Hoffman: OpenAI's TBPN acquisition was driven entirely by Sam Altman's preference
Liz Hoffman · OpenAI's TBPN Mistake, SpaceX’s $2 Trillion IPO?, Iran Disables Amazon Infrastructure · Apr 6, 2026 · at 13:59
Semafor editor Liz Hoffman reacts to OpenAI's acquisition of the live tech talk show TBPN.
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“This is just a thing Sam wanted to do. It seems to me that the simplest solution is, is the easiest one. And, you know, they are going to have to you know, follow a much broader public discourse strategy to convince the huge swaths of the public that really just increasingly by the day hates this technology and is terrified of it and doesn't like the people founding it. And, you know, Afraid of losing their jobs. I mean, I don't think I don't think this is going to change the narrative. And I guess I'd be surprised if really smart people inside open AI thought it would. This just seems to me like this is a thing Sam likes, so his company bought it.”
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