From two guys
in a studio
to OpenAI.
The TBPN story. Zero investors. 18 months. Terms undisclosed.
Two people who couldn't stop talking about tech.
John Coogan, co-founder of Soylent and Lucy nicotine pouches, veteran YouTuber, EIR at Founders Fund -- where his first deal was OpenAI's post-ChatGPT funding round in 2022. He meets Jordi Hays through Will Manidis in 2023 and they bond instantly over shared obsession with tech details and business models.
Sam Altman funded Coogan's first company in 2013. They worked together at Y Combinator. Coogan's first deal at Founders Fund was OpenAI's post-ChatGPT round in 2022. When TBPN got acquired by OpenAI in 2026, Coogan called it a "full circle moment." That circle took 13 years.
'24
They casually launched Technology Brothers as a joke side project. They quickly rebranded to TBPN to make it sound less misogynistic. Then things got serious. When the acquisition was announced on 2 April 2026, Coogan opened the show with: "This is not an April Fools joke."
They copied the sports TV playbook for tech.
Three-hour daily live shows from Los Angeles, streaming across X, YouTube, Spotify, and Apple. They adopted the full sports TV production bible: tickers, graphics, suits, gongs, and "TRADED" cards. TechCrunch called it "SportsCenter for the tech industry." Their competitors were Bloomberg, CNBC, and Fox Business.
TechCrunch: "a safe space where industry power players can speak candidly and be questioned by fellow insiders."
- Sam Altman OpenAI
- Mark Zuckerberg Meta
- Satya Nadella Microsoft
- Marc Benioff Salesforce
- Alex Karp Palantir
- Mark Cuban Investor
They became #1 and built the infrastructure to stay there.
A daily Substack that became required reading for every founder and VC. A directory of over 200 top AI builders and investors. They lived inside the ecosystem they were covering.
Zero outside investors. Profitable from month one. 100% bootstrapped. They never needed anyone else's money to build one of the biggest shows in tech.
They reinvented what a sponsorship could be.
Year-long, category-exclusive deals at $87,000 per month. They hired Dylan Abruscato as President, their 10th employee, to scale ad sales. They nearly sold out their entire 2026 inventory with around 30 sponsors. They turned even boring ad reads into entertaining segments the audience genuinely enjoyed.
Ten people. In their first full year they made over $5 million. In 2026 they were on track for over $30 million. A 6x single-year leap, all from ad revenue, zero outside money. The default water-cooler show for terminally online tech builders.
OpenAI acquired the whole operation.
OpenAI's first ever media company acquisition. Announced internally by Fidji Simo, CEO of AGI Deployment. Reports to Chris Lehane. Editorial independence protected by a formal "Editorial Independence Covenant." Sam Altman on X: "I don't expect them to go any easier on us. Am sure I'll do my part to help enable that with occasional stupid decisions."
The New York Times: "Silicon Valley's newest obsession"
The standard comms playbook doesn't work for OpenAI.
Fidji Simo's internal message was direct: "We're not a typical company. We're driving a really big technological shift." OpenAI also recently closed a $122 billion funding round at an $852 billion valuation and is reportedly going public in 2026. Rather than build their own media operation ahead of an IPO, they acquired the one that already had the audience, credibility, and guests.
OpenAI just bought a show that covers OpenAI.
The show now sits inside OpenAI's Strategy org, reporting to Chris Lehane -- a political operative described as a master of the "political dark arts," who invented the phrase "vast right-wing conspiracy" as a tool to deflect press scrutiny. Wired's headline: "OpenAI buys positive news coverage." Altman on X: "I don't expect them to go any easier on us. Am sure I'll do my part to help enable that with occasional stupid decisions."
$30M+ in projected 2026 revenue, confirmed by the Wall Street Journal. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed -- but that's the number OpenAI bought. A media company that didn't exist 18 months ago.
"The world is changing quickly but TBPN will stay the same. Live every weekday, just with a lot more resources."
-- Jordi Hays, co-founder and co-host of TBPN
Three things this signals.
1. Acquired credibility beats manufactured credibility. Simo said it herself: the standard comms playbook doesn't work for OpenAI. So they bought 18 months of trust that would have taken years to build.
2. The lean media model is proven. $30M ARR, 10 people, no investors. Format innovation matters more than headcount. The SportsCenter playbook applied to a new vertical works.
3. The editorial independence covenant is the actual asset. The moment TBPN's credibility goes, the acquisition is worthless. That structural tension is actually the best protection the audience has.
