Why OpenAI Bought a Talk Show

The grill room is presented by BP. See all the ways BP is investing in America at bp.com/investinginamerica. The sports betting alliance is working to bring clarity to the conversation around sports betting. There's a lot being said right now and not all of it is true. Here's what is. Legal online sports betting is highly regulated and for adults only, with strict age verification and responsible gaming tools like deposit limits, time limits and self exclusion. But not all betting happens in that regulated system. Illegal operators are still widely accessible and they don't offer those same protections. That difference matters. Learn more at sportsbettingaliance.org. I just think we need to understand and recognize that you're not in a time period anymore. Where you're just speaking passively, you through paid advertising in the way maybe it used to take place in the past. Or maybe some interactively putting out an announcement in a blog or an old school press conference or a launch event. It's a totally different world right now. Hello friends and welcome back to the grill room. It is Friday, April 10th. We have a very special episode for you today. It is an open AI TBPN mega deal omnibus. If you listen to the last show, you heard Julia and I trying to make sense of why Sam Altman and open AI decided to acquire a great fun, three hour gab fest hosted by John Cougan and Jordy Hayes. What did that have to do with their ambitions to win the AI race? I couldn't make sense of it. A lot of people couldn't make sense of it. So we figured the best thing to do would be to have the parties involved in the deal come on and walk us through the thesis. We're going to start with Chris Lahane who's going to be John and Jordy's new boss. He's the chief global affairs officer at open AI. Of course, most listeners know that he has a long and storied history before that. Dating back to the Clinton White House. Various points in between. Wonderful guy, great guest, very enjoyable conversation and very, very interesting to hear his rationale, how he thinks about this acquisition and why he thinks TVPN is valuable to open AI. It's something to do with growing the media company also has a lot to do with marketing. It's a lot to do with narrative. It's going to unpack all of that for us. And I think for everyone out there who's sort of still scratching their heads, this will be helpful. And then in part two of the conversation, Julian and I are going to talk to the president of TVPN, Dylan Abruzgato, who's going to help us understand how he views that deal. I don't think we need any explanation as to why these guys took hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and stock from open AI. That's pretty obvious. But it's sort of interesting to hear the nuances between how Chris thinks about this and how Dylan thinks about this. So this is going to be very useful to anyone who's trying to unpack this deal. And included therein is a broader discussion about AI and the AI story. And the future of media organizations in that landscape. Is this a template for other sorts of deals where you have platform companies come in and buy media organizations? Or buy a startup show, a YouTube show. Maybe we're going to see. Anyway, I think you'll enjoy it. I think you'll learn a lot. And without further ado, please welcome Chris Lehan and then Dylan Abruzgato to the grill room. Chris Lehan, welcome to the grill room. Thank you for joining us. Awesome, man. With you and Julia, like I fit the big time here. It's great to see you again. It's really good to see you. Before we start, I haven't seen you in a while. And I have a lot less hair and you seem to have grown more hair. It's impressive. I haven't seen you since you were, you know, like the master of disaster, master of the political dark arts back in your DC era. My young and innocent era. That's right. Now you're in your Silicon Valley era. And there's been a lot in between, of course, which if we had more time and didn't have so many burning questions, I would ask you questions about everyone you've represented, which include like, mate, businesses, sports franchises, et cetera, and politicians, of course. But I'm not going to go deep on the Seahawks. We, you know, again, we'll have you back. Yeah, Julia, everyone, the Yankees will drop the races. We have, as anyone who listens to our podcast knows, Julia and I have burning questions about your acquisition of TBPN. And I think that you're probably familiar with the discussion out there, the narrative out there, and certainly some of the head scratching out there. No one has any questions about why John and Jordy took the deal. I don't know if you want to tell us how many hundreds of millions. I don't know if you want to tell us if how much of it's stock. The good show in the macro gallery, Dylan, we're just trying to ask your comment. But there is this sort of like, okay, here is open AI, which is a stensibly like building the future, trying to win the AI race, counting and saying all sorts of revolutionary questions that are going to change the world, and even as you point out, demand a new social contract. And here's this like great, great show that these two charming young guys produce out of a little studio in Hollywood. Why do Chris and Fiji and Sam want to own this? Yeah, there's a lot to unpack here. So I'm glad this is a great forum to do it, given both what you all cover and Dylan, you and I go back a bit. But your time really sort of defining and explaining the different errors of media that we've all lived through. And so I think there's sort of a couple different levels to this, you know, I think first and foremost, but Jordi, John really with the whole team, Dylan, who really sort of, you know, does the programming behind the scenes. When I think they are incredibly good at and obviously biased here, but I certainly from what I've seen, I think arguably the best at is unpacking the ideas behind technology. And specifically AI that the proverbial why and the how, you know, when things like agentic AI comes on or even I remember listening to them when we released 01, which was our first reasoning model, really the first reasoning model and AI. And we put out an explanation describing it, but then I listened to their show, they did a better job than I think we did. It actually, you know, explaining it and translating it to a, you know, you know, a high signal, silicon Valley, Quarant, Quatt opinion, elite audience, you know, developers, entrepreneurs, builders, talent, investors, but they did a really good job of actually translating why it was important and what the big ideas are behind it. I mean, Dylan and Julie, by Dylan specifically, like you've made a career of scooping and breaking news. I mean, sometimes they break news, but what they really do is break down the ideas behind the news. And that, that just provides a really valuable service out there. So I think first and foremost, you know, how we can, you know, help support that that just has a broader educational pedagogical value. And the second part of that is, can we scale that particular audience while maintaining the quality and quantity. I should have begun, begun this by emphasizing an important part of all this. Like we do have an editorial independence commitment was built into the contract, like it's a very specific provision. It just only works if they're able to maintain their editorial independence. I have a lot of faith and confidence because of both the contractual but also aligned interests on that that will be the case. And obviously you all will evaluate that as we go forward. But the second point is, you know, if you take a look at their audience, core audience is roughly, you know, 70,000 of those of those for a high signal people in the Valley, not just the Valley, but disproportionately in the Valley that, you know, really tune in on a daily basis. But there is a broader audience out there of similar developers, builders, entrepreneurs, and I was talking to folks in France yesterday where there's a really robust AI startup community. And they were literally asking, well, can we do a version of, you know, TBPN in French and I, you know, as long as I get the croissants and the preferred roles, like I'm all for it. But like that, you know, I'm not sure I don't take away here is not that we're launching this in France, but but the bigger point being that there's a larger audience out there that is really a curious and an AI interested and at the same time you've also got just a broader. which is starting to tune in. And I think if you look in the fields of science, health, academia, media, other places, where there's like the next circle of, again, I'm almost low to use this word, but opinion elites or maybe AI curious that are really beginning to tune in now. And we do want to be able to communicate and sort of scale the audience that is out there. And then the third point, yeah, there's a third point. - Can I just double the data chart? - Yeah, go ahead, go ahead. - The third one, and we can come back to this, is like a lot of analogies have been drawn here, is this Microsoft and MSNBC, or is this Bloomberg finance or Bloomberg LLP and Bloomberg Media are going back in a less than house and CBS and GE and NBC. You know, you were, I think, an NBC guy at one point. - Yeah. - I think the more apt analogy here is, late 80s, early 90s, when Shia Day, which was, you know, when the leading marketing firms, and they had been supporting Steve Jobs and Apple, and they basically created an in-house agency that became the Apple Media Lab. And the Apple Media Lab was designed to actually work from the ground level, like from the, in the case of AI, the research and engineer and product development level, so that you really begin to think about the marketing of this. And in an age where content is the most important piece, and then you have to be digital forward in communicating this, like these guys are incredibly talented at this. So, you know, bringing them in is the equivalent of, and a marketing agency for this day and ever in this audience is, you know, is an incredibly important aspect for