The daily live show, hosted by former founders John Coogan and Jordi Hayes, will sit in OpenAI’s strategy organization and report to Chris Lehane, chief global affairs officer. Terms were not disclosed. OpenAI states that TBPN will maintain its editorial independence.
OpenAI has acquired TBPN Technology Business Programming NetworkThe Silicon Valley talk show has built a following of founders, investors and executives since March 2025.
The deal, whose terms were not disclosed, marks OpenAI’s first acquisition of a media company. TBPN will sit inside OpenAI strategy organization and report to Chris Lehane, the company’s CEO of global affairs.
The show is hosted by John Coogan and Jordi Hayes, both former tech founders, and airs for about three hours each day on YouTube and X, covering technology, business, artificial intelligence and defense. It attracted a prestigious Silicon Valley audience, averaging nearly 70,000 viewers per episode across platforms, and featured guests including. Meta CEO Mark ZuckerbergMicrosoft CEO Satya Nadella and Sam Altman himself.
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The show is expected to generate roughly $5 million in ad revenue in 2025 and is on track to surpass $30 million this year. According to the Wall Street Journal. Sponsors include fintech firms Ramp and Plaid, Google’s Gemini division and the New York Stock Exchange. TBPN has 11 employees and says it is profitable.
Fidji Simo, CEO of Applications at OpenAI, announced the acquisition internally in a memo describing TBPN. “One of the places where the conversation about AI and builders happens every day.”
Simo promised that OpenAI would maintain TBPN’s editorial independence, with the team continuing to choose its own guests and make its own editorial decisions. Altman, who has appeared on the show multiple times, posted on X that TBPN was there “My Favorite Tech Show” and added: “I don’t expect them to go easy on us.”
The acquisition is an unusual move for an AI lab and raises immediate questions about editorial independence, which OpenAI has previously sought to address.
TBPN will report to Lehane, who served as chief strategist in the Clinton administration and has been described as a political operative adept at manipulating the press. The show previously covered OpenAI and its competitors as a theme, a dynamic that will now exist in the proprietary structure. Coogan, for his part, noted in X that he has known Altman for more than a decade, with Altman backing his first company in 2013.
