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Patreon co-founder Sam Yam joined OpenAI last month to lead its creator initiative — and he’s already got his first project set up.
Yam is partnering with podcast host Chloe Shih, who launched her podcast “Office Drama”
earlier this year, on a new series to explore how technology can help those navigating parenthood and the first years of a child’s education. The series, the specifics of which the company has not disclosed, hopes to showcase how AI’s development can help families, in line with Yam’s intention upon hiring to help creators “shape culture” and “unite diverse communities together.”
“Being a parent is becoming increasingly expensive and even out of reach for many who are already trying to balance their professional and personal lives,” said Shih, who’s expecting a child, in a statement. “I’ve often seen tech products focusing too much on convenience and not enough on addressing actual problems that the everyday person faces, and I want to make sure we build for people outside the tech bubble, too.”
Shih will also use OpenAI’s Dots, its always-on AI agent and competitor to Meta’s Muse that it unveiled during its DevDay showcase last month, to help produce the project.
Yam, who co-founded Patreon as a creator-focused monetization platform in 2013 and served as its president, announced on X last month that he would join OpenAI as its head of creator product — and that Patreon’s heads of product and engineering would join him. The exits followed Patreon’s layoffs in July, when it pink-slipped roughly 20% of its staff.
Yam wrote in a Sept. 22 X thread that he loved creators’ “relentless dedication to the craft” and was excited to help them bring “many more of their ideas to life.”
“I believe human creativity is paramount,” he wrote. “It allows us to see ourselves reflected in the world around us and drives authentic connections — and at the heart of it is a universal desire to be seen as we are and know that we are not alone.”
OpenAI‘s embrace of creators was made clear earlier this year when it poached Charles Porch, who connected celebrities to Instagram and helped them use the platform to bolster their careers, from Meta earlier this year. Some of those efforts have landed participating creators in hot water, however, including a maligned creators’ trip OpenAI organized in August to Wildflower Farms, a luxury estate in New York’s Hudson Valley.