us, like a huge opportunity for us. We obviously have to execute on that, which is totally fair question. - But I get, so I'm hearing almost like two different DCs. One is, okay, here's this media company, which talks about our business, and we really like that. We like the way they do it, it's smart. And we want to scale it. And I guess my outstanding question there would be, why does open AI need to be the one to scale it? Because, you know, John and Jordy are seemingly on a media, and they're going to talk about you anyway. They're probably going to talk about you and the broader AI industry quite favorably anyway. Why do you need to do that? And then perhaps the second thesis is the answer to that question, which is we also want them to be part of our marketing team. And-- - Yeah, we do have two pieces to this. Go ahead, I'm sorry. - Right. Well, no, and so I guess I just wonder is like, again, I don't know what the mix of cash and stock is here in the offer, but what is, it seems like a lot of money to bet on a media company, and two guys who, well, like, I love what they do. I love their show. I love their merch. My guess is is that if you have, if open AI is envisioning like a future of Google's light-guised-like events, they would serve as great moderators. But I still can't wrap my arms around why that's a necessary investment for open AI. - Yeah, so again, I think you are correct. Like there's two aspects to this at the highest level. One is the scaling of the audiences that they region. You all have covered the economics and finances and the business side of media, right? It is, it takes resources to be able to scale an audience. We are at a moment when there is a much broader and growing interest in understanding the how and the why behind AI. And putting resources into folks who are incredibly good at being able to connect the dots in a way that, both people who are native to this but people who are just curious to it can understand like this is just an incredibly important moment to begin to educate a broader audience on how this is actually going to work, why it will be good for the world, how they have to start to think about building this in to their small businesses, big businesses, their organizations, and giving these guys the resources to be able to scale that audience. So there's 70,000 people that hit right now are incredibly important, but imagine that it's a much bigger audience, right? So that's the first part which you hit and that does take resources. Like that does take the ability to do stuff in a way that can help you expand where you're, the folks who you're reaching. The second part is this aspect of bringing in an agency in the way that again, Apple did back in the 1980s and I mean if you're inside a big company and look at their three or four companies in the world that have a user, a regular user base of a billion plus right, we're approaching that neighborhood. Think of the idea that you're able to connect these folks who can do an incredibly good job of explaining things with a massive distribution channel that we can uniquely tap into, like put those two things together and you can start to see some really interesting opportunities here and bringing them in from that agency capacity as we start to build out our own content, our own digital franchises and get their expertise in terms of how we build that, particularly given our user base, I do think is enormously important. And look, I never wanna diminish costs or anything like that. We just went through $122 billion raise, some part of just in history. And I think sometimes, and look, I have challenges with what I'm about to say too, like getting your head around the scale and scope of this technology, how transformative it is where it's going and understanding that this is not just your normal, highly successful startup, like we've seen the last 20 years, like this is an entirely different sort of animal out there. - Sure. And I do think that folks like Sam and Fiji sort of do think about this stuff that's on par with just how transformative the technology is. And as we think about that marketing capacity, given our size of our audience, given their expertise, bringing that agency in house, like yes, you could go out and hire a bunch of marketing agencies. And by the way, by any conventional definition those marketing agencies are not cheap. Like people spend enormous amounts of money on their marketing agencies and their advertising campaigns. Like we're bringing that to pass the in-house with expertise in terms of how people actually communicate and particularly AI users. I mean, there's a bunch of data out there that I'm sure you're familiar with that just shows the disproportionate engagement between people under the age of 30 and over the age of 30 on AI. And like those folks aren't engaging in the mainstream media the way at least I grew up engaging right. They are totally digital first. That's where they get their information from. And these guys are amongst the best in the world of being able to think that through. And so bringing them in for their expertise is just a huge advantage for us. - So I want to let Julia jump in here with, 'cause I'm sure she has questions. But just one last one, what you're talking about here gets to a broader narrative that's taking place. I think certainly in the valley and it's related to, I think the valleys, I don't want to suggest it's monolithic, but the valley's feelings about the media industry and also the importance of owning narrative. And as Tyler Dank, it be I've put it like narrative is the moat. I guess what I wonder is. - Well content is still king. It just wears that content coming from it. - Where is it coming from? - Yeah, right. - Yeah, and is it the AI in-house for a company? - No, no, not at all. But that's a good question. And is it in-house for a company? I guess what I wonder is, do you see this deal as an anomaly? Because certainly, again, everyone from the FT to Ben Thompson has been scratching their heads. Or do you see it as a template or a harbinger of future deals where platform companies, it's certainly in AI or elsewhere in tech, start thinking about who is our TPBN? First of all, I do think that you've already seen, I think some technology or tech platforms begin to really think about this. You look at how, and I'll use one that I think is pretty obvious and pretty easy to go to, but how a Netflix over the years has changed how you put information out about the shows that they're putting out. And really start to do that just right off with their platform enough of their own built-in audience. And when I was at Airbnb and I was there and oversaw out of their content piece through the Combs channel, we used our audience of, I'm doing this off the top of my head 'cause it was a couple of years ago, I think four or five million hosts and hundreds of millions of guests, as a distribution channel, where we would communicate with them right through the platform. And I think when I was at Airbnb, I think we were amongst the first, I mean, Steve Jobs and Apple did a version of this where they would do their launches at their headquarters on video. But I think we were amongst the first, if not the first, to really use the actual distribution channel of the platform itself to do our twice a year big product launches. And why not? You have a much bigger audience than all the traditional conventional media, so we're added together in terms of the coverage that you would get and the ability to direct a consumer. But that wasn't at the expense or it's not binary choice. Like we also did the mainstream media. And so it's a very long way to go and I'm saying I do think in the age that we are in. The content that is King I think has always been the case, I think it is, are you producing your content and then figure out a really effective way to distribute it that meets people where they are. I mean there's the line from Hamilton, the room where it happens, I think that we are in an age where you can effectively build out the rooms where it happens, bring people into those rooms. But not only that, you know, how information moves in this day and age, you can bring people into those rooms, they themselves take the information and then in turn go build their own rooms and bring more people in. And I just think we need to understand and recognize that you're not in a time period anymore. And I know you to know this because you cover this, you've lived it where you're just speaking passively, you through paid advertising in the way maybe it used to take place in the past, you know, or maybe you know, somewhat interactively, you know, putting out an announcement in a blog or, you know, old-school press conference or launch event, right? It's a totally different world right now and yeah, yeah, that's right. Behind every BP fill up, thousands of people across America go to work every day. 