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

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[–] 150 points 7 months ago (5 children)

I have never heard of this show

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  • [–] [S] 100 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    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

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  • [–] 32 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 9 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 9 points 7 months ago

    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.

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  • [–] 88 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago

    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.

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  • [–] 41 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    Not sure how buying a podcast is going to help pay the bills, Altman.

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  • [–] 72 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 28 points 7 months ago (4 children)
  • [–] [S] 20 points 7 months ago* (2 children)

    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

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  • [–] 70 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    65k YouTube subs and they paid hundreds of millions?!?

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  • [–] 27 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    Super. Media is always better when big corporations control the content.

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  • [–] 24 points 7 months ago

    Never heard of it, like ever.

    Seems like such a great investment, therefore. /s

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  • [–] 20 points 7 months ago

    Launder harder Sam you fucking dweeb.

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  • [–] 12 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    Where can I sell my 43 subscriber YTP channel to him?

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  • [–] 11 points 7 months ago

    Probably insider corruption. Like the corporate sales agent or podcast employee is somehow related through friendship or blood to someone at openai.

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  • [–] 8 points 7 months ago

    Open AI's core business is lying to inflate their stock price. This tracks.

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  • [–] 8 points 7 months ago

    They will probably just run ai podcasts or something like that.

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  • [–] 7 points 7 months ago

    More proof of this stellar company’s incredible jenius.

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago
    [–] 9 points 7 months ago

    "Hey everyone, we sold our channel for several million! Anyway, follow us on our new channel here".

    OpenAIs stupid lol

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago

    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

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago

    This must be a show that only people who make their lifeways by following the scent of VC dick stank watch

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  • [+] 4 points 7 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago

    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.

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago*

    Is it just me or i am so much companies acquiring/selling assets in the past 4 years??

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