Friday has arrived. And for you dozens of owners of Spotify’s soon-to-be-defunct Car Thing, it’s a day of celebration. Thanks to an outcry from customers (and the threat of lawsuits), the company announced that it’ll provide refunds for the product after it bricks the device on December 9th… but you better have kept your receipt.

And calling all music lovers! It’s, as always, the perfect summer to experience the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival. Our giveaway for a pair of 4-day tickets (plus $1,000 CASH) has been extended through today only. Don’t miss your chance to see Post Malone, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and more incredible acts. Enter now.

In other news… Sam Altman is plotting his world takeover, Complex is acquiring the food festival Family Style, and Skydance is still heavily courting Paramount.

We hope you enjoy this and all upcoming issues, but we have one request: please share your feedback. If you have any thoughts at all about our new look, format, and direction, please reply to this email. It’ll go straight to us. Do not hold back.

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• YouTube – Wolfs

• X (Twitter) – Beyoncé

• Google – Nicholas Galitzine 

• Reddit – Dick Van Dyke

• TikTok – “Bring It Back” - Chris Travis

• Spotify – “I Cover the Waterfront” - Andrew Bird

.ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE.

Sam Altman remakes OpenAI in his own image

The Future. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has hit the gas since being reinstated as CEO in November after a very, very brief firing, inking several deals and considering a major restructuring of the company that would ensure he’s likely never ousted again. With so much money and power on the line, don’t expect OpenAI to ever pull the trigger on handing over control to “humanity” as he previously promised.

Generating a takeover
Having pushed out the board members and execs who were behind his ouster, including board member and safety advocate Helen Toner and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, Sam Altman is more powerful than ever at OpenAI.

• He struck a deal with Apple to potentially have ChatGPT supercharge an updated version of Siri — something Microsoft, OpenAI’s largest investor, doesn’t seem too happy about.

• He announced that the company is already training the next iteration of ChatGPT, which could leapfrog any publicly available LLM… despite the ongoing safety and copyright risks.

• He’s discussing changing OpenAI’s unique profit/nonprofit structure into a fully for-profit one where he could take equity in the company (something he famously hadn’t done).

Somehow, Altman has also been allowed to carve out time for endeavors outside of OpenAI. That includes an ambitious chipmaking startup trying to raise up to $100 billion and an AI-hardware device project in collaboration with former Apple designer Jony Ive, rumored to be a pair of AI-powered earbuds with a forward-facing camera.

Those two projects, of course, will benefit OpenAI, too.

67.8% of you voted Yes in yesterday’s poll: Have rowdy tourists ever hurt your perception of a city?

“Santorini. Mykonos.”

“I live in San Fran. It’s hurting itself!”

“Loud American tourists ruined Venice and Florence decades ago.”

“Lower Broadway in Nashville is completely rowdy; hardly ever venture there as a result. Officials are also considering how to control this tendency while establishing their new East Bank river development.”

.A WORD FROM OUR FRIENDS AT SAGE.

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Media, Music, & Entertainment

• Skydance has sweetened the deal for its takeover deal of Paramount Global, offering less money for Shari Redstone’s National Amusements so more can be allocated to pay other shareholders (and avoid lawsuits). [Read More]

• Sony Pictures CEO Tony Vinciquerra announced that the studio is looking to leverage AI to make producing films and shows more efficient and less expensive. [Read More]

• Hacking group ShinyHunters allegedly stole the personal information of 560 million Ticketmaster customers — potentially one of the biggest data breaches in history. [Read More]

Fashion & E-Commerce

• Amazon has added the ability to order food through Grubhub on its platform — the first time the tech giant has added a third-party delivery service to its offerings. [Read More]

• Adidas’ new sneaker designed by NBA star Anthony Edwards has become a bestseller for the company after becoming Foot Locker’s fastest-growing signature franchise. [Read More]

• Nike has laid off staff from its secretive sneaker archive department that’s essentially the private museum of all things Nike hidden within the brand’s corporate offices. [Read More]

Tech, Web3, & AI

• Anthropic is debuting chatbots that can be assigned to specific tasks like answering emails or looking for online deals. [Read More]

• Goldman Sachs is very high on the worth of Bitcoin and Ethereum after Bitcoin ETFs have taken off. [Read More]

• Startup Lumet has manufactured a new tech that could majorly reduce the cost of manufacturing solar panels, making the US less reliant on components from China. [Read More]

Creator Economy

• An Axios Harris poll found that TikTok’s reputation is backsliding with Americans (from “fair” to “poor”) as the government moves to force a sale of the platform. [Read More]

• Instagram is soaking up user data to help build Meta’s AI. Are virtual influencers on the way? [Read More]

• YouTube co-founder Steve Chen is backing cryptocurrency Pajamas — a memecoin inspired by Chen’s own cat, who was the face of some of YouTube’s early popular cat videos. [Read More]

.MEDIA.

Complex boxes up Family Style

The Future. Complex, hungry for M&A that expands its physical cultural footprint, is acquiring the food-meets-streetwear festival Family Style. After losing Hot Ones-producer First We Feast in the sale from BuzzFeed, Complex may be positioning Family Style as a direct competitor.

Taste trend
With Family Style, Complex is getting back into the popular food space.

• The company will help Family Style expand into media, building content around chefs, brands, and artists.

• That’ll exist as a food-focused vertical within Complex, similar to its music discovery vertical Pigeons & Planes.

• Family Style’s flagship festival will also expand further in Los Angeles and have a pop-up at ComplexCon in Las Vegas.

Family Style, which was founded in 2019 by Ben Shenassafar and Bobby Kim of The Hundreds and Miles Canares, has been at the forefront of pairing restaurants with streetwear brands, like good wine with dinner. That includes collaborations between LA staples like Jon & Vinny’s with Off-White and Mother Wolf with Tommy Hilfiger.

So, don’t be surprised if chefs become the next hot influencers.

.A WORD FROM OUR FRIENDS AT QUARTZ DAILY BRIEF.

Get the global download

Staying up-to-date on all the industries and policies running our global economy isn’t easy.

But don’t worry, dear TFP reader, the Quartz Daily Brief takes the pressure off.

Their free newsletter gives you fresh analyses of all the big dog decisions going down at companies like Tesla, Microsoft, and Nvidia.

That’s why over half a million biz professionals start their mornings with the Quartz Daily Brief.

When you read it, you’ll see why.

• Read: WSJ puts all the chatbots to the test in how accurately they provide info on a range of topics, including health, finance, and current events.

• Watch: Bloomberg sits down with YouTube CEO Neal Mohan about the modern state of the creator economy and what’s next for the industry.

• Review: Wired takes Sightful’s Spacetop G1, an AR laptop, for a spin… which could be the future of personal computing.

Wall Street is in its AI era.

LATEST PODCAST EPISODE

Today we get into the NFL potentially allowing private equity into team ownership, how brands are paying school tuition fees, and how streamers are trying to change the way they pay their talent.