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You alluded to other digital products. I might come down the line. I just wanted to poke at what those may be. What your digital media strategy is for a company, the size of OpenAI. If there's anything you wanted to talk about in terms of whether you wanted to announce things or just kind of get a little bit more. It would be a good forum to break things. Absolutely. We love when that happens. I will give my way back to my press secretary days that Dylan will crack. There's a time for all seasons. I'm going to look out, answer this maybe a little bit of a higher altitude than maybe where you're poking at. I think you should expect us to be building out some compelling and interesting franchises of our own. I think we've done even some beta tests of concepts. I'll just flag a couple of this is not to suggest that these are going to be exactly what they are. Over the last year, we had brought on a chief economist, Ronnie Chatterjee. We did a series of physical events called OpenAI Economic Events. It was really sort of economics of AI where we would bring interesting people, primarily other economists into the room and do conversations. You could certainly see some version of that becoming an interesting digital container for us to talk about a lot of those types of issues where we had previously shared, but we will be opening a space in Washington DC. Later this month, or May, that we're calling the AI Workshop, think of it as an AI laboratory of democracy where we're going to take some of the policy ideas that were in the recent industrial policy document that we put out and really begin to flush them out. You could see creating that entire content series around that. We have something called the forum, which currently exists as a way for people to be able to tap into yet to sign up for it. I think it's got an audience of 70 or 80 or 90,000 on a regular basis. Don't hold me the exact number. I'm doing this off the top of my head. That's a really AI native audience. We just had Sam and some of our researchers talking about the industrial policy on that earlier this week. It's primarily a venue for developers and builders to get on. Just to learn about some of the technical aspects like that, something that we can build out. We do something called AI Academies, which are in effect different types of tutorial modules for small businesses, for teachers, and how to think and use AI. You could see building these things out. We've been doing a lot of in effect beta tests of concepts. I just flag those as the type of way we're thinking about things, but then how do you really build them out? Particularly as we start to get to this, as I noted, we're going to we're approaching a billion users. There's just a big distribution network out there. Yeah. I think the way you're talking about the digital products, which makes sense for OpenAI, is within that realm. Obviously, of marketing and marketing toward both the consumer, I think marketing towards DC and regulatory potential people sitting on those sides of the equation, especially as you get to that one billion user. These are things I'm sure people like Mark Zuckerberg wish they would have thought of 20 years ago as they kind of dealt with the fact. Sorry, I just thought that always mystified me. They were sitting on top of this huge channel dealing with all these dynamics, and yet they were doing primarily communicating through sort of an old school approach. Sorry, you started figuring it out that way. You're exactly right. We'll get to what I think about that in a second, but I'm curious. No, no, I'm curious. You're talking about this through the marketing funnel, and then you also started this conversation by saying, and we're going to have TBPN, and we're going to give them complete editorial independence. How do they, in your mind, operate independently when executives kind of like yourself at OpenAI are thinking, here's how we're going to use this platform to get messaging across about AI in general. How does that not create a problem for guests like Zach, like Dario, potentially Elon, who are like, I don't want to participate in an OpenAI marketing machine. Is there a inherent friction there between what you want for them and what they want, and then what OpenAI ultimately wants? Yeah, I'm going to give a little bit of a wise answer, and I'll give a serious answer. The wise ask part of it begins with the fact that Elon knows this thing called Twitter, although all those people he just named are on Twitter, they seem to be comfortable being on Twitter. So I do think that that has a little bit of an asterious answer. If you have a platform that seems to be very effective as a place to go and share your content and information, you're going to go on there. The more serious answer, and I don't mean to be, it's a good question and the right question to ask, is that you do have to make clear that that commitment that we have put into our agreement holds up, and I think folks like you will and should hold people to account on it. Again, I think important, and I think you guys get this. TBPN has never been a traditional news place. Again, breaking news. It is a place that people know that they can go on and have a really serious discussion about the ideas. We are certainly one of a small number in the world of front theorem labs. They're a building. This infrastructure technology and the smarter that these guys are, and they're very, they start off very smart at understanding where it is going. I think the better off, they are going to be at having a program where people can come on from a variety of places and have conversations about this. Again, I think the editorial independence, I'm super confident because it doesn't, we're not able to keep this thing in terms of what it is unless that continues, but you guys will judge that as we go forward. There's a lot you're probably familiar with the sort of like ink stain journalist community being like, well, this seems like a terrible conflict of interest. That's not my concern so much as it is just when you have a forum, like if you think about Squawk Box, Squawk Box is this very powerful forum. And it is where the business community goes every morning. And no one stops and thinks, well, I'm not going to go be a guest on that show because it's owned by Comcast, right? Or I guess was owned by Comcast. And GE before that, right? And GE before that. All of that said, it just seems like the competitive atmosphere right now around AI is so heated and so intense. And you've got everyone sort of in this race right now. And it just seems to me like is the value proposition of an independent TBPN sort of undercut by becoming an in-house marketing, like part of a marketing team. And yes, they're independent, but yes, they're independent, but it's sort of just like, oh, this thing that was sort of cool and awesome. And these guys were having fun, and they weren't beholden to anyone. And now all of a sudden, they're just part of like this corporate structure. I guess that would use the, you know, and again, it might be not the perfect analogy, but it's the one that's closest to my thinking is, you know, Pshayat Day came in, they built the media lab inside Apple. Pshayat Day continued. There's a market these agency on the outside, people understood that Apple was an infrastructure technology and a ton of other companies in the world work with, you know, Shia Tei, because they were a great marketing firm. Right. I get that this is a little bit different because of the content coverage piece of it. So it's not a perfect analogy, but I also think we're in a different age and a different time period. And I think when you think about that competition piece, I mean, what you're really talking about, if I could just push on this a bit, just, you know, there's a very specific small handful of frontier labs, three, four, five, depending how you want to account, you know, here in the US, there are building this at a global scale. There's obviously some out of China as well. The vast majority of the people who are specifically part of the broader AI ecosystem, you know, are those who are looking to build off of these infrastructure platforms. And so, you know, to do an analogy here, you know, Edison and Westinghouse were building out electricity, right? There was a whole bunch of people who were eventually became appliance companies and automobile companies and you know companies, media companies that were effectively looking at how we build things that can plug into the wall or plug into that outlet or source from that electricity. And they were super interested in actually being sort of in the middle of the conversation. And I think that there is a comp here, which is the vast majority of the people who are building, investing, the talent thinking about this, they're not frontier labs, right? They are the folks who are going to be building the things that plug into the frontier labs. And like this is the room where it's going to happen. Right. I get to play, you know, amateur historian here. I was a history major. I get to like technologists and these things, but I was really a history major in college. No, it's good. No, it's good. It's useful context too because I people have very short memories when it comes to like who has owned the media in the past and who sponsored and underwrote the media. So yeah, right. I was thinking that comes up in the discussion around TbP and his idea of we want to scale the audience. So a giant understand. I think if you talk to most people in media about what that means, there's a revenue and profit component. When you talk about scaling, you're talking about advertising and subscribers. That's right. Both of those things seem fairly non-plus in terms of what Open AI is looking for. So when I think about the value of scaling audience, the question is, well, who is the audience of which Open AI execs want to scale in order for this impact to happen and therefore the KPI to really make sense? And the people I keep going back to are like DC, right? It's people in places where they have to answer to their constituents about these massive data centers that are being built about the potential loss of jobs, about the mental health component, all these different things that you hear about. And if I'm Sam Altman, having the ability to have a platform that is not necessarily even pro-Open AI to the point about editorial independence, but is inherently based on the conversations that we watch from them, very pro-AI, is inherently valuable if you can scale that kind of regulatory audience around the world. And so I wanted to hear from you, though, because I could be completely wrong on that in the room. Who the audience is to scale that you think is of extreme value? