In a flurry of deal offers in the high tens of billions of dollars, the bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery is over. David Ellison-owned Paramount will acquire Warner Bros. Discovery.
On Thursday, Warner Bros. Discovery announced that Paramount Skydance’s newest offer of $31 a share was a “superior proposal,” giving Netflix four business days to counter. Netflix then said it would not raise its $82.7 billion all-cash bid for the legacy studio, and would walk away from the deal.
“The transaction we negotiated would have created shareholder value with a clear path to regulatory approval,” said Netflix co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters in a statement Thursday. “However, we’ve always been disciplined, and at the price required to match Paramount Skydance’s latest offer, the deal is no longer financially attractive, so we are declining to match the Paramount Skydance bid.”
Per the terms of the original deal, Warner Bros. Discovery will have to pay a $2.8 billion termination fee to Netflix to end the existing agreement. Paramount’s renewed offer — backed by the world’s sixth-richest person, Oracle’s executive chair, and David Ellison’s father, Larry Ellison — includes paying that breakup fee.
The new deal will see Paramount, which was bought just last year by Ellison’s Skydance Media with heavy financial backing from his father, acquiring the entirety of Warner Bros. Discovery, including its studios, HBO, its streaming service, its games and entertainment divisions, and linear television networks like CNN, TBS, TNT, Discovery, and HGTV.
Ellison, whose Paramount already owns major studios, entertainment, and news businesses, has warned of significant job cuts. His ownership of news network CBS has also attracted controversy and has largely been seen as a sympathetic turn toward the Trump administration, with reporting critical of the administration shelved or facing increased scrutiny by Ellison and CBS’s editor-in-chief, the conservative provocateur Bari Weiss. Larry Ellison is a major donor and supporter of President Trump.
Netflix had announced its intent to acquire WBD in December, offering nearly $83 billion for its studios and streaming service alone. Despite several hostile takeover bids by Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery reaffirmed to shareholders its belief that Netflix’s offer was superior to Paramount’s, which offered $108 billion for the full company including its linear television networks. Paramount’s newest bid, of $31 a share, values WBD at about $111 billion.
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Paramount will take on the about $33 billion in debt held by Warner Bros. Discovery, according to the deal. Larry Ellison, whose net worth is $201 billion, according to Bloomberg, has agreed to supply the additional equity to fulfill Paramount’s bid. Paramount’s market cap is about $12 billion.
The deal is also being financed by a $57.5 billion debt commitment from Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Citi, and Apollo Global Management.
Netflix shares jumped as much as 10% in after-hours trading in New York. Shares in Paramount were up 4.5%.
As Paramount continues its fight for Warner Brothers, Larry Ellison’s company wants TikTok too
TikTok has signed a deal to spin off its U.S. operations to a group controlled by mostly American investors, including software giant Oracle, a company run by billionaire Larry Ellison, a Florida businessman cozy with President Trump.
Ellison, who is also doing battle along with his son David Ellison at Paramount, for control of Warner Brothers, with the father-son billionaires engaging in a hostile takeover offer that is being rejected by the legendary Hollywood studio, will now own a piece of TikTok.
TikTok announced it has sold 80% of the company’s U.S. assets to American and global investors, with CEO Shou Zi Chew breaking the news to employees on Thursday. The alternative was for the app to be banned in U.S., a push first proposed by Trump and then passed by Congress.
Should all of the Ellison’s efforts prove successful, they would add CNN and TikTok to a portfolio that already includes CBS News, which they acquired as part of their Paramount takeover, leading them to control a significant amount of American news distribution.
An Oracle-backed investor group is set to take majority control of TikTok’s U.S. operations, pending regulatory approval. Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
A yearslong saga over the future of TikTok in America is nearing its end. The U.S. division of the popular social media app, which is owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance, will soon be majority-owned by a coalition of U.S. investors that includes Oracle.
The agreement was detailed in an internal memo from TikTok CEO Shou Chew, first reported by Axios. Oracle, alongside private equity firm Silver Lake and the Abu Dhabi-based investment firm MGX, will own 45 percent of TikTok’s U.S. operations. ByteDance will retain a stake just below 20 percent, and affiliates of existing ByteDance investors will own the remaining roughly one-third.
MGX did not respond to requests for comment from Observer. Oracle and Silver Lake declined to comment.
The development follows years of concern over ByteDance’s access to data on U.S. citizens, an estimated 170 million of whom use TikTok. Efforts to either ban the app in the U.S. or force a sale to American owners began last year under the Biden administration, with deadlines later extended multiple times by President Donald Trump.
The terms of TikTok’s new deal appear to closely mirror a framework laid out by the White House in September to place the company’s U.S. division in domestic hands. Under that proposal, Oracle would be responsible for recreating TikTok’s algorithm by retraining a new version for the U.S. market and protecting American user data in a secure cloud. At the time, Trump said Chinese President Xi Jinping had expressed approval of the plans.
Oracle will play a similar role in TikTok’s new agreement, which is expected to close on Jan. 22. The American owners of the division will oversee “retraining the content commendation algorithm on U.S. user data to ensure the content feed is freed from outside manipulation,” according to the Chew’s memo, which also notes that Oracle will serve as a “trusted security partner” upon the deal’s completion.
Austin-based Oracle, co-founded by billionaire Larry Ellison, has emerged as the winner among a crowded group of U.S. players—including MrBeast and Perplexity AI—bidding for ownership of TikTok. The deal is set to further deepen ties between TikTok and the tech company, which already helps the platform store U.S. user data. Oracle’s shares are up by more than 7 percent today (Dec. 19).
The new deal is expected to value TikTok at approximately $14 billion, according to Axios. After it closes, TikTok’s U.S. operations “will operate as an independent entity with authority over U.S. data protection, algorithm security, content moderation and software assurance,” the memo said, while “TikTok global’s U.S. entities will manage global product interoperability and certain commercial activities, including e-commerce, advertising and marketing.” The U.S. venture will be governed by a seven-member, majority-American board.
The agreement, which is still pending approval from Chinese regulators, would resolve a longstanding point of contention between Washington and Beijing. Not all lawmakers, however, are convinced that it goes far enough to safeguard national security or protect the data of U.S. citizens.
