Sam Altman Bought A Media Company. Now What? w/ Emily Sundberg - The Story
TechStuff
iHeartPodcasts
4.3 • 1.9K Ratings
🗓️ 8 April 2026
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
TBPN started with a simple premise: what if the tech world got the ESPN treatment? Eighteen months later, it is a profitable independent media company — until last week, when OpenAI acquired it for hundreds of millions of dollars.
Oz sits down with Emily Sundberg, author of the daily business newsletter Feed Me and frequent TBPN guest, to unpack what the deal actually means. They get into why OpenAI went shopping for a media company in the first place, what independence is really worth when a nine-figure offer lands in your inbox, and what this deal reveals about the strange new economy of attention. They also get into how Emily Sundberg built Feed Me into a thriving independent business — and why she's in no rush to follow TBPN out the door.
Additional Reading:
- You cannot compete with people who are having more fun than you.
- Processing my San Francisco trip. - by Emily Sundberg
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an IHeart podcast. |
| 0:02.5 | Guaranteed human. |
| 0:04.4 | No gloss, no filter. |
| 0:07.4 | Just stories. |
| 0:09.1 | Spoken without fear. |
| 0:10.9 | Person who is not generous can not be an artist. |
| 0:13.8 | The world will be at peace only when it is ruled by poets and philosophers. |
| 0:18.4 | Listen to my weekly podcast, the Pooja Abhawad show |
| 0:21.1 | on the IHeart Radio app, |
| 0:22.9 | Apple Podcasts, |
| 0:24.2 | or wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:27.6 | Come for the honesty. |
| 0:29.2 | Stay for the fire. |
| 0:56.6 | God is happening. But I'm not talking about the turning point where AI can now create its own self-improving systems. |
| 1:05.6 | I'm talking about the realization by AI companies that having a voice in the wider human culture has become ex-essential important. |
| 1:14.9 | Last week, OpenAI acquired TBPN, a daily podcast about tech and business news for a price reported in the low hundreds of billions of dollars. |
| 1:19.9 | And I can't think of anyone better place to break down this story with today than our guest, Emily Sumberg. |
| 1:24.6 | Her newsletter, Feed Me, is one of the busiest independent media companies out there. |
| 1:28.1 | She has a sixth sense for what makes media and culture tick. |
| 1:34.1 | And she's been a regular on TBPN. In fact, last year she called it the only media business I'm jealous of. Emily, welcome to tech stuff. I'm so happy to be here. No, thank you for coming on. |
| 1:39.1 | I've been a fan for a while. And before we get into TPPN, tell us about FeedMe. How did it come |
| 1:43.5 | about? Where's did it come about? |
... |
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