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good. I love these questions. This is a lot of fun. You guys have to have it back. Any time. Yeah, so I'll break that down to two pieces. And I hope no one takes it. This is like not a hot take. And I'm not going to use actual real numbers here. I'm going to use the following numbers for illustrative purposes. Keep in mind that we just had the biggest raise in history and the economic scale of these frontier labs. Imagine that in the context of helping these numbers are, there's a very, very, very, very small number of what it takes to acquire a property. Right. Imagine if you even get a couple basis points of growth. That is, the x's on that are pretty meaningful, just from just the basic economics. Because I know you're asking, I think, the right question in terms of, yes, it takes advertising dollars in a traditional media platform to grow your audience that you plow back into the right growing that audience. If you can sort of remove that pressure and actually just be able to invest with, for a traditional media outlet, it may look like a lot of money given the scale here is just different and then actually get growth off of that. That's a pretty damn good investment in terms of how effective your marketing is going to be. So that's point when I'm not using any even make it made up numbers just because people take that and run with it. But I think you sort of get the point. I think in terms of the audiences, look, these guys have never been nor would I anticipate them to become, you know, folks who are really engaged on sort of the policy, regulatory, political conversation. I think they're much more focused on unpacking and locking the ideas behind the innovation. And so when I think about those audiences, it is certainly the ones, you know, we've talked a little bit about here, which is talent and entrepreneurs, investors, developers, builders, you know, who have huge interest in this. I do think we're in a moment and you see this out there where there is both a growing geographic, you know, from around the world, interest from those same audiences, but also you're sort of getting this next circle of folks who feel like they really need to understand how AI is going to translate into their world. Again, this could be someone who's running a mid or small sized company who is getting that this could really change how they do their operations from compliance to marketing to, you know, scaling what their employees can do, but they need to be able to build it. And they're starting to really tune in like academics, where starting to think about their research are really beginning to scientists. Like there's this sort of next circle of audiences that are really trying to understand this and these guys do such a good job of unpacking this and, you know, open AI, one of our competitive advantages, at least we certainly think so in part of core to our strategy is, you know, we do have this massive consumer-based forex larger than anyone else. You know, we see that as those folks start to use this technology more and more, the benefits that they get from it are bigger and bigger, they compound. And so, you know, we do have this big audience out there that is trying to learn how to use this stuff. You know, we've talked about this thing, the capability gap, you know, between a non-user, a user and that power user, power users get like a 7x productivity benefit versus a regular user. And so I think people are beginning to sort of intuitively get that and are really interested in learning how they can become first a user than ultimately really a power user. And like these guys can sort of walk you through that. Let me just double click on one thing and then I'll pass it off to Dylan. I understand that there's a component of this, according to people outside of the business, according to the outside of opening AI, where it's just like opening a lot of money, Sam has money, Sam likes them, therefore Sam wants them. Like there's a component of that narrative that either buy into or don't buy into. I don't believe that you have an executive team who's looking at a potentially trillion dollar IPO and does things because it's cool. In the same way that I don't think Apple launches a streaming division just because Tim could want to go to the Oscars. What is the KPI on open AI side? What is the metric of success and it doesn't have to be a number? It can be the narrative changes. It can be a very specific thing, but why do it now? It almost feels like, and I don't use the term pre-crisis. I think that's too much, but it almost feels like let's get ahead of it. We've learned from Silicon Valley mistakes in the last 15 years. I'm just curious what you guys look at and say, okay, and a year or now, two years or five years, this has been successful for us. Yeah, I think there's a couple of different ways and I won't use specific numbers for obvious reasons. We know that those who don't use AI have a view of it. And this is, by the way, primarily US. When you start to sort of talk about the world, US and Europe crack relatively closely and then the rest of the world's in a really different place and have a much more optimistic view of AI. I'm talking primarily US sentiment and audience in the following. Those who don't use AI and they tend to be older have, I think, a view with somewhat unformed, a little bit nervous, given what they have heard out there. Those who are using it as casual users have a generally predisposed positive view of it, but still trying to understand how it becomes something that is better than just a much better version of search to be overly reductionist or simple. But they're the AI curious and then you have those power users who are like all in and totally get that we put out bad last week on Codex that people have figured out that electricity changed the night today and now you can actually have Codex working for you while you're sleeping and so you can work while you're sleeping and get this. And so can we begin to I think accelerate the transition of how, again, users every day people are understanding this that meets the acceleration of the technology. And I think, and Jill, I can't remember if you used the word urgency or not or if that's just in my head, but I do think we feel an urgency to really educate people on this. I mean, we were in Dylan, you had referenced this earlier and I've dropped it a couple times. We released industrial policy for AI on Monday and what we specifically and explicitly called out is that this technology is accelerating our research or see where it's going. you know, we do begin, believe we need to begin having policy ideas that are on par with the power of and transformative power of this technology. That's on the policy realm. This is also on the realm of the, I'm going to use another historical analogy. This is the printing press. The printing press has come out. It's 1490. We want to get as many people as literate as possible so that they can actually participate in this. This is not the solution to all of that, but it is part of how we want to begin to accelerate, not just the adoption, but the adoption, you know, to this technology. With particular audiences, there are going to be very influential. I mean, there are tons of conversations about, quote unquote, you know, influencers in social media. Like the influencers, you know, in the AIA, are going to be sort of that, that the core group, and then this next circle that I am talking about, you know, who are going to begin to understand how this can be transformative. And I do think that this is going to be an important piece, not deep piece, but an important piece to helping with that. That's not a precise number, but it is trying to answer your question. And then I think the second part of that is a year from now, two years from now, three years from now, you pick your time. You know, have we built out, you know, a really effective way to be able to communicate to people that is content first and digital forward. And, you know, maybe there's a variety of franchises that we have built out there, and that these guys have really helped us think that through and build that out. And I guess there's a third piece to this, sorry, this is, maybe this is just embedded in the first two, and it really is, as I'm thinking out loud, is, like I think we, and you know, you guys follow our space a bit. Like we put a ton of stuff out, and, you know, we tend to communicate about it in a very AI researcher language. And if you're not native to this language, it's really an understandably hard to understand. Like I don't think the AI space, and this is not, I think a particularly stunning statement to make has done a particularly good job of explaining why this technology is going to be important for people or why they should care about it, or where their piece of it is going to be. Like we do need to get a lot better at that, particularly, you know, as the world is waking up to this. You know, I've talked with a lot of politicians, and they're seeing their constituents and voters ask about this now in a way that they weren't a year ago. And I do think we as a space, we as an industry need to get a hell of a lot better at actually telling people why this is going to be important and good for them. And, you know, the conversation thus far for the most part has been this really binary conversation. This is going to be the most incredible thing ever. We're all going to be painting and watercolors with homes by the beach. And we're never going to be hungry and everything's going to be perfect. And then, you know, on the other extreme, the doomer view of the world, which is this is the most powerful technology humans have ever built because it's so powerful only a small number of us should be able to control it happens to be the ones making that argument. And like we think that the argument and the conversation needs to be a lot more realistic. What is this? Why can't it be good? How do you actually take advantage of it? What are the challenges around it and how are we really thinking about it in ways that meet people where they are. I mean that that all. It pitamizes and I think really like encapsulates the storytelling aspect here, which I think brings this all together and Chris, I know we're probably only have you for a minute more to but we will bring you back on this conversation is something we will like but we'll continue to be relevant in perpetuity and we look forward to having you back on but I think where I want to like where I want to kind of one more question about the narrative aspect of it. It seems that you know you do all these things you've got your in house communication and you've launched your own sub stack and you've worked with other media