“This deal won’t do a thing to protect the privacy of American users,” said Senator Rob Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, in a statement.”It’s unclear that it will even put TikTok’s algorithm in safer hands.”
NEW YORK (AP) — Paramount on Monday launched a hostile takeover offer for Warner Bros. Discovery, initiating a potentially bruising battle with rival bidder Netflix to buy the company behind HBO, CNN and a famed movie studio along with the power to reshape much of the nation’s entertainment landscape.
Emerging just days after top Warner managers agreed to Netflix’s $72 billion purchase, the Paramount bid seeks to go over the heads of those leaders by appealing directly to Warner shareholders with more money — $77.9 billion — and a plan to buy all of Warner’s business, including the cable business that Netflix does not want.
Paramount said its decision to go hostile came after it made several earlier offers that Warner management “never engaged meaningfully” with following the company’s October announcement that it was open to selling itself.
In its appeal to shareholders, Paramount noted its offer also contains more cash than Netflix’s bid — $18 billion more — and argued that it’s more likely to pass scrutiny from President Donald Trump’s administration, a big concern given his habit of injecting himself in American business decisions.
AP AUDIO: Paramount goes hostile in bid for Warner Bros., challenging a $72 billion offer by Netflix
AP’s Lisa Dwyer reports on a hostile bid for Warner Bros. Discovery.
Over the weekend, Trump said the Netflix-Warner combo “could be a problem” because of the size of the combined market share and that he planned to review the deal personally.
For its part, Netflix says it is confident Warner will reject the Paramount bid and that regulators, and Trump, will back its deal, citing multiple conversations that co-CEO Ted Sarandos has had with him about the streaming company’s expansion and hiring.
“I think the president’s interest in this is the same as ours, which is to create and protect jobs,” Sarandos said Monday at an investor conference.
Battle draws political attention in Washington
The fight for Warner drew strong reaction in Washington, with politicians from both major parties weighing in on the likely impact on streaming prices, movie theater employment and the diversity of entertainment choices and political views.
Paramount, run by David Ellison, whose family is closely allied with Trump, said it had submitted six proposals to Warner over a 12-week period before the latest offer.
“We believe our offer will create a stronger Hollywood. It is in the best interests of the creative community, consumers and the movie theater industry,” the Paramount CEO said in a statement. Ellison added that his deal would lead to more competition in the industry, not less, and more movies in theaters.
A regulatory document released Monday suggested another possible Paramount advantage to win over Trump: An investment firm run by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner would be investing in the deal, too.
Also participating would be funds controlled by the governments of three unnamed Persian Gulf countries, widely reported as Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar. Trump’s family company has struck deals this year for buildings and resorts that bear his name in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, partnering in the former with a company closely tied to the government and in the latter with the government fund itself.
Also possibly in Paramount’s favor are recent changes at CBS News since its October purchase of the news and commentary website The Free Press. The site’s founder, Bari Weiss, who has a reputation for fighting “woke” culture, was then installed as editor-in-chief in a signal Ellison intended to shake up the storied network of Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather and “60 Minutes,” long viewed by many conservatives as the personification of a liberal media establishment.
Trump is a wild card
Still, Trump is a wild card given his tendency to make decisions based on gut and his personal mood.
On Monday, he lashed out at Paramount for allowing “60 Minutes” to interview his ally-turned-enemy Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, writing on social media that “THEY ARE NO BETTER THAN THE OLD OWNERSHIP.”
The drama surrounding control of Warner began Friday when Netflix made the surprise announcement that it had struck a deal with its management to buy the Hollywood giant behind “Harry Potter,” HBO Max and DC Studios.
The cash and stock proposal was valued at $27.75 per Warner share, giving it a total enterprise value of $82.7 billion, including debt that will be assumed in the deal. By contrast, the Paramount offer is for $30 per Warner share, and worth $108 billion, included assumed debt. Paramount’s offer is set to expire on Jan. 8 unless it’s extended.
But comparing the two deals is complicated because they are not buying the same thing. The Netflix offer, if it goes through, will only close after Warner completes its previously announced separation of its cable operations. Not included in the deal, which is unlikely to close for at least a year, are networks such as CNN and Discovery.
The federal government has the authority to kill any big media deals if it has antitrust concerns, but such matters are usually left to experts at the Department of Justice. In his decision to get involved personally, Trump has decided, as he has with other government norms, to make a sharp break with precedent.
That worries Usha Haley, a Wichita State University specialist in international business strategy, who noted that Ellison is the son of longtime Trump supporter Larry Ellison, the world’s second-richest person.
“He said he’s going to be involved in the decision. We should take him at face value,” Haley said of Trump. “For him, it’s just greater control over the media.”
But others are uncertain how big a role Trump will play.
John Mayo, an antitrust expert at Georgetown University, said the scrutiny will be serious whichever offer is approved by shareholders and goes before the DOJ, and that he thinks experts there will keep partisanship out of their decisions despite the politically charged atmosphere.
“That may affect at least the rhetoric that occurs in the press,” he said, “though I doubt it will affect the analysis that occurs at the Department of Justice.”
Shares of Paramount surged 9% on Monday while Netflix fell 3.4%, and Warner Bros. closed up 4.4%.
___
Associated Press writers Matt Sedensky, David Bauder and Charles Sheehan in New York and Michael Liedtke in San Francisco contributed to this report.
Paramount Skydance’s hostile takeover bid of Warner Bros. Discovery places CNN and its sister cable networks squarely back into what is likely to be an extended period of management limbo.
There was some relief at CNN with last Friday’s announcement that Netflix was buying Warner’s studio and streaming businesses, since the cable network would not be a part of that deal. But that quickly changed on Monday with Paramount’s announced bid, which includes the cable assets that Netflix doesn’t want and, if successful, opens the possibility of a combined CNN and CBS News.
The management uncertainty adds to what is already a challenging time at CNN, where there was no doubt who was in charge before swashbuckling founder Ted Turner sold his company in 1996. “That era might as well be the roaring ‘20s for how long ago it feels,” said Ross Benes, senior analyst at emarketer.com.
