OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is photographed in Berlin on September 25, 2025.
Florian Gertner | Phototheque getty images
More than 10 months after spending $6.4 billion for Jony Ive’s new device startup, OpenAI announced another surprise deal on Thursday, spinning off a media business that streams a three-hour tech talk show daily.
For a company that is facing intense scrutiny from investors as it loses billions of dollars building out its infrastructure, OpenAI’s M&A strategy is hard to figure out. After startup, it is now valued at more than $850 billion, announced It’s purchase of the technology business programming network “TBPN is my favorite tech show,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a Thursday post on X.
“I don’t expect them to treat us anything easy, I’m sure I played my part in enabling it with occasionally foolish decisions,” Altman. wrote.
This is an important moment for OpenAI, which is preparing for an IPO soon this year. The company’s core products – its popular artificial intelligence models and ChatGPIT chatbot – are facing intense competition GoogleAnthropic and Elon Musk’s xAI, which is likely to hit the public market first through SpaceX’s anticipated offering.
OpenAI has been falling short of expectations on its spending and last month it shut down its Sora video app that quickly went viral after launching six months ago. It’s not readily apparent how TBPN fits into OpenAI’s strategy, but the AI market is moving so fast that the most logical steps today may make little sense tomorrow.
“When you have more and more disruptive competitors appearing, they need to create things that give people a unique reason to choose ChatGPIT over other AI platforms,” Daniel Newman, CEO of Futurum Group, said in an interview. “They’re kind of chasing emotions a little bit.”
Although not all of OpenAI’s acquisitions will be profitable, Neumann said that after the $122 billion funding the company can afford to experiment. He called TBPN a “small enough bet to attract a lot of attention.”
OpenAI did not disclose terms of the deal. The company did not respond to a request for comment.
OpenAI’s biggest deal to date was the purchase of Ive’s io, which thrust the company into the complex world of hardware development for the first time. Ive is famous in the field of designing iPod, iPhone, iPad and many other gadgets during his years AppleAnd it is trying to bring the first OpenAI devices to market by next year.
In December, OpenAI hired Google’s Albert Lee to lead corporate development, a sign that the company was looking for bigger goals. It has since purchased several startups across a variety of industries, including software startup Astral, cybersecurity startup PromptFu, and health-tech startup Google. torch.
OpenAI’s last big splashy acquisition was as a developer rather than a company. In February, the company hired Peter Steinberger, the Austrian software developer behind the viral AI assistant OpenClaw. Like TBPN’s surprise announcement, news of Steinberger’s appointment exploded on social media.
Neumann said Altman is likely trying to figure out the company’s next focus area, and whether there is an “M&A path to relevance.”
“He hasn’t yet succeeded in many other big, ambitious ideas,” Newman said.
Founded in 2024 by hosts John Coogan and Jordy Hayes, TBPN quickly rose to prominence in Silicon Valley, cultivating a loyal audience of investors, founders, and tech workers. The company has less than 60,000 subscribers on YouTube, but high-profile guests like Altman, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears on the show regularly.
one in memorandum to employees On Thursday, OpenAI’s CEO of Applications Fidzi Simo said the company believes it has a responsibility to “help create space for real, constructive conversations about the changes brought about by AI.” OpenAI will take advantage of TBPN’s “amazing communications and marketing instincts,” Simo said, though he added that TBPN will make its own “editorial decisions.”
Andrew Frank, an analyst at Gartner, said that TBPN was not on his “bingo card” as an acquisition candidate. But he said it might make sense for OpenAI if it were seen as a way to counter the narrative that AI is a threat.
“If you’re a company like OpenAI, where everyone looks forward to news, I think you just need an established outlet through which you can communicate with the wider world,” Frank said in an interview.
Paul Nary, an M&A professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, doesn’t understand this at all.
“The acquisition of @tbpn by OpenAI makes no sense to me,” he said wrote On X.
In an interview with CNBC, Nary explained his thinking and said that OpenAI’s explanations were not much help.
“We’ll give you editorial control, but you’ll still be involved with our company,” Nary said. “So is there a conflict of interest there, and what does that mean for the business moving forward?”
Nary said that the media and entertainment transaction was most likely to fail, but he suggested that TBPN’s size did not present too much of a financial liability for OpenAI. He hopes that the show will change a lot with time.
“In terms of the show or what the founders are doing, what it looks like a year from now, I think will be different than what’s happening today,” Nary said.
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