OpenAI acquires Silicon Valley's popular tech comedy show TBPN, seizing the narrative entry point on the eve of its IPO?

Author: Xiao Ba, Deep Tide TechFlow

Deep Tide Reader: OpenAI has announced the acquisition of Silicon Valley tech livestream program TBPN. The deal value has not been disclosed, but the British Financial Times, citing people familiar with the matter, reports it is “in the tens of millions of dollars” range.

The program will be folded into OpenAI’s strategy department and will report directly to Chief Global Affairs Officer Chris Lehane.

OpenAI has promised to preserve TBPN’s editorial independence, but the program’s advertising business will be shut down after the acquisition, raising questions about whether the CEOs of rival companies will still appear on the show in the future.

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OpenAI has officially moved into the media industry.

According to multiple outlets including CNBC, TechCrunch, and Bloomberg, which reported on April 2, OpenAI announced it is acquiring the tech business livestream program TBPN (Technology Business Programming Network, i.e., “Technology Business Program Network”). This is the company’s first acquisition of media assets since it was founded. TBPN is co-hosted by former tech entrepreneurs John Coogan and Jordi Hays. Each workday, it livestreams for three hours in parallel on YouTube, X, and LinkedIn, covering topics in technology, business, AI, and defense. The New York Times describes it as “the newest obsession in Silicon Valley.”

OpenAI App CEO Fidji Simo said in an internal memo: “Traditional communication strategies don’t work for us. We’re pushing a massive technological change.”

TBPN: A tech version of “SportsCenter” with 70,000 viewers per episode in its first year

TBPN launched in March 2025. The team has only 11 people, yet it quickly went viral within Silicon Valley circles. According to the Wall Street Journal, the show averages about 70,000 viewers per episode, with 58,000 YouTube subscribers. The numbers aren’t huge, but the audience quality is exceptionally high: Meta CEO Zuckerberg, Microsoft CEO Nadella, Salesforce CEO Benioff, Palantir CEO Karp, and even Altman himself have all appeared on the show.

Its financial performance is equally impressive. TBPN’s 2025 ad revenue is about $5 million, already profitable, with no outside investors. According to a WSJ report, the company’s revenue target for 2026 exceeds $30 million. Axios, however, reported that TBPN previously hired former Postmates and HQ Trivia executive Dylan Abruscato as president, aiming to raise 2026 revenue to $15 million (the two sources’ figures are inconsistent).

The show was initially called “Technology Brothers.” According to a New York Times report in October 2025, the name is a self-deprecating jab at “tech bros.” The two hosts’ style leans toward an insider’s Silicon Valley perspective, offering real-time news analysis and founder roundtables. TechCrunch has positioned it as “SportsCenter for the tech industry”—a “safe space” where a big-name insider can chat freely and occasionally manufacture news.

Folded into the strategy department; ad business shut down

After the acquisition, TBPN will be folded into OpenAI’s strategy department and report directly to Chief Global Affairs Officer Chris Lehane. Simo pledged in the memo that TBPN would retain editorial independence, “continuing to make autonomous decisions about the program’s content, choosing guests, and making editorial judgments.” Altman posted on X that TBPN is his “favorite tech show,” adding, “I don’t expect them to be nicer to us. I’ll definitely do some stupid things now and then so they’ll have material.”

But TechCrunch pointed out in its reporting the sensitivity of this arrangement: an AI giant that is about to IPO has acquired a tech show that frequently discusses it and its competitors, while the background of the show’s managing executive Lehane himself is full of controversy.

As described by TechCrunch, Lehane is the inventor of the phrase “right-wing conspiracy theories” from the Clinton White House era, and has been known as the “master of political dark arts.” He is also a behind-the-scenes driving force behind the crypto industry super PAC Fairshake, which spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the 2024 election to attack pro-crypto candidates. After joining OpenAI in 2024, Lehane has played a significant role in AI regulatory policy.

According to the WSJ, after the acquisition is completed, TBPN’s advertising business will be shut down. That means the show will no longer rely on external advertisers to sustain operations, and its economic independence will be fully borne by OpenAI. In its analysis, Axios noted that after OpenAI acquired TBPN, whether rival CEOs would still be willing to appear on the show is an unknown. The show may gradually evolve into a traditional “enterprise-owned content” model, mainly serving OpenAI and its narrative needs for partners and investors.

Coogan and Altman’s decade-long connection

TBPN co-founder Coogan posted on X that the acquisition is “a complete closed loop” for him, because his working relationship with Altman has exceeded ten years. In 2013, Altman funded Coogan’s first company. Last year, Altman was the first head of the AI lab to appear on the TBPN program.

The other co-founder, Hays, said in a statement: “Over the past year, we’ve not only observed OpenAI up close, but also observed the entire ecosystem. Although we’ve sometimes taken a critical stance toward the industry, after deep engagement with Sam and the OpenAI team, what moved us most was their openness to feedback and their commitment to doing the right thing.”

The show continued to livestream as scheduled on the day the acquisition was announced. Coogan told thousands of online viewers during the program: “This isn’t an April Fools’ joke—that was yesterday’s news.”

Narrative setup ahead of the IPO—does OpenAI need a comedy chat show?

From the timeline, this acquisition took place at a time when OpenAI was in the midst of a period of rapid expansion. Earlier this week, OpenAI announced it had completed its latest funding round of $122 billion, with a post-investment valuation of $852 billion. The company is in the preparation stage for an IPO. Previously, Bloomberg reported that in SpaceX’s secret IPO filings, OpenAI and Anthropic were listed as potential candidates for follow-on listings later within the year.

According to Altagic, OpenAI has recently been facing challenges to its public image. After the company reached a cooperation agreement with the U.S. Department of Defense in February this year, Anthropic’s Claude briefly took the top spot on Apple’s free app charts. A resistance campaign called “QuitGPT” has also been brewing. OpenAI President Greg Brockman listed the reputation challenges facing the AI industry as one of the reasons the company has increased political spending.

Against this backdrop, acquiring TBPN can be understood as OpenAI’s attempt to build a direct narrative channel outside of the traditional public relations system. The wording in Simo’s memo directly points to this motive: “We’re not a typical company. We’re pushing a massive technological change. The mission to bring AGI to the world means we have a responsibility to create space for real, constructive dialogue around AI transformation.”

According to the UK’s Financial Times, the acquisition price is “in the low hundreds of millions of dollars” range. For a company that just raised $122 billion and is targeting $280 billion in revenue by 2030, this money isn’t that much. In her memo, Simo also said she expects to leverage Coogan and Hays’s “communication and marketing instincts” beyond the show to help OpenAI innovate how it conveys its AI influence to the outside world.

There are precedents for tech giants acquiring media assets. In 2013, Bezos acquired The Washington Post; Salesforce founder Benioff acquired Time magazine; and Robinhood acquired the financial newsletter brand MarketSnacks. Each time, it sparked questions about editorial independence. The latest case is fintech company Plaid’s acquisition of industry newsletter This Week in Fintech last month. OpenAI’s acquisition of TBPN continues this pattern, but there is also a key difference: in the acquisitions mentioned above, the media properties being acquired largely do not make coverage of the acquirer itself the core content.