organizations to tell your story you've got initiatives to try and help local news you're trying to enhance the conversation around AI and make it more palatable and accessible to people and now you've brought in the guys from T B P N but part of the narrative to is about telegrafting to audiences at every level. Both in Washington in the regulatory community and then just like the consumers like we are the good guys right like you want to come out of this like looking more like Steve jobs than you do like Mark Zuckerberg post 2015. And at this particular moment you mentioned Elon Musk earlier he's out there trying to kick the shit out of Sam Altman every day. There's a New Yorker story out there that you know basically depicts Sam as like the 10 headed Hindu you know devil God and sit insinuating that he can't really be trusted. Do you I suppose this this gets back to your history as a sort of like master of the dark arts and all of that but like how do you how do you win this story because it seems to me like at this particular moment. That I wouldn't say open AI is is on the back foot here but in a in a world where there's like a Dario and a Sam and an Elon and a Sundar and inside like it does it does seem like a moment of vulnerability and I wonder how you think about telling not just the story of AI but basically convincing the world that Sam is not the person that people are starting to depict him to be. Yeah I think there's you know a number of ways to think about this I think you know first and foremost I think it's important I think you guys know this open AI you understand you know has a very specific mission or purpose and that's to ultimately build a GI that benefits all of humanity. It's easy to say that right do you actually put real stuff behind it because I'm ultimately crust and faith and character comes through in terms of what you actually do the actions that you take and under Sam open AI has led the effort to democratize access to this incredibly powerful technology. So as many people as possible can participate in it like we do have in this really begins with Sam at the center have a fundamental perspective and belief that if this technology is going to optimize for as many people in the world at being able to participate in the incredible economic opportunity and productivity is going to come from this like you have to democratize this. And you know we've talked about this a couple times we have nearly a billion people who are using this on a regular basis in the vast vast majority of them are using it for free and we're able to do that because Sam put in place like a very different structure that exists here we are a not for profit that oversees a public benefits corporation. And so you have a not for profit that owns almost a third of a 30% of the business I think 26% to be to be accurate means the public effectively owns a big chunk of this through the nonprofit it's governed by the nonprofit and as a public benefits corporation. It can consider the best interest of a variety of stakeholders and then you see how that then translates into our ability to put this out to the world like that's that Sam's vision and as more and more people use this and you know if you're getting to a billion which that one and eight of the people in the world. Like that's an incredibly powerful thing that have been responsible for and I do think that that comes through and shines through as we go forward I also think and I've said this and Dylan thank you for raising it like the neighborhood I grew up in you could often judge someone's character by who they were willing to stand up to and against you know and right now you know when it comes to really the control of AI you know there is a real battle maybe even a fight going on and you know in the US and that is between Sam and Elon and Mark Zuckerberg and you know I think the fact that you know Sam is taking both of those folks on speaks for itself in terms of care I mean there you had a smoking text that came out I think a week or two ago with Elon and Zuckerberg you know seniorly inclusion. And it is by the words of the tax to try to seize the IP of open AI like see the IP that is behind you know those nearly one billion people who are able to access this and now you have you know Elon pursuing a legal case to try to seize a hundred billion dollars of the not for profit that I just talked about and so you know there really is this people versus the powerful you know dynamic this taking place again using my electricity analogy not all that different than somebody electricity was that took place in the world. And so the last one I would just make on this and Sam makes this point all the time like he should be held accountable we all should be held accountable like we're building incredibly important powerful stuff but you know it shouldn't just be one person or you know in this case you know Sam Elon Zuckerberg Daria like who are in the middle of this ultimately this does need to be done through like the small D democratic process right this is technology that really for the first time in modern history. You know of this of this magnitude is being built by the private sector you know we do live in a democracy all of us get to have a voice in this and express ourselves on it and we should and that's the way open AI approaches this like we are taking the harder road here you know we could easily go out there and you know the water color painting approach like nothing's wrong here but we're actually trying to roll up our sleeves and do the hard work here and you know that is ultimately the path that if you really do want to advance to human condition and think about how general purpose technologies have done that over the last 10,000 years like the history lessons from that is the amateur historian here is pretty to do it through the democratic process. Right. We are the democratic platform out there, and we are trying to work through the democratic process to actually put these values in at the front end. And that ultimately comes back to Sam's core belief on this. And so I think you look at the actions and those actions matter a hell of a lot more than words. And certainly matter a hell of a lot more than Elon Musk hiring a bunch of private investigators or using third parties to do that to go run a smear campaign that was totally debunked. Right. This is, for my money, and arguably the most important story of our time. And one that is going to play out over the course of many, many, many years. And you have a standing invitation to come back anytime you have anything to say. And we will certainly invite you back when we have more questions. But we are so grateful to you for your time and for walking us through all of this. And look forward to talking to you again, Chris. Thank you. Awesome. And thanks you guys both for having me. We're on the Seahawks and the Yankees next time and hopefully Seattle gets its MBA team back building. Oh, I have no doubt that they will. No doubt that they will. It's great to see you both. Thank you for having me. I mean, you know, I'm not surprisingly great. Really. That was so much fun, Chris. And really, really helpful. So thank you. And it is really great to see you again, man. Yeah. Awesome. Okay. Good seeing you guys both. All right. Thanks. There's a lot of noise right now around sports betting and a lot of confusion. The reality is legal sports betting is one of the most regulated digital industries in the US. There's strict age and identity verification that keeps minors off the platforms and oversight from over 8,000 regulators across 40 legal states. It's built around responsible gaming with tools like deposit limits, time limits, and self exclusion easily accessible in app. Compare that to illegal and unregulated operators, which still operate at scale with no age verification, no safeguards, no accountability. The sports betting alliance is focused on bringing clarity to this conversation because whether consumers are in a regulated system or outside it has real consequences. Learn more at sportsbeddingaliance.org. Your mission. Love having Chris on. I think he's absolutely wonderful. I think it was very helpful to hear how he's thinking about this acquisition. Not sure I still completely understand the rationale here, but certainly a lot closer to it. We're going to turn now to Dylan Abruzgato, president of TBPN. See how they're interpreting this deal. What they think is going to happen. You heard Julia ask him about what are the KPIs for success? How do you measure whether or not this was a good investment? Chris's answer to that question was a little different than what Dylan's answer is going to be. How Dylan interprets the marketing piece of it is a little different than how Chris interpreted it. I'm sure they can iron all that out. And hundreds of millions can paper over a lot. Now, a chance to see things from the other side of this deal. And so, without further ado, please welcome Dylan to the grow. Dylan, welcome to the grow room. Thank you so much for having me. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. It's a fun week. Julian, I, Julia's here. We were talking earlier this week, sort of recounting our initial reactions to the news. Yeah. I don't think we have any, I don't think there's any ambiguity about why you and John and Jordy all said yes to this. I think there are hundreds of millions of reasons to say yes to this. I remain curious and sensually and I last spoke, I've spoken to more folks who've sort of walked me through the open AI thesis for the deal and we can get into that. But first set us up like what happens? Like does Chris Lehane come and like get into a room with you guys? Does Sam Altman get into a room with you guys and say here's the vision? Yeah. So, about two months ago, right after the Super Bowl, we got essentially like an inbound email and kind of calendar invite from Fiji. Fiji CMO initially under the guys of kind of wanting to give us a sneak peek at something. We didn't think twice kind of part of the course of agreeing to things under embargo and getting demos in advance of interviews on the show. But it kind of became pretty clear right when the call started that it wasn't a product demo and that they were essentially pitching us on what eventually became the acquisition of TBPN. To be clear, none of us had met Chris Lehane at this point and only very recently kind of met him and started talking to him. But the entire deal and negotiation was kind of done with Fiji and her team. But yeah, just to kind of take a step back, like we had absolutely no plans of selling the show. We didn't run a process and I think we were equally surprised at the thought and the idea seemed very unexpected. But from our standpoint, we were kind of at this point with the show where we were reaching a certain scale and definitely relatively well known on our corner of the internet and on Tech Twitter. But we've had these huge ambitions to do a college tour or our version of a deal book or properly cover and take the show to Davos and Milkin and Raiden and kind of all of these shows that you see traditional tech shows go to. But as a 10 person early stage startup, we basically had to either think about raising a proper venture round, which we've all done in the past at previous startups or start thinking about other potential creative exits to help tap into some resources. Which is great. But when you're in that room with Fiji and everyone, they say what? They say we want to be the ones to do this. Why? Essentially, to grow the show as big as possible to take these things. I guess what I wonder is why do they want to grow the show? Why does opening the show? Yeah, I want to grow the show. For sure. I mean, I think you probably know this better than anyone that John and Jordy have this unique ability of taking incredibly complex stories and things that are very, very technical in nature and making them digestible and relatable to pretty much anyone that listens to them. I think there's this kind of rising tides, you know, lift all boats theory around like American AI and essentially like the bigger the show can get and the more people we can reach at this incredibly like crucial turning point in technology. It's beneficial for everyone. I'm going to let Julia jump in here in a minute. Just one more thing. So, as people have sort of theorized about this and there is like a Ben Thompson at Stratek Review of like, there is no theory of the case here. This doesn't make any sense. Some people say, "Okay, well, you know, it's not uncommon for major companies throughout history, not just tech companies to own media outlets, whether you're talking about like GE owning NBC or today like Bloomberg owning Bloomberg media." The best, the better analogy I've heard and it gets to a point about the importance of narrative and storytelling is that it's basically analogous to Apple bringing in Shia Day. However, three or four decades ago, whenever that is. And basically that open AIs in a very competitive race for the future of the most important technology of our lifetime. And they need marketing and they need narrative and they need storytelling and they need PR. And the theory is that somehow if you bring in TPPN that works in the service of that goal. Is that the right thesis? Look, I think, you know, Sam went on an Axio show and referred to us as Genius Marketers, which was incredibly generous and nice at him to say. But like, there's definitely a thinking that in lieu of the 29 sponsor conversations that we're having before, you know, and after the show, if OpenAI is brainstorming their next Super Bowl campaign or if they're thinking through their next, you know, founder video series like, sure, now they can tap into us for ideation or in brainstorming sessions. So I think that's definitely part of it for sure. And if they're doing their version of Google'sitegeist, they're putting John and Jority on stage interviewing everyone. Yeah, I mean, I think that is separate. Like, we're, you know, we can, you kind of have to take our word forward. But, and I know you covered it in the last episode of Grillroom. But like, there is this commitment to editorial independence, covenants or claws, like in the agreement. So, contractually, we don't have to take the show on the road to anything that we don't want to. We have full creative control over everything that we cover on the show. How we talk about it. We just spoke about the New Yorker approach. profile on today's episode right before I hop down. But we're going to evaluate basically like remote show opportunities as though we normally would under the guise of like, does this make the show better? And we'll audience care about this. - Got it. Okay, Julia, I've been boguiding the mic. It's all yours. - No, no, these are great questions. I always love to listen to Dylan be excellent at his job. So when you guys first started talking to VG, it's round the Super Bowl. You finish the deal this week. It's about, it's not that's less than two months kind of for this to kind of go through or just around two months. In that time, you know, OpenAI comes out and says that we're committed to doing less side quests. They shut down Sora, they're pivoting. It feels like they're trying to focus heavily on the anthropic competition. What convinces you guys that you're not just another side quest to OpenAI that could go away in six months a year, depending on whatever Sam refused you to want to focus on next. - Yeah, I mean, really just how hands off they've been in terms of the show itself. Like, you know, I know it's only been a few days since the deal was announced, but absolutely nothing has changed you know, outside of, you know, press appearances like this in terms of how we conduct the show. Our guest lineup has remained completely unchanged. We even, you know, when we were thinking about how we were gonna announce the show on the show and in our newsletter, you know, we had the instinct to bring it to them and say, hey, you know, this is how we're gonna frame it. And it was almost like, you know, you guys do it, however you normally would have. I don't think they're thinking about this like a side quest because I don't think they're thinking about the show as a product of OpenAI at all. - You mentioned kind of on those lines that the goal from OpenAI side is to help you guys grow the audience. And I think we're Dylan and I and others struggle with is, you guys have built an incredible company and an incredible product and clearly there is a deep Silicon Valley audience who watches. It's also a small audience. Comparatively to other networks, some other platforms and other shows like it's small, what is the audience that OpenAI is interested in growing? Like who is the people that they see as the potential success metric for their investment? Is it genuinely just like random people on the internet and we're gonna scale this? Or is there in your conversations like who are they thinking about in terms of that audience? - Yeah, so to be clear, I don't think the goal is to get the viewership numbers up as high as possible. They don't know, none of us want to reach the masses with our show. It's still going to be incredibly incitery. I think the goal with scaling the show is to be able to do things that improve the show that we've always wanted to do but haven't necessarily had their resources to do so. Not to go back to what I said earlier, but these, you know, Madobo style shows, the college tours, you know, deal book style events, they're all ideas that we wanted to do but just didn't have the resourcing or scale to do so. We can now essentially do that to grow the show in terms of the content but still kind of reach that core audience. Having said that, there are still, I don't know, hundreds of thousands of people that work in and around tech and AI that still don't know TBPM. So I still think there's room to grow while still staying incredibly incitery. - You guys have made it pretty clear. You say multiple times like we're not journalists. You're the ideas that you're having this conversation about AI for the community and tech in general and kind of what's happening, which I think is part of what made it appealing to Sam and Fiji is this idea. And they say that, they can have this kind of longer form conversation. Inevitably though, there will come a time when you guys potentially feel internal pressure or external pressure as your audience grows to talk about things that Sam and Fiji would do for you don't talk about, to have debates and conversations that they don't want. I'm curious if you guys have already started thinking about whether that changes your approach to giving a heads up to Sam. Being like, by the way, we're gonna go hard on this, the way that if you guys were owned by Meta, you might talk to Mark or Google, you would talk to Sundar or like how are you thinking about that moment 'cause it feels like it's inevitable for any media company. Whether or not you're labeled as journalists or not, that there will be a pressure if from that audience to not just come across like a public relations firm. - Yeah, I mean, I have no visibility or insight into what that could look like in terms of what we would cover, but again, the goal and the mandate is to not change anything about how we cover stories and topics. And we've now been live only a handful of days, post acquisition and both times in the intro of the show, we've covered an opening-eye story that's been in the news just likely would have a few months ago. So I don't anticipate any sort of heads up internally if we're gonna go hard on Sam. If anything, he said to us in private and both publicly that he wants us to continue to go hard on him. So I have no plans and I know the guys have no plans in kind of changing how I do that. But I do think that the fact that we're not journalists and this is essentially like a variety show or a talk show or a commentary layer on top of the news is an important distinction. Founders and publicists come to us all the time asking us to break news or offer us exclusives on the show. And every single time we kind of recommend and intro them to the Wall Street journals and bloombers of the world with the goal that they essentially like break the news with the scoop olive famous that we talk about on the