The dueling bids between Paramount and Netflix now “lead to more uncertainty and greater anxiety among the current CNN staff and among those of us who served for many years as leaders of CNN under Ted,” said Tom Johnson, former CNN president in the 1990s.
Paramount’s bid, which must be approved by shareholders and regulators, could be seen favorably by President Donald Trump, who is closely allied with Paramount Skydance chairman and CEO David Ellison as well as his father, Oracle founder Larry Ellison. But Trump has already expressed anger at the company on social media for Sunday’s “60 Minutes” report on former U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Prior to Friday’s announcement, Warner Bros. Discovery had said it planned to spin off its cable television networks including CNN, Discovery, HGTV, the Food Network and TLC, into a separate company. The growth of streaming has made cable networks an unattractive business.
CNN’s television ratings have tumbled to the extent that it is firmly the third-rated cable news network behind Fox News Channel and MS NOW, formerly MSNBC. Its CEO, Mark Thompson, has aggressively moved into digital with a new subscription service and said that management of Discovery Global, the spinoff company, has already approved a 2026 budget investing in the plan.
“I know this strategic review has been a period of inevitable uncertainty across CNN and indeed the whole of WBD,” Thompson told staff in a memo Friday. “Of course, I can’t promise you that the media attention and noise around the sale of our parent will die down overnight. But I do think the path to the successful transformation of this great news enterprise remains open.”
Thompson had no additional comment on Monday, a spokeswoman said.
Since Paramount’s takeover of CBS News this past summer, the network has taken steps to appeal to more conservative viewers with the installation of Free Press founder Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief. Weiss is moderating a prime-time discussion this weekend with Erika Kirk, widow of slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
During an appearance on CNBC Monday, Ellison answered, “yeah,” when asked if he would combine CNN’s newsgathering operation with CBS News. What exactly that means is unclear.
“We want to build a scaled news service that is basically, fundamentally, in the trust business, that is in the truth business, and that speaks to the 70% of Americans that are in the middle,” Ellison said.
Trump has spoken highly of both Ellison and his billionaire father. But he was clearly angry about Lesley Stahl’s “60 Minutes” interview with former MAGA supporter Greene, who broke with him and recently resigned from Congress. Trump said on Truth Social that his real problem with the show is that the new corporate ownership allowed it to air.
“THEY ARE NO BETTER THAN THE OLD OWNERSHIP,” Trump said, adding he believed that “60 Minutes” had gotten worse from his perspective since the changeover.
CNN is not likely to find out soon who its new owners would be. Even before the Paramount bid, experts had predicted the Netflix deal would face more than a year of regulatory hurdles.
“There is such a need for independent, unbiased news services,” Johnson said. “I so hope that the new CNN owners will see that as their fundamental mission.”
If Netflix eventually wins, emarketer.com’s Benes predicted it would be likely that the spinoff company, Discovery Global, would be shopped around to other buyers.
“CNN will be in limbo for a while no matter which bidder purchases CNN,” he said.
In September, Larry Ellison‘s Oracle said it had accumulated $455 billion in backlogged orders, including the infrastructure that allows AI companies to perform computing.
The company is expected to grow from $18 billion this fiscal year to $144 billion in fiscal 2030.
The news was surprising, to say the least. One analyst was “in shock,” he told Inc. reporter Bethany McLean for a feature on the Ellison. Another said he was “blown away.”
The growth even briefly made Ellison the wealthiest person in the world, surpassing Elon Musk.
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And it was a competition. Ellison has said before that he’s “addicted to winning,” and he’s the subject of a 2003 biography, “Everyone Else Must Fail.”
Bryan Cantrill, an engineer who worked at Oracle, labeled Ellison a “lawnmower… [and] don’t anthropomorphize the lawnmower,” he said. Longtime investor Roger McNamee spoke to his fierceness, too.
“He was the first CEO I ever met who felt it was important to punish those who competed with him,” he said. “He views business as a battlefield.”
Oracle made its move into the AI space in November 2023. From that point until January 2025, the company was the largest lessor of data center capacity in the U.S., according to SemiAnalysis. OpenAI began renting servers from its giant Texas-based data center in 2025, making Oracle’s publicly traded shares a sort of stand-in for the privately held OpenAI.
Safra Catz, former CEO and executive vice chair or Oracle’s board, said the company is now the “go-to place for AI workloads.” She highlighted the hefty contracts it holds with the “who’s who of AI, including OpenAI, xAI, Meta, Nvidia, AMD, and many others.”
Catz predicts that Oracle’s revenue could jump to $144 billion in 2030, nearly doubling the $53 billion it made last year.
Oracle’s been in the scene for nearly 50 years. The company clinched a spot on the Inc. 500 list, which came before the Inc. 5000, three times in the 1980s.
“Oracle has prospered through market changes that should have killed it,” said McNamee. “The companies that competed with Oracle in the 1980s and 1990s are all gone now.”
Incredibly, the company has outlasted countless companies and emerged again as a leader in new technology. But the drive behind Ellison’s big moves and success is clear.
“Am I winning for Oracle shareholders, or is this simply a matter of personal vanity?” Ellison said in a CBS 60 Minutes episode. “An awful lot of it is personal vanity.”
Following David Ellison’s acquisition of Paramount, the company’s first earnings report since the merger sent shares soaring 10% on Tuesday
On Monday, Paramount issued a letter to shareholders announcing that merger-related cost savings are now expected to total $1 billion more than previously forecast, while outlining Ellison’s ambitions for the newly formed Paramount Skydance.
The letter defined these ambitions as the company’s “North Star priorities”: investing in growth businesses, expanding globally, and driving efficiency with a focus on “long-term free cash flow generation.” Paramount also projected total revenue of $30 billion for next year, supported in part by plans to raise Paramount+ subscription prices in the U.S. during the first quarter of 2026.
A major theme of the letter centered on efforts to “optimize the workforce for the future.” Ellison has made aggressive budget cuts a cornerstone of his leadership, including substantial workforce reductions, most recently with the elimination of 1,000 positions nationwide last month.
