We need to talk about TBPN's reported acquisition by OpenAI.

I have thoughts, especially as someone who has founded and continues to run a media and creator business, What's Trending, for 15+ years.

TBPN was founded in October 2024 and has been broadcasting live for three hours daily on weekdays since March 2025. Hosted by former tech founders John Coogan and Jordi Hays, it has quickly become a go-to space in Silicon Valley where power players speak candidly and get questioned by insiders. The New York Times called it "Silicon Valley's newest obsession."

Someone recently posted TBPN's sponsor list, and it got me thinking about the model behind this. Sponsors include fintech companies Ramp and Plaid, Google's Gemini division, and a partnership with the New York Stock Exchange.

Even accounting for a niche, high-value audience, getting to a projected $30M in year two off about 70K viewers per episode across platforms is unique.

For context, that is roughly $2.5M per month. Year one was reportedly about $5 million in advertising revenue, and the company was profitable with no outside investors prior to the OpenAI deal.

I have also heard that some of these sponsors may be spending up to about $1M per year. I have worked with and spoken to many of these companies, and even in niche, high-access media, I have not typically seen deals at that level. If that is where things are landing, kudos to them, and maybe it’s time we all start pricing accordingly.

But that is not really the point. I don’t think this deal was about current viewership or self-reported revenue.

Some, like Kara Swisher, argue this is less about the future of media and more about marketing and owning the narrative.

This is true. HubSpot acquired The Hustle for the same reason. Rather than build an audience from scratch, you buy a trusted brand and a direct line to the people who matter most to your business. The Hustle was reaching founders, growth people, and investors at tech startups, an audience HubSpot wanted but wasn't yet reaching, and they were acquiring subscribers for less than $2 each. The math made sense then. The same logic applies here, just at a different scale and with higher stakes.

Strategically, I understand why a company like OpenAI would make this same kind of move. OpenAI occupies a strange position in public life. It is simultaneously a research lab, a consumer product company, a regulatory target, and arguably a geopolitical actor. Standard PR firms are not equipped for that kind of complexity. As Fidji Simo, the CEO of Applications at Open AI put it, "the standard communications playbook just doesn't apply to us."

But this feels less about current media revenue and more about momentum, positioning, and belief in the founders within the AI ecosystem. Coogan and Sam Altman share more than ten years of history. Altman funded Coogan's first company in 2013 and was active as YC president when Coogan took his second startup through the accelerator. That's not an acquisition. That's a relationship becoming more official.

It also raises a broader question about how AI companies communicate in a policy-heavy environment. As lawmakers and regulators increasingly engage through podcasts and creator-led media, owning a platform like this could have implications beyond marketing.

The hot takes, besides Kara’s, have been flying. CNBC called it OpenAI "chasing vibes," while The Information's Jessica Lessin framed it plainly, saying Elon Musk "has X," and now Sam Altman "has TBPN." Fortune pointed out something worth noting. OpenAI's chief communications officer role has been vacant since earlier this year, and the acquisition was internally championed by Simo, who has been overseeing its communications department. So yes, this is partly a hiring strategy dressed up as a media deal.

CNN drew a longer historical line, noting that this pattern goes back a hundred years, to 1926, when RCA created NBC in part to sell radios. OpenAI's chief global affairs officer Chris Lehane, himself cited Westinghouse owning CBS and Microsoft partnering with NBC to launch MSNBC as precedents. The playbook isn't new. The medium is.

As for what comes next, Lehane told CNN that having TBPN's marketing and communications skills in-house will help "as we build out some of our own franchises and our own channels," which suggests this is just the first move in something larger. The deal also saves the founders from the pressures of running an advertising-dependent business, and notably, TBPN's ad revenue model is being wound down under OpenAI's ownership.

For me, this is one of those moments that feels both validating and frustrating.

I have pitched this exact model to multiple AI companies over the past two years for What’s Trending, as both a marketing and media division, and an R&D layer to create and test new tools.

I have been through diligence and told I did not have enough scale, despite a larger cross-platform reach, consistent viewership, and a strong track record of brand partnerships and network relationships. Or that the brand relies too heavily on me.

I would be remiss not to point out that there are also broader dynamics at play here around who gets backed, believed, and accelerated in this space.

We have been building since 2011, so no, it does not look like a brand-new daily show with momentum behind it.

That is exactly why it matters.

It is interesting what gets framed as scalable versus personality-led, and how much weight gets put on momentum versus track record. TBPN had an 11-person team and a YouTube channel with around 58,000 subscribers. On paper, that does not scream “must-have acquisition.” But OpenAI didn't buy ad revenue. It bought a voice Silicon Valley actually trusts. It's the quality of their audience versus the quantity and that distinction is one legacy media companies have been slow to accept and platforms have been slow to reward.

What this also signals is a broader shift that anyone in media, podcasting, or creator businesses should be paying close attention to. Larry Ellison is reportedly looking to buy CNN and merge it with CBS News while owning a piece of TikTok, and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is toying with launching a media venture.

Tech and finance money is moving into media not to build journalism, but to own the conversation.

Rather than renting attention through paid channels, companies are investing in media properties that own it. The HubSpot media network, now including The Hustle, My First Million, and Starter Story, is one of the clearest proof points that this model works at scale.

The question for independent creators and media brands is what this means for those still building on the outside.

If the most valuable asset is a trusted audience in a specific niche, and tech companies are increasingly willing to pay for that access, then many of us are sitting on more leverage than we are pricing for.

And if you are a funded AI company looking to think big and build with a pioneering female founder in media and the creator economy, let’s talk.

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