Dylan Byers: Why does OpenAI want to own TBPN? What’s the thesis?

Chris Lehane: There’s a couple of different levels to this. First and foremost, Jordi, John, and their whole team are incredibly good at unpacking the ideas behind technology and specifically A.I.—the proverbial why and the how. I remember listening to them when we released o1. We put out an explanation describing it, but then I listened to their show. They did a better job than I think we did at actually explaining it and translating it. Now, they were explaining it and translating it to a high-signal, Silicon Valley “opinion elite” audience… but they did a really good job of actually translating why it was important and what the big ideas were behind it. What they really do is break down the ideas behind the news.

The second part of that is, can we scale that particular audience while maintaining the quality and quantity? Their core audience is roughly 70,000 high-signal people that really tune in on a daily basis. But there is a larger audience out there that is really A.I. curious and A.I. interested.

The third point is [marketing]. There have been a lot of analogies drawn to Microsoft and MSNBC, Bloomberg LLP and Bloomberg Media, Westinghouse and CBS, GE and NBC. The more apt analogy here is when Apple brought in Chiat/Day and created an in-house agency that became the Apple Media Lab. In an age where content is the most important piece, bringing them in as the equivalent of a marketing agency for this era and this audience is an incredibly important aspect for us.

Dylan: But why does OpenAI need to be the one to scale this? Why spend this money?

We are at a moment when there is a much broader and growing interest in understanding the how and the why behind A.I. The 70,000 people they hit right now are incredibly important, but imagine if it’s a much bigger audience—and that does take resources.

The second part is this aspect of bringing in an agency. 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. Put those together and you can start to see some really interesting opportunities.

And look, I never want to diminish costs or anything like that. We just went through a $122 billion raise—the largest in history. Getting your head around the scale and scope of this technology, how transformative it is—this is not just your normal, highly successful startup; this is an entirely different sort of animal. People spend enormous amounts of money on their marketing agencies. We’re bringing that capacity in-house with expertise in terms of how people actually communicate—particularly A.I. users.

Dylan: Is this a one-off—or a template for how tech companies will think about media going forward?

I do think we’ve seen technology platforms begin to really think about this. You look at how Netflix has changed how they put information out right [from] their platform. When I was at Airbnb, we used our audience as a distribution channel where we would communicate with them right through the platform. We were among the first to really use the actual distribution channel of the platform itself to do our big product launches. And why not? [At OpenAI] we have a much bigger audience than all the traditional conventional media companies added together.

I think in the age that we are in, content is king. I just think we need to understand and recognize that we’re not in a time period anymore where you’re just speaking passively through paid advertising, or putting out an announcement in a blog or an old-school press conference or launch event. It’s a totally different world right now.

Julia Alexander: What kinds of media or digital products will OpenAI build around this?

You should expect us to be building out some compelling and interesting franchises of our own. Over the last year, we brought on a chief economist, Ronnie Chatterji, and did a series of physical OpenAI economic events. We’ll be opening a space in Washington, D.C., called the A.I. Workshop, which we’re thinking of as an A.I. laboratory of democracy. You could see creating an entire content series around that. We have something called the Forum, which has an A.I.-native audience of around 70,000 to 90,000 on a daily basis and is primarily a venue for developers and builders. We do something called “A.I. Academies,” tutorial modules for small businesses. We’ve been doing a lot of, in effect, beta tests of concepts that we could really build out, particularly as we approach a billion users. There’s just a big distribution network out there.

Julia: How do you maintain editorial independence while also using TBPN as part of a broader strategy? How does that not create a problem for guests like Zuck, Dario, potentially Elon, who don’t want to participate in an OpenAI marketing machine?

I’m gonna give a little bit of a wiseass answer and then I’ll give a serious answer. The wiseass part of it begins with the fact that Elon owns this thing called Twitter. All those people you just named are on Twitter. They seem to be comfortable being on Twitter. So like, I do think that that has a little bit been asked and answered. If you have a platform that seems to be very effective as a place to go and share your content and information, you’re gonna go on there.

The more serious answer: We do have an editorial-independence commitment that was built into the contract. It’s a very specific provision. This [deal] only works if they’re able to maintain their editorial independence. I have a lot of faith and confidence that that will be the case.

Dylan: And how do you win the broader narrative battle around Sam Altman? Elon Musk is trying to kick the shit out of him every day. There’s a New Yorker story this week saying he can’t be trusted. How do you convince the world that Sam is not the person that people are starting to depict him to be?

OpenAI, under Sam, has a very specific mission and purpose: to ultimately build A.G.I. that benefits all of humanity. And under Sam, OpenAI has led the effort to democratize access to this incredibly powerful technology so as many people as possible can participate in it. We have nearly a billion people who are using this on a regular basis and the vast, vast majority of them are using it for free. We’re able to do that because Sam put in place a very different structure. We are a not-for-profit that oversees a public benefit corporation—the public effectively owns a big chunk of this through the nonprofit.

I also think you can judge someone’s character by who they are willing to stand up to and against. And right now there is a real battle, maybe even a fight going on, between Sam and Elon and Mark Zuckerberg, and I think the fact that Sam is taking both of those folks on speaks for itself.

There really is this “people versus the powerful” dynamic that is taking place. It shouldn’t just be one person. Ultimately, this does need to be done through the small-d democratic process. 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. I think you look at the actions, and those actions matter a hell of a lot more than words.