Less than a month after the merger, employees were notified that a five-day in-office workweek would become mandatory starting in January. Those unwilling to return were offered buyouts; according to the letter, about 600 employees chose to leave the company rather than return to full-time office work.
Ellison’s broader philosophy has been described as “cutting down to build up.” In pursuit of that vision, he has made three unsuccessful bids to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery.
When asked about these attempts on Monday, Ellison declined to elaborate, “I think it’s important to know there’s no must-haves for us,” he said. “We really look at this as buy versus build, and we absolutely have the ability to build to get to where we want to go.”
Following Paramount Skydance’s $8 billion merger, Ellison is said to be weighing a potential cash bid for Warner Bros. Discovery as speculation grows over Hollywood’s next major deal
There could be another shake-up for Hollywood soon.
With Warner Bros. Motion Picture chairs Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy signing new contracts, Deadline reports that David Zaslav runs Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) could soon become the next addition for David Ellison and Paramount Skydance.
No formal offer has been made yet, but Ellison, whose company recently completed an $8 billion merger with Paramount, is said to be weighing a potential cash bid. Backed by his father, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, the Skydance chief is reportedly eager to avoid the kind of drawn-out process that defined the Paramount deal.
According to reports from Deadline, there appears to be little room for Zaslav in a merged studio. At most, he could be offered a board seat or adversity role, however, his long-term involvement seems unlikely.
Reports also note that Zaslav has been seeking alternative buyers like Netflix, but analysts doubt the streamer would pay between $75 billion and $100 billion for WBD, citing the company’s cable assets and complex distribution structure.
For now, speculation centers around whether Ellison will move before WBD completes its planned split of the linear and streaming divisions. This is a change that could raise the price tag. With few competitors able to match Ellison’s resources, the prospect of a Paramount Skydance-Warner Bros. Discovery union remains a high possibility.
Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison speaks during the Bloomberg Screentime conference in Los Angeles on Oct. 9, 2025. AFP via Getty Images
For months, it was one of the worst-kept secrets in media circles: Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellisonwas angling to buy The Free Press, the provocative digital outlet founded by a culture warrior who left The New York Times over what she viewed as its anti-conservative groupthink. Yesterday (Oct. 9), just four days after Paramount Skydance confirmed its $150 million acquisition of The Free Press, Ellison finally explained his reasoning in detail at the Bloomberg Screentime conference in Los Angeles.
He described the deal—which also includes naming Free Press founder Bari Weiss the first-ever editor-in-chief of CBS News, the crown jewel of Paramount’s media holdings—as a cornerstone of his plan to rebuild trust in journalism and connect with audiences “where they are.” That means a mix of broadcast, digital and direct-to-consumer platforms aimed at the roughly 70 percent of Americans he believes fall between the ideological extremes.
“Our goal in news is to become the most trusted destination in news media,” Ellison said. “Civil discourse that currently exists is not in a great place. We basically believe in all the things The Free Press believed in—speaking to the 70 percent of the audience that identifies themselves as center-left to center-right. We believe in the open exchange of ideas, and then fundamentally presenting both sides and allowing the audience to ultimately make their determination about how they feel about it. But they’re presented with the facts.”
Ellison praised the heritage of CBS News and 60 Minutes but said the network lacks a cohesive digital strategy—one reason The Free Press became central to the deal. He said Weiss’s publication would continue to operate online while helping Paramount expand across formats such as broadcast, podcasts and eventually a direct-to-consumer platform that unites them all.
Ellison also used the conference to outline a broader vision for Paramount Skydance as a company built for reinvention. He pointed to its 80 million streaming subscribers and what he called “one of the best content libraries in existence.” He drew a distinction between CBS’s broadcast business and the broader decline of linear TV, calling CBS “a remarkable asset that’s been number one in primetime for 17 straight seasons,” one that remains profitable and buoyed by sports rights.
In addition to the Free Press deal, Paramount Skydance has also secured high-profile partnerships in recent weeks with the UFC, Activision’s Call of Duty and filmmaker James Mangold. Ellison called the acquisition of UFC rights a key piece of a “year-long sports strategy” that complements CBS’s existing portfolio of the NFL, March Madness and The Masters.
Pressed about consolidation rumors, particularly speculation over a possible Warner Bros. Discovery merger, Ellison declined to comment. But he emphasized that any acquisition would be guided by storytelling, talent relationships and shareholder value. “Consumers don’t love going to seven different apps,” he said, arguing that any deal would need to produce “more content, not less,” and create something better for audiences.
Ellison is the son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, who was briefly the world’s richest person recently, thanks to Oracle’s surging stock. When asked about family dynamics, the Paramount Skydance CEO described their relationship as “phenomenal,” calling Larry Ellison a mentor with an unmatched record of value creation. “He’s the largest shareholder [in Paramount Skydance], but I run the company day-to-day,” Ellison said.
Ellison closed his onstage talk by reflecting on the passion that started it all. “I fell in love with movies as a kid. My mom and I would go to the movies every single weekend. We went 52 weeks a year and just saw anything that was playing,” he said. “I have always loved and believed in this business. I love storytelling. I believe in the value of entertainment and media and what these stories mean, and it’s a privilege to get to tell them in our culture.”
President Donald Trump on Thursday afternoon signed an executive order clearing the way for a deal to put TikTok in U.S. hands, with some of his closest billionaire allies poised to take the reins.
“This is going to be American-operated all the way,” Trump said during the signing, adding that the agreement had been greenlit by Chinese President Xi Jinping. “I have great respect for President Xi, and I very much appreciate that he approved the deal, because to get it done properly, we really needed the support of China and the approval of China.”
Who’s in the deal
The ownership structure is still being finalized, but Trump revealed that Oracle, and its co-founder Larry Ellison would play a “big” role in managing the app, given that they had already stored much of Tiktok’s U.S.-based data in their servers. Ellison has been an ally of the President, raising millions for the president’s campaign and advising him during the COVID-19 pandemic.
He also added that conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox corporation – which runs Fox News – would be an investor, and computer billionaire Michael Dell would also sit on the board. He hinted that three more “blue chip” backers were also part of the group, but did not announce who they were.
For Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, a stake in TikTok could provide a way to reach younger audiences beyond traditional TV and print, where the family’s News Corp empire dominates — and perhaps redeem their disastrous MySpace purchase nearly 20 years ago. The terms of Fox’s role remain unclear, but a TikTok tie-in would join minority stakes the Murdochs already hold in betting companies Flutter and FanDuel, and further cement Lachlan’s control of the empire after a recent family trust restructuring ensured his succession as Rupert’s heir.
Vice President JD Vance asserted that the agreement gives Americans authority over TikTok’s prized algorithm; the system that dictates what over 170 million U.S. users see on their feeds. Speaking as the president signed the executive order in the Oval Office, Vance pegged Tiktok’s worth at $14 billion — significantly below earlier estimates that placed TikTok’s U.S. assets as high as $100 billion depending on algorithm access.
“This deal will allow for the U.S. to control the app’s algorithm,” he said. “It’s actually going to be American-operated all the way.”
For Trump, the signing was about more than national security – he linked it to his broader trade agenda, boasting about tariffs and their windfall.
Still, concerns are surfacing about what it means for Trump allies to control a platform with such influence over American political discourse.
Trump himself joked about algorithmic favoritism: “I always like MAGA-related. If I could make it 100% MAGA, I would, but it’s not going to work out that way, unfortunately. No, everyone’s going to be treated fairly. Every group, every philosophy, every policy will be treated very fairly.”
Vance also stressed that business would drive the app’s content decisions: “We want the business to make decisions about content based on the interest of the business and based on the interest of the users, and that’s what we think will happen.”
The signing also lays the groundwork for Trump’s first in-person meeting with Xi since returning to office. The two leaders are expected to discuss the deal further at the upcoming APEC Summit in South Korea.
Tiktok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Oracle founder and potential TikTok overlord Larry Ellison’s current net worth is estimated at $393 billion, making him the second-richest person in the world in 2025, only behind Elon Musk. His fortune has grown rapidly due to massive gains in Oracle’s stock, driven by the AI boom, and a significant stake in Tesla.
Ellison pledged to donate 95% of his wealth as part of the Giving Pledge in 2010. Since then, he’s distanced himself from traditional nonprofits and says he’s opting to give away wealth on his own terms. He founded the Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT), a for-profit philanthropic organization at The University of Oxford.
But Ellison’s EIT has recently been destabilized by leadership changes, according to a report in The New York Times. In 2024, he hired scientist John Bell to head the research. But in August, Ellison announced he had hired former University of Michigan President Santa Ono to “collaborate” with Bell. Just two weeks later, Bell announced his departure from the “very challenging project.”
The Times reports there are tensions over “how best to commercialize Mr. Ellison’s scientific research, along with persistent questions about how much the institute could trust Mr. Ellison to deliver on his financial commitments.”
Here’s what we know—and don’t—about Ellison’s plans to give away his fortune eventually.
Net worth (2025)
Estimated at $393 billion as of September 2025.
Most of his wealth derives from his 41% share in Oracle and a significant stake in Tesla.
Philanthropy and plans for giving
His main philanthropic focus is through the Ellison Institute of Technology, which aims to address global issues such as healthcare, food insecurity, climate change, and AI advancements, with a major new campus opening in Oxford worth approximately $1.3 billion.
In the past, Ellison has donated hundreds of millions to establish research and treatment centers, including a $200 million contribution to the University of Southern California for a cancer research center and approximately $1 billion in total to the Ellison Medical Foundation (now closed), primarily for medical research.
Amounts already given and future commitment
Direct charitable disbursements are less than those of some peers, but commitments to the Giving Pledge and the Ellison Institute total in the billions.
Key known contributions:
$200 million to USC for cancer research.
Over $1 billion to aging and disease prevention through the Ellison Medical Foundation, before winding it down.
$1.3 billion toward the Oxford Ellison Institute campus, set to open by 2027.
He continues to indicate nearly all his fortune will eventually be directed toward philanthropic causes—done on his own terms and timeline.
Ellison’s net worth has reached record highs in 2025, and though he has pledged to give away almost all of it, his giving is uniquely structured—focusing on large self-driven projects such as the Ellison Institute, rather than broad public charity.
For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help with an initial draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.
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Clay Magouyrk (L) and Mike Sicilia (R) will combine their strengths in cloud infrastructure and applications as Oracle’s new co-CEOs. Courtesy Oracle
Oracle has appointed not just one, but two new CEOs to help the software giant maintain momentum as it rides the A.I. revolution to unprecedented highs. The top executive role, currently filled by Safra Catz, will be jointly taken up by insiders Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia going forward, announced Oracle today (Sep. 22). The two leaders will be charged with guiding Oracle at a pivotal time for the tech player as it leans heavily into providing the cloud infrastructure required to power A.I. It’s already benefitted handsomely from a newfound demand for data centers, with the A.I. boom lifting its shares by nearly 95 percent this year, propelling its founder Larry Ellison’s net worth to new heights and giving rise to some of the largest cloud contracts in history. Both of Oracle’s new leaders have the credentials to back up the company’s A.I. shift. Magouyrk, head of Oracle’s cloud infrastructure team, has overseen the rollout of platforms powering A.I. data centers, while Sicilia formerly led Oracle’s applications business and steered teams integrating industry-specific A.I. agents across areas like healthcare, banking and communications.
“A few years ago, Clay and Mike committed Oracle’s Infrastructure and Application businesses to A.I.—it’s paying off,” said Ellison, who serves as Oracle’s chairman and chief technology officer, in a statement. “They are both proven leaders, and I am looking forward to spending the coming years working side-by-side with them.” While co-CEOs remain unusual in Silicon Valley, this isn’t the first time Oracle has dabbled with a joint leadership structure. After Ellison stepped down as CEO in 2014, Catz was appointed to the role alongside Mark Hurd and remained on as the sole chief executive after Hurd’s passing in 2019.
