Sora fermé, Disney planted, a milliard of dollars parti en fumée. La réponse d’OpenAIÂ: s’offrir le talk-show préférré de la Silicon Valley.
On March 24, OpenAI announced the closure of Sora, its AI video generator. Disney lost in the process a billion dollar deal. On April 2, the company bought TBPN, a daily tech talk show broadcast on YouTube and X. The link between the two decisions can be summed up in one word: communication.
From AI video to media: the logic behind the shift
Sora was launched at the end of 2024 with fanfare. Disney had signed a licensing agreement to integrate 200 characters. The application reached one million downloads in five days. But the computational costs have caught up with the enthusiasm. Downloads fell 32% in December 2025, then 45% in January 2026. The deal with Disney was never finalized financially. The refocusing which justifies the debacle concerns productivity tools, code and preparation for an IPO.
TBPN is part of this reorientation. The show, launched in 2024 by John Coogan and Jordi Hays, is broadcast three hours a day. It attracts around 70,000 spectators per episode. THE Wall Street Journal estimates its 2026 revenues at more than $30 million. Sam Altman describes it as his favorite tech show, just that.
An “independent” podcast under the tutelage of OpenAI’s political strategist
Fidji Simo, director of applications at OpenAI, justified the acquisition in an internal memo. According to her, OpenAI is not “Not a classic business” and traditional communication methods do not apply. TBPN will continue to choose its guests and topics. Editorial independence is « explicitement protégée » in the agreement.
The cool detail: TBPN will be attached to the OpenAI strategy team, under the direction of Chris Lehane. The man is vice president of global affairs. A former advisor to Bill Clinton, he also led Fairshake, a crypto lobbying organization that spent hundreds of millions to eliminate candidates hostile to the sector. At OpenAI, he pushes policies like deregulation of AI and relaxation of environmental standards for data centers.
Press investigations have already shown that the economic research team under Lehane was struggling to publish work on the negative impacts of AI. Place a podcast “Independent” under his supervision questions, at a minimum, the definition of the word. Altman promises that TBPN won’t be any softer on OpenAI than before. It remains to be seen what this promise is worth when the boss of the show signs his pay slip.
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Source :
TBPN via LinkedIn
