greater than $30 million in income this 12 months, according to the Wall Street Journal.
TBPN co-host Hays acknowledged in an announcement that the present has been “essential” of the AI trade.
“After attending to know Sam and the OpenAI staff, what stood out most was their openness to suggestions and dedication to getting this proper,” Hays mentioned. “Shifting from commentary to actual affect in how this expertise is distributed and understood globally is extremely necessary to us.”
In an period of fast-moving media consolidation, it is a truthful query — can TBPN preserve saying what they actually suppose, even when that ruffles OpenAI’s feathers? In her assertion, Simo mentioned OpenAI needs the present to take care of its “editorial independence.”
“TBPN will proceed to run their programming, select their visitors, and make their very own editorial selections,” she mentioned. “That is foundational to their credibility, and it is one thing we’re explicitly defending as a part of this settlement.”
Altman, OpenAI founder, echoed that sentiment with a posting on X. additionally calling TBPN his “favourite tech present.”
“We wish them to maintain that going and for them to do what they achieve this properly,” Altman posted. “I do not anticipate them to go any simpler on us, am certain I will do my half to assist allow that with occasional silly selections.”
The acquisition prompted some criticism and concern on social media as individuals questioned whether or not TBPN might actually preserve editorial independence.
“Reporters doing accountability journalism are getting mowed down by mass layoffs & at the moment are nearly extinct — whereas the targets of their accountability reporting are giving lots of of tens of millions of {dollars} to pundits,” David Sirota, a longtime columnist and founding father of the investigative information outlet The Lever, posted on X. “What stage of the media dystopia is that this?”
TBPN might be below the supervision of OpenAI’s Chief International Affairs Officer Chris Lehane, who joined the company in October 2024 and is the corporate’s fundamental strategist in working with authorities officers. A long time in the past, he labored within the White Home of President Invoice Clinton — serving to to deal with the Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky investigations — and as press secretary to Vice President Al Gore. Lehane additionally arrange a procrypto tremendous PAC known as Fairshake that helped defeat anticrypto candidates through the 2024 elections and helped Airbnb battle housing rules.