Safra Catz helmed Oracle for more than a decade. Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Catz, who will also be passing on her principal financial officer position to Doug Kehring, is staying on at Oracle as executive vice chair of its board of directors. Her 11-year tenure as the software company’s CEO was most recently marked by a surge across its cloud business, which generated some $3.3 billion in cloud infrastructure revenue during the July-August quarter to represent a 55 percent year-over-year increase. That figure will rise to a total of $18 billion for the 2026 fiscal year, according to Oracle’s forecasts, and increase to $32 billion, $73 billion, $114 billion and $144 billion over the following four years.
Behind Oracle’s ballooning fortunes is an unrelenting demand from A.I. developers to secure computing capacity. Over the most recent quarter, Oracle signed four multibillion-dollar contracts with three different customers and reported that its performance obligations from existing contracts surged to $455 billion—up 359 percent compared to the prior year. One of its most significant deals to date includes a recently announced agreement to provide OpenAI with $300 billion worth of computing power over the next five years as part of the ChatGPT-maker’s Stargate venture.
Earlier this month, Oracle’s A.I. dominance culminated in a share gain that sent its stock flying in the company’s biggest one-day percentage jump since 1992 and briefly made Ellison the world’s wealthiest person in the world. “Oracle’s technology and business have never been stronger,” said Catz in a statement, adding that the company’s “breathtaking growth rate points to an even more prosperous future.”
Beyond Oracle’s A.I. ambitions, the tech company is also set to play a role in a looming deal that will see the Chinese-owned TikTok sell its U.S. arm to a consortium of American investors. Under an arrangement overseen by the Trump administration, Oracle will be responsible for recreating TikTok’s algorithm by retraining a new U.S. version, said White House officials today.
Last month, Skydance Media, the entertainment giant, completed an $8 billion acquisition of one of Hollywood’s most prestigious studios, Paramount. Skydance, owned by David Ellison, son of Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison, now reportedly has its eyes set on another historic movie studio: Warner Bros.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Paramount Skydance is currently preparing a majority cash bid for Warner Bros. Discovery. If completed, the son of one of Donald Trump’s most powerful supporters (and, as of this week, the tech billionaire to unseat Elon Musk as the world’s richest person) would own a gargantuan portion of America’s entertainment industry.
Not a whole lot of information has been released yet about the reported deal. The Journal notes that the bid would be for “the entire company, including its cable networks and movie studio.” Gizmodo reached out to Paramount and Warner Bros. for more information.
The Ellison elder has been described as a personal “friend” of Trump, and the New York Times reports that, not long after Trump’s presidential victory, Ellison “appeared at Mar-a-Lago to sit in on a transition meeting.” He also visited the White House earlier this year to take part in the launch of the Stargate Project, an AI infrastructure initiative that will be a boon for the data center industry.
Ellison Sr. has also floated the idea of buying TikTok, which would put the family in control of yet another massive media acquisition, albeit of a slightly different kind. Last August, the New York Times reported that Oracle was helping the Heritage Foundation, the right-wing org behind Project 2025, to identify a list of Trump loyalists for the new administration.
There appears to be an Ellison family interest in propping up conservative voices. A report published earlier this month by Puck stated that Ellison Jr. was looking to buy Bari Weiss’s The Free Press for somewhere between $100 and $200 million. The New York Times reported on Wednesday that Ellison is considering giving Weiss a top editorial position at CBS, which is owned by Paramount.
At the same time, Ellison Jr. has also been accused of engaging in a “side deal” with President Trump as part of CBS’s $16 million settlement with the president over what he said was an unfairly edited interview with Kamala Harris from last year. That alleged side deal supposedly “up to $20 million of programming in support of conservative causes,” although Paramount immediately clarified “that it wasn’t aware of such terms,” the Hollywood Reporter reported in August. Nevertheless, House Democrats have announced their intentions to look into the matter.
Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison wrested the title of the world’s richest man from longtime holder Elon Musk early Wednesday, according to wealth tracker Bloomberg, as stock in his software giant rocketed more than a third in a stunning few minutes of trading.
A college dropout, the 81-year-old Ellison is now worth $393 billion, Bloomberg says, several billion more than Musk, who had been the world’s richest for four years running. Stock in one of Musk’s biggest holdings, Tesla, has been moving in the opposite direction of Oracle’s, dropping 14% so far this year as of Tuesday.
The switch in the ranking came after a blockbuster earnings report from Oracle powered by multibillion dollar orders from customers as the artificial intelligence race heats up.
Larry Ellison, co-founder and chairman of Oracle Corp., speaks during the Oracle OpenWorld 2017 conference in San Francisco.
David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Another news organization with a long history of tallying the world’s richest, Forbes, still has Musk at the top, at $439 billion. Bloomberg put his net worth at $385 billion. The difference is in how the two estimate the value of Musk’s rocket company SpaceX, among other private holdings.
With Ellison’s surging fortune Wednesday, he could fund the lifestyles of 5 million American families for a year, about the entire population of Florida, allowing them to all quit their jobs, assuming the U.S. median household income.
Or Ellison could just tell all of South Africa to take a vacation for year and produce nothing, based on its gross domestic product.
Senior advisor Elon Musk claps as U.S. President Donald Trump enters the stadium during the Division I Men’s Wrestling Championship held at the Wells Fargo Center on March 22, 2025 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Isaac Wasserman/NCAA Photos via Getty Images
Ellison’s son David owns Paramount, a Skydance company, which is the parent company of CBS.
The U.S. economy has a history of producing the world’s most valuable companies. United States Steel became the first-ever $1 billion company in 1901, and 117 years later, Apple became the first company in the world to surpass a $1 trillion valuation.
Apple is now worth over $3 trillion, but since 2018, tech giants Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta Platforms, and Alphabet have joined it in the trillion-dollar club. But I think yet another is on track to join them.
Oracle (NYSE: ORCL) was founded in 1977 and has since participated in nearly every technological revolution. Right now, it’s quickly becoming a leader in artificial intelligence (AI) data center infrastructure, which could be the company’s ticket to a $1 trillion valuation.
Based on Oracle’s current market cap of $429 billion, investors who buy its stock today could earn a gain of 133% if it gets there.
