What OpenAI’s TBPN deal reveals about branded entertainment’s limits

Brands are building in-house entertainment studios on the promise that great content earns the audiences advertising can’t buy. OpenAI just revealed what that promise actually costs. Last week the AI company acquired TBPN, a daily tech talk show that streams live on YouTube, X and other platforms, in a deal the Financial Times reported in the low hundreds of millions of dollars. For a company that