show. But and then come back on to like have a conversation with us and kind of more of like a color commentary view on the why. - I wanna go back to the growth question. How do you see this growing? Like what are the big priorities for you now as you think about growing the business? And what is the sort of level of investment that you have to do that? - Yeah, I mean, we haven't like come up with an exact like dollar number on the budget. But we have already spoken about and started kind of loosely planning this college tour in Davos and Milken and kind of all the things I've already laid out with the full blessing of kind of open AI and the resourcing standpoint. The in terms of like the growth numbers, I think it's, it's, Jorities kind of gone on the record saying are about 200,000 people that care about the content that we put out there. We wanna make sure that all of them are consuming it wherever it's easiest for them. So, you know, I'm a realist. I know that not everyone has three hours a day to watch a show every day. So we put out in addition to the live show on X and YouTube, there's a cut down version of the show that we call Diet TVPN. That's kind of like our version of the daily. There's the clips that we're probably most well known for that you know see tens of millions of impressions just on X alone every week. But we really just wanna make sure that everyone that works kind of like in and around tech is consuming our content. Wherever they may be. - You've worked in, you've worn many hats in your career. What is the, why do you think this is working? Like, and again, it's a small audience, but it's a very powerful audience and obviously just made a massive amount of money. And now you get to grow the business further and to your point sort of like become you know at the sort of 10 pull at at milkin or at Davos. So why did this work? What is the particular alchemy that made this work in your view? - Yeah, I mean, I've heard you talk about it. I've read Emily Sumberks take on it, but like the truth is we're just having so much fun every single day. Like our brainstorming sessions every single morning are like the only mandate is like, if it sounds good to us and if it makes us laugh, like let's do it. We're genuinely just like building the show that we wanna watch. Like we, you know, before and during the show, like we, you know, doon scrolls, heck, Twitter just as much as anyone else. And so we're just like essentially throwing on the show that we've always wanted to watch. And so every other industry, whether it's sports or politics kind of has this like, almost like variety show or talk show or like fun version that kind of like juxtaposes the journalists, whether that's, you know, pardon the interruption around the horror and like that's where my brain goes or pat McAfee is kind of the more frequent comparison on the sports side of things. And that was just sorely missing in tech. And so I think everyone, the easy, you know, low blow against TV can is that we, you know, we don't ask like hard hitting questions, but again, we're not, we're not journalists. We're just putting on a fun interactive variety show for tech and like honestly, that's the secret sauce. - Yeah, and I accept that the nut being journalists part, and I truly, I do truly think that you're having a hell of a lot of fun. I wonder just to go back to Julia's question to frame it differently is like, how does the conversation around the AI industry change by virtue of the ownership? Is there a different conversation about Gemini or Anthropic or whatever, by virtue of the fact that you are now, yes, like a great really fun media company, but also part of the marketing arm of OpenAI. - Yeah, I mean, in my mind, again, not to continue saying this, but I really don't think anything's gonna change. I like, we're not quite ready to announce it, but another huge lab CEO was scheduled to come on in the coming weeks. It's something that we booked before the deal was announced. And in all of the conversations I've had, with his team since the steel has been announced. Like, nothing's changed. We still plan on having that big lab CEO come on the show. So, you know, there are people that we're never going to do the show anyway for one reason or another, but we still want to have the exact same conversations. And like, on the flip side, Gemini was our, you know, second biggest sponsor behind Ramp for the past year in Change. And we had 29 sponsors that were essentially paying us. We were, you know, a bootstrapped media company. And I don't want to say if anything were even more editorial and dependent now, but there is this kind of removal of thought in the back of our mind. It's like, well, you know, can we say this? Because we have this one huge sponsor that's, you know, on a multi-year deal with us. And can we say this about Gemini? Because they're a huge sponsor. And we kind of only have now, I guess, one industry in the back of our mind. Do you have any concerns? I mean, again, look, hundreds of millions of reasons to not be concerned about anything. But do you have, oh, and I have to ask, sorry, you're not going to answer this, but I have to ask, cash stock. What's the mix here? Comment on the deal. I had to ask. Yeah. I guess what I want to do, have any concerns? Like, there's been a lot of sort of skepticism about why OpenAI is doing this. And I trust like Fiji is smart, Sam is smart. Ben Thompson's a smart guy. Like, if he can't figure this out, like, and if there is, like, you know, sort of a pattern of like, to Julius Point of OpenAI sort of like placing bets and then sort of deciding to pivot pretty quickly in another direction, does that give you any pause? No. I mean, again, I don't necessarily think that they're thinking about this like a OpenAI. Like a part of the company. Everything that I've seen so far has made us feel like and act like nothing's changed. You know, I've been, this is my fourth acquisition I've been through. And I know, like, I'm a realist. I know that it doesn't always end up exactly what was initially pitched to you. But this one at least so far feels different. Yeah. I want to ask you a two-pronged question because they're kind of related. The part of how OpenAI is thinking about this and obviously you are not Sam, you're not Fiji, so you're not going to answer on behalf of them by any means. And I respect that. But if you look to Dylan's earlier points about NBC Universal and GE or Bloomberg and Bloomberg Media. Bloomberg Media has an added in subscription business and NBC Universal has significant theme parking cable revenue that played into these companies. Put yourself in their shoes. What is the KPI for you guys as a successful part of the company? Even though few don't think you are, you are technically part of it. So what are they looking for? And in relation to that, walk me through the process of what ads and brand deals now look like. But there was a lot of I think confusion around what that part of the business now looks like under OpenAI and what that might become. Yep. So I can tell you what was told to us in terms of the KPI, which was essentially like drive the global conversation around AI as much as possible. We're going to continue to ask guests like Andrew Huberman and Ken Burns and Jake Paul and Sarah Foster who have all been on the show, like how they're using AI and how it's improving their workflow and just like deeply kind of like enhancing that conversation across all of our like non-tech guests. And then on the brand side of things, we did have 29 sponsors as of last week. We now have zero. So we did wind down the ads business and there's kind of no plans to kind of bring that back. And the main reason for that is because speaking on my personal behalf, because of all the conversations I've had before, during and after those ad deals were signed, it frees up a ton of time, energy and bandwidth on our side to not have to worry about 29 and basically like brand conversations and renewal conversations and net new pitches and reporting conversations. And all of that time is now essentially like freed up to think about growing the show and scaling the show and improving the show day to day. So it's mostly just around our time. So let's say the KPIs driving global conversation, we're also in media, I hate when that's the KPI given to me or someone else because it's how do you track it, right? At least with like affiliate links, you're like, here's how much we sold based on what we linked to an Amazon. The idea of what you're saying is effectively a strong comms perspective from Sam. Is this idea that, oh, look how AI is increasing the workflow for people. Look how it is increasing productivity, look at what it's bringing to the world, which is what Google really leaned into a deep mind. I'm not saying that this is only a Sam old and thing. I wonder if that gives you guys positive or how you think about having on AI detractors, having on someone like whether it would be an ad zitron, not that I'm saying you would have them on or a professor or whatever it might be, a senator or congressman who's thinking about this from the anti AI or the far more negative AI side of the equation. Like does that now play into more of a problematic part of your company, even though you are remaining editorial independent, according to you and open AI? Yeah, I mean, not at all. I'm drawing a blank on the name of the guest, but yesterday in the group chat, while it was live, everyone was texting like least AI killed guest of all time, but we love that. I got nothing's going to change in terms of who we bring on the show. And if it's someone that is, you know, again, to use the lingo, like not a GI pill, like we're, they're still going to come on the show and we're going to have an engaging and interactive conversation around why? When do we get the open AI rug be sure? I don't know. I mean, we love our merch. I know our listeners and friends do too. So no plans to stop doing TbP merch. I guess one thing I would ask is like, I think there's something happening in media right now where deals happen that seem like total anomalies. And then people wonder, is this the future of