A leader in AI infrastructure
Large language models (LLMs) are at the foundation of every AI software application. They are trained by ingesting mountains of data, and from there, the model identifies patterns and learns to make predictions. Typically, the “smartest” AI applications are powered by the LLMs with the most data, and the training process is facilitated by centralized data centers filled with graphics processing units (GPUs).
Nvidia supplies the world’s most powerful GPUs for developing AI models. Simply put, the more GPUs a developer can access, the more data they can feed into an LLM, and the faster it can be processed. The Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Supercluster technology allows developers to scale up to more than 32,000 Nvidia GPUs (and soon, over 65,000), which is more than any other data center provider.
Plus, the company’s random direct memory access (RDMA) networking technology moves data from one point to another more quickly than traditional Ethernet networks. Since developers often pay for computing capacity by the minute, OCI is among the fastest and cheapest solutions for training LLMs. That’s why AI leaders like OpenAI, Cohere, and Elon Musk’s xAI are now using Oracle.
Oracle chairman Larry Ellison says the company currently has 85 live data centers, with 77 under construction. However, he estimates the company will eventually have somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000, so it has barely scratched the surface of its opportunity so far.
Automation is one thing that sets Oracle apart from other data center operators. No matter its size, every Oracle data center is identical in terms of functionality, so the company is able to manage them all with software alone — no humans required. Not only is that a big cost savings for the end-user, but it also creates a more secure service by eliminating human error. Plus, automation is the key to scaling up Oracle’s data center locations into the thousands.
Image source: Getty Images.
Oracle’s data center revenue is surging
Oracle generated $13.3 billion in total revenue during the fiscal 2025 first quarter (ended Aug. 31), a 7% increase from the year-ago period. The OCI segment, specifically, delivered $2.2 billion in revenue, up by a whopping 46%.
As in previous quarters, OCI revenue would have grown even faster during Q1 if the company had more data centers online. It currently has an enormous backlog of customers waiting for more computing capacity.
That is reflected in Oracle’s remaining performance obligations, which came in at a record $99 billion during the quarter, up 52% year over year. That was an acceleration from the 44% growth the company achieved in the final quarter of fiscal 2024. Oracle signed 42 new deals for GPU capacity worth $3 billion during Q1 alone, contributing to the sharp increase in remaining performance obligations (RPOs).
CEO Safra Catz believes 38% of the company’s RPOs (around $37.6 billion) will be converted to revenue over the next 12 months, which should help the company return to double-digit percentage growth at the top line. Additionally, she expects an acceleration in OCI growth compared to the previous fiscal year.
Oracle’s (mathematical) path to the $1 trillion club
Oracle has generated $3.88 in trailing-12-month earnings per share. So, based on its current stock price of $155.89, it trades at a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 40.2. The Nasdaq-100 technology index trades at a P/E ratio of 30.7, so Oracle stock certainly isn’t cheap when measured against its peers.
However, Oracle’s trailing-12-month earnings grew by 15% compared to the prior period, and Wall Street is forecasting accelerated earnings growth of 24% for fiscal 2025 overall. That might explain why investors are now willing to pay a premium for its stock.
Mathematically speaking, if Oracle’s P/E ratio remains constant, the company could achieve a $1 trillion valuation within the next 10 years, even if its earnings growth slows to just 8.8%. But that’s a very conservative estimate considering based on Ellison’s comments, it could grow its data center footprint tenfold over the long term. If that happens, Oracle’s earnings growth is likely to accelerate, not decelerate, in the coming decade.
Remember, the company’s data centers rely on automation, so they offer incredible scalability. In other words, Oracle should experience an expanding gross profit margin as more data centers are built, which will be a huge tailwind for its earnings.
As a result, I think Oracle has a great opportunity to join its big-tech peers in the $1 trillion club within the next decade.
Should you invest $1,000 in Oracle right now?
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NEW YORK (AP) — The merger between entertainment giant Paramount and media company Skydance is set to go ahead after Edgar Bronfman Jr. withdrew a competing offer.
Bronfman, executive chairman of streaming service Fubo, told Paramount’s special committee of directors Monday night that he would not proceed with his bid.
“While there may have been differences, we believe that everyone involved in the sale process is united in the belief that Paramount’s best days are ahead,” he said.
Bronfman, the former chairman and CEO of Warner Music, had intitially offered $4.3 billion for Shari Redstone’s National Amusements, the controlling shareholder of Paramount, according to multiple media reports. He then upped that bid to $6 billion.
Paramount agreed last month to a merger deal with Skydance that will inject desperately needed cash into a legacy studio that has struggled to adapt to a shifting entertainment landscape.
Since then, during what’s known as a “go shop” period, a special committee of Paramount’s board had reached out to more than 50 third parties to determine whether they were interested in making offers. The go shop period was extended for Bronfman, but has now closed.
Shari Redstone’s National Amusements has owned more than three-quarters of Paramount’s Class A voting shares through the estate of her late father, Sumner Redstone. She had battled to maintain control of the company that owns CBS, which is behind blockbuster films such as “Top Gun” and “The Godfather.”
The deal signals the rise of a new power player, Skydance founder David Ellison, the son of billionaire Larry Ellison, who founded the software company Oracle.
Skydance, based in Santa Monica, California, has helped produce some major Paramount hits in recent years, including Tom Cruise films like “Top Gun: Maverick” and installments of the “Mission Impossible” series.
The proposed combined company of Paramount and Skydance is valued at around $28 billion. The deal is expected to close in September 2025, pending regulatory approval.
Paramount, founded in 1914 as a distributor, is one of Hollywood’s oldest studios and has had a hand in releasing numerous films — from “Sunset Boulevard” and “The Godfather,” to “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “Titanic.”
The entertainment giant Paramount will merge with Skydance, closing out a decades-long run by the Redstone family in Hollywood and injecting desperately needed cash into a legacy studio that has struggled to adapt to a shifting entertainment landscape.
It also signals the rise of a new power player, David Ellison, the founder of Skydance and son of billionaire Larry Ellison, the founder of the software company Oracle.
