TechBro Propaganda Network? (TPBN)
How Sam Altman is trying to buy distribution through a 2nd-best podcast network.
🎥 On AI(r): How Sam Altman is turning TBPN into a distribution channel
👉 Go to German Version: 🇩🇪 [Hier auf Deutsch]
I rubbed my eyes. The tech podcast TBPN, after only about a year of existence, announces its sale for a nine-figure sum. The buyer: OpenAI. What?!
Ah, of course! I fell for it. It’s April 1st, isn’t it? — Not a chance! Just days after Sam Altman vowed to turn his company around and refocus, neglecting side issues in favour of make-or-break battles, the AI lab now wants to take over a kind of sports studio for tech bros in Patagonia vests and is paying more than 100 million US dollars for it.
TPBN stands for Technology Business Programming Network and broadcasts news from the region for 3 hours a day. The video podcast is produced by the serial entrepreneurs Jordi Hays and John Coogan, who are also the hosts of the news program. Analysis services rank it in the top 1.5 per cent of podcasts. However, this doesn't put it in the true top league. With approximately 70,000 listeners per episode, it only has slightly more listeners than the Doppelgänger Podcast, which has around 50,000 downloads.
What makes him attractive, however, is his target audience. Business owners, decision-makers, and users get their information about technology, and therefore primarily about AI, from this channel. It seems that OpenAI simply wants to gain control of the narrative surrounding artificial intelligence.
I'm rather sceptical as to whether that can succeed. TBPN was also valued for its independence. Nobody wants to watch Sam Altman's corporate propaganda in a 180-minute infomercial.
Nevertheless, the quick deal of the TBPN creators will motivate many new creators to step up their efforts or develop entirely new formats. For a long time now, professional podcasts have been virtually indistinguishable from asynchronous television.
Podcasters and newsletter publishers building a large following around AI topics are currently making a killing. Chips and hardware can be bought with billions in funding from NVIDIA's Jensen Huang. How to convince users of their services remains an open question. And open too are the marketing and PR budgets of the major AI companies.
🔗 Financial Times | The Wall Street Journal
💬 Quote of the Week
“Moving from commentary to real impact in how this technology is distributed and understood globally is incredibly important to us.”
Jordi Hays- TBPN Host on the transition from journalism to distribution.
📰 Here are the other news stories of the week:
🔌 Anthropic pulls the plug on OpenClaw: Anthropic acted swiftly, cutting off the use of Claude subscriptions via third-party tools like OpenClaw as of April 4th. Official reasoning: The "unoptimized" use of agents consumes too much capacity and bypasses laboriously built caching efficiencies, which is why power users are now being asked to pay for extra tokens via pay-as-you-go. While OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger (now at OpenAI) calls the move "sad for the ecosystem," Anthropic is trying to cushion the churn with free credits and discount bundles. A classic move to fix unit economics ahead of a potential IPO flirtation. 🔗 Business Insider
👋 Fidji Simo takes a break: OpenAI loses its Product Chief. OpenAI President Fidji Simo is taking a surprise sabbatical to focus on her health and family. A major blow for Sam Altman, as Simo—following the Instacart exit—was seen as the person who could translate the technological "miracle" of GPT into scalable consumer products. While the company emphasizes that she will return, the Valley rumor mill is already churning over whether the immense pressure of upcoming model releases and internal reorganization exceeded her breaking point. Either way, it raises questions when top personnel go on leave in the middle of "crunch time" ahead of an IPO.
🔗 Wired
👩⚕️ BioNTech billions for Doctolib: The Strüngmanns buy the dip. Andreas and Thomas Strüngmann are using their Hexal and BioNTech fortunes for a massive secondary deal in the French doctor appointment platform Doctolib, albeit at a significantly lower valuation than in the last official round. The previous valuation stemmed from the Corona boom era. While the unicorn was profitable for the first time in 2025 and is eyeing a 60 million euro profit for 2026, the entry of these pharma legends at a bargain price signals two things: on one hand, the ultimate knightly accolade for Doctolib's platform dominance; on the other, the bitter end of "growth-at-all-costs" valuations in the digital health sector. The platform was also recently the subject of a critical segment on Jan Böhmermann's “Neo Magazin Royale.”
🔗 manager magazine | Neo Magazine Royale (YT)
🪰 More news can be found in the latest episode of the Doppelgänger Podcast…
🔗 Doppelgänger Podcast
📶 Chart of the Week: SpaceX’s Hockey Stick Valuation
80 percent of SpaceX’s targeted valuation was fabricated in the last 12 months. Anyone already looking forward to the newly filed IPO of Elon Musk’s space company, SpaceX, should be aware that venture capitalists valued the successful space firm at less than $500 billion just about a year ago.
Given revenues of approximately $15 billion, that is still a galactic revenue multiple of more than 30. Since Musk took control of the narrative and valuation himself through mergers with his companies X and xAI, SpaceX is reportedly intended to be worth more than $2 trillion at its IPO.
Yet, X and xAI—both highly deficit-ridden—certainly don’t make the otherwise impressive SpaceX any more valuable.
And yet, I am certain Elon Musk will find enough retail investors to enable him and his apostles to exit from this atmospheric “hot air” stunt.
🔗 Public Data
📺 Worth watching: OMR Podcast #893 (approx. 69 min)
Approximately a dozen times I’ve had the pleasure of being a guest in Philipp Westermeyer’s living room. It’s never boring when Philipp and I talk about marketing, startups, or the increasingly important megatrend of artificial intelligence.
A few sneak previews of the OMR presentation and a small status quo download on the topic of AI can be found in episode 893 of the OMR podcast.
🔗 OMR | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube
📺 Sehenswert: Louis Theroux — Inside the Manosphere (about 90 min)
Netflix dives in with “Inside the Manosphere“deep into the toxic ecosystems from Alpha-Grindset, Pick-up artists and radical masculinism, via platforms such as TikTok, which shapes entire generations of young men. The documentary incisively analyzes how lonely victims of algorithms are transformed through targeted manipulation into a loyal army for digital hate preachers, an army that now even influences real political elections. Between disturbing insights into the “red pill” ideology and the question of the lost identity of modern masculinity, this is the ultimate deep dive into a world we would rather ignore, but can no longer.absoluteA must-watch for anyone who wants to understand why the internet is so broken right now.
Danke für den Tipp aus dem Podcast, Substack entwickelt sich (natürlich neben dem Doppelgänger Podcast...) gerade zu einer meiner Lieblingsquellen zum Thema KI!
Erster!