media deals? Like David Ellison gets Barry Weiss and it's like, oh, is this a sign of something happening in the market? Or is this just that like David Ellison, specifically David Ellison, very specifically wanted Barry Weiss and had a very specific demand given his acquisition? And open AI has a very specific desire for Tpbn because of their interest in growing the business. You got to start calling it Tpbn. Sorry, excuse me, Tpbn. It's a mouthful. Is there some lesson that the industry at large can take from this deal? Are there future deals that might be comparable to this? Yeah, look, I don't know if another AI lab is going to see this and think we need our media company and go out and acquire another. I know that we didn't run a process. We didn't shop this around. There wasn't a sea of potential buyers. I know this was a very clearly Fiji's idea and something that the company really wanted to invest in. We heard them out and sat with it and thought it made the most sense to grow the production capabilities of the show and improve it on a day-to-day basis. My personal take, again, has nothing to do with open AI's or honestly Tpbn's, is that this is not, but I don't think this is a trend. I don't think there are many layers into why this makes sense and why this was a unique one-off deal in my mind. But again, I have no idea if a potential other competing lab is going to try to get their version of it. Well, do you see, to that point, the thesis, Julie and I were discussing Tyler Dank put it out there that narrative is the moat and that every tech company needs narrative, needs storytelling. Do you accept that thesis and might therefore more platform companies think about, "Oh, okay, who is our Tpbn?" Yeah, I mean, I don't really see this as a narrative telling or storytelling arm of open AI at all. I do think that a clear and cohesive marketing strategy and a proper story that you're telling to customers and potential hires is incredibly important, even more so now than ever. But there are a lot of takes as to why both sides did this deal online and not all of them were right. So, I think it's a good idea to put it mildly. Julia, you got anything else? Yeah, I've got two. One is just going back to and not to harp. I apologize. But you know, when you're talking to the team at OpenAI and it's separate from their business and I get what you're saying. This is the end. This is not chat GPT, this is not the Quest for AGI, this is not the agentic future they're competing on, I totally get that. There must have been though some level of even fun conversation about how you're going to grow this business and what that investment might look like from OpenAI on a quarterly basis, on an annual basis. And I'm just curious if you can talk about how much you are expecting, whether, however you want to talk about it from OpenAI specifically versus just kind of being within this bigger machine because part of the reason you make the deal is you guys would be dumb to turn it down. The other part of the reason that you do it is that it does theoretically help grow from a financial standpoint. So I'm just curious what that investment strategy from OpenAI looks like into you guys specifically and what those conversations were like. Yeah, again, there's been no kind of like dollar number associated with it. It was more of just like a high level and kind of philosophical alignment that we now have there blessing to kind of make editorial decisions that improve the show each day. So yeah, not sure exactly which part of that you want to double click on, but again, we've had these ambitions for months now and we now feel like we can properly say yes to Davos this time. So it's just like I'm just obsessed with process. Is it like you guys want to go do something like Davos or whatever, something big and you go and talk to Chris or whomever it might be about writing a check or do you have a black MX that it's just like we're just going to go build it and they don't really care because they're busy focusing on a trillion dollar IPO. So they're not really looking at what we're doing. How much freedom do you have versus how much conversation is happening in terms of that investment in the bigger projects? Yeah, I mean, the honest answer is there's still a lot to figure out in terms of process. We haven't received OpenAI emails yet, but we're kind of like in the process of onboarding where like this deal was from initial conversation to close was I think under too much months and so we all move pretty quickly and still need to figure out a lot of like formal processes, but we're kind of just acting under the blessing. Are you staying in the Thunderdome? Altradome, yes forever. Altradome, what is it? For a share. TPBN from the Thunderdome. Brutal. The last one I have for you, Dylan on my end is I want to get your take on not necessarily related to this deal by any means, but something Dylan and I talked about in the podcast yesterday is I think ironically the narrative around the narrative acquisitions and you doom scroll like we doom scroll. I feel like every weekend there is some of the loudest voices from Silicon Valley on X being like we need to buy wired and redo it. We need to buy the New York Times because it they feel like it's so anti favorable to AI and kind of technology in general. There was a debate happening today on X about this exact thing. I want your opinion on that. You kind of come from media. There's a need for independent media and not saying independent media is dying by any means, but this idea of if the goal for media companies is to eventually sell into a larger tech or entertainment company or whatever it is, very Silicon Valley culture of the startup to then sell to Apple to Google whatever it might be. I want to get your opinion on that conversation and how you kind of think about to Dylan's earlier question, where media is going, what you see as the future of independent media and kind of just that realm of things. Yeah, I guess in my mind there's a clear difference between like journalistic media companies and entertainment based media companies. I personally don't believe that journalistic media companies should explore similar outcomes. I think they play a really important role in terms of what we do and how we put on the show every day. We open the show every morning with an hour of reacting to the news and we have copies of the journal and FT on the desk that kind of informed them on a log. We are huge fans of traditional journalistic media companies and I think it's different for entertainment based media companies. At least personally that's how I differentiate it in my mind. In terms of the future, I don't know, I've kind of dedicated my entire career to the future of live TV and I really think the future is kind of like in this content that the viewers can engage with. So something that usually falls through the cracks is the live chat that is kind of the backbone of TVPN and whether it's issuing corrections or alerting the guys of breaking news or actually being able to log in and ask Mark Cuban or Ken Burns a question directly that the guys will then read off is incredibly novel. Almost a decade ago I kind of started my career in tech at H.C. trivia and it was kind of the same belief that like why would you ever watch a game show on your couch when you can now via live streaming and technology overlays and chat functionality like actively participate in all of these traditional TV formats. So I think whether it's game shows or talent competitions or news shows or reality competitions, there should be versions of those that live online that everyone that wants to participate in can. So I think this is the beginning of that trend but I have been saying that for 10 years so we'll see. All right, last question then we'll let you get out of here. After the meeting with Fiji, what did you do? What did you do to celebrate? Did you did you did you did you did you did you did you did you did you did you did you do nothing? No. I just thought about it. What was the show tomorrow? Yeah, no, I mean that that was an initial conversation that kicked off an intro to a corp dev team that kicked off in a low-eye process that kicked off a diligence process that kicked off a definitive agreement process that you didn't go somewhere in Hollywood and have like a like a I don't know about a champagne. There was no one went out like. No, it's one of those things where it's like at any point like this could change and so even it wasn't until a few days ago when the definitive sign that we all were 100% confident the thing would happen. So I've always said a deal is not a deal until it's a deal so that was kind of the mindset here. But I don't know we're a live show and we haven't missed a day and there's just there's no time to celebrate. So we're going to. I just as a company that like does great merch and has like gongs and you know like a fire horse in the studio. I just figured there'd be some token of the moment. Oh, we hit the gun on the show on the show for sure. Sure. Well, look, all kidding aside, all harping aside, congrats. Thank you. This is a level of exit that I think many people only dream of and excited to see what you guys do, excited to see how open AI leverages the relationship and we appreciate you coming on to talk about it. Yeah, of course. Thank you so much for having me and again, not to keep harping and there's only so much a week and say before folks start to believe it themselves, but I genuinely think this show only gets better from here. So I'll be live every day from 11 to 2 Pacific. Hope so. All right. Thank you, Dylan. Okay. Talk soon. The grill room is a presentation of Odyssey and partnership with Puck. I'm Dylan Byers and I want to thank today's myriad guests, Chris Lahain, Lopin AI, Dylan Abruzcato, the TBPN, and of course, my partner and co-host Julia Alexander. I also want to thank the show's executive producers, Puck co-founder John Kelly, executive editor Ben Landy and director of editorial operations, Gaby Grossman. The show is produced and edited as always by Molly Nugent and a special thanks to the team at Odyssey, Kelly Turner, and Bob Tavidol.