Shari Redstone’s National Amusements has owned more than three-quarters of Paramount’s Class A voting shares through the estate of her late father, Sumner Redstone. She had battled to maintain control of the company that owns CBS, which is behind blockbuster films such as “Top Gun” and “The Godfather.”
Just weeks after turning down a similar agreement with Skydance, however, Redstone agreed to a deal on terms that had not changed much.
“Given the changes in the industry, we want to fortify Paramount for the future while ensuring that content remains king,” said Redstone, who is chair of Paramount Global.
The new combined company is valued at around $28 billion. In connection with the proposed transaction, which is expected to close in September 2025 pending regulatory approval, a consortium led by the Ellison family and RedBird Capital will be investing $8 billion.
Skydance, based in Santa Monica, California, has helped produce some major Paramount hits in recent years, including Tom Cruise films like “Top Gun: Maverick” and installments of the “Mission Impossible” series.
Skydance was founded in 2010 by David Ellison and it quickly formed a production partnership with Paramount that same year. If the deal is approved, Ellison will become chairman and chief executive officer of what’s being called New Paramount.
Ellison outlined the vision for New Paramount on a conference call about the transaction Monday. In addition to doubling down on core competencies, notably with a “creative first” approach, he stressed that the company needs to transition into a “tech hybrid” to stay competitive in today’s evolving media landscape.
“You’ve watched some incredibly powerful technology companies move into the … media space and do so very successfully,” Ellison said. He added that it was “essential” for New Paramount to chart a similar course going forward.
That includes plans to “rebuild” the Paramount+ streaming service, Ellison noted — pointing to wider goals to expand direct-to-consumer business, such as increasing engagement time on the platform and reducing user churn. He also said that the company aims to transition to more cloud-based production and continue the use of generative artificial intelligence to boost efficiency.
Executives also outlined further restructuring plans for New Paramount on Monday’s conference call, with chairman of RedBird Sports and Media Jeff Shell noting that they had identified some $2 billion in cost efficiencies and synergies that they’ll “attempt to deliver pretty rapidly.”
Shell and others addressed the declining growth of linear TV. Flagship linear brands will continue to represent a big chunk of the company’s operations, but learning how to run this portion of business differently will be key, he said.
The on-again, off-again merger arrives at tumultuous time for Paramount, which has struggled to find its footing for years and its cable business has been hemorrhaging. In an annual shareholder meeting in early June, the company also laid out a restructuring plan that included major cost cuts.
Paramount is one of Hollywood’s oldest studios, dating back its founding in 1914 as a distributor. Throughout its rich history, Paramount has had a hand in releasing films — from “Sunset Boulevard” and “The Godfather,” to “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “Titanic.”
The studio also distributed several early Marvel Cinematic Universe films, including “Iron Man” and “Thor,” before the Disney acquisition. In addition to “Mission: Impossible” and “Top Gun,” Paramount’s current franchises include “Transformers,” “Star Trek” and “Jackass.”
While Paramount has not topped the annual domestic box office charts for over a decade, the wild box office success of “Top Gun: Maverick” in 2022 (nearly $1.5 billion worldwide) was an important boon to both movie theaters and the industry’s pandemic recovery.
Still, its theatrical output has declined somewhat in recent years. Last year it released only eight new movies and came in fifth place for overall box office at around $2 billion — behind Universal (24 films), Disney (17 films), Warner Bros. and Sony.
This year the release calendar is similarly modest, especially with the absence of “Mission: Impossible 8,” which was pushed to 2025 amid the strikes. The studio has had some successes, with “Bob Marley: One Love” and “A Quiet Place: Day One,” and still to come is Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator” sequel.
The National Association of Theatre Owners, a trade organization that represents over 35,000 screens in the U.S., said in a statement Monday that it plans to look closely at the details of the merger with an eye towards whether it will produce more or less theatrical releases.
“We are encouraged by the commitment that David Ellison and the Skydance Media team have shown to theatrical exhibition in the past,” said Michael O’Leary, president and CEO of the National Association of Theatre Owners. “A merger that results in fewer movies being produced will not only hurt consumers and result in less revenue, but negatively impact people who work in all sectors of this great industry – creative, distribution and exhibition.”
Sumner Redstone used National Amusements, his family’s movie theater chain, to build a vast media empire that included CBS and Viacom, which have merged and separated a number of times over the years. Most recently, the companies re-joined forces in 2019, undoing the split consummated in 2006. The company, ViacomCBS, changed its name to Paramount Global in 2022.
Under Sumner Redstone’s leadership, Viacom became one of the nation’s media titans, home to pay TV channels MTV and Comedy Central and movie studio Paramount Pictures.
It is a company with a rich history, as well as a deep bank of media assets, and Skydance wasn’t the only one to gun for Paramount in recent months — Apollo Global Management and Sony Pictures also made competing offers.
Late last year, Warner Bros. Discovery also made headlines for exploring a potential merger with Paramount. But by February, Warner had reportedly halted those talks.
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AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr contributed to this report.
Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
A regular Jane celebrating a personal renaissance after a long-term relationship might commemorate the new era with an ankle tattoo of a spiritual saying. When you’re a billionaire, you could do it instead with a $500 million megayacht.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos made waves in May riding around the roughly 127-meter “Koru,” a Māori term that may signify a fresh start, with his reported fiancée Lauren Sanchez. (In 2019, Bezos finalized his divorce from MacKenzie Scott, whom he was married to for 25 years).
Tech billionaires like Bezos, Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison, and Google cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page have all purchased their own mini vacation hubs at sea, decking their boats with amenities like gyms, spas, pools, nightclubs, and movie theaters.
For those wishing to experience life aboard these multi-million-dollar yachts, some are available to rent out for a few nights or weeks at a time. Late Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen’s yacht can be booked for $2.2 million per week or more, according Bloomberg.
Chartering yachts owned by billionaires like Alphabet cofounder Sergey Brin has previously cost customers anywhere from $773,000 a week to $1.2 million.
Take a look at some of the yachts that have been owned by tech billionaires.
A mystery buyer bought a 414-foot superyacht that was once owned by late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen for $278 million. Allen had the boat, which was named “Octopus,” built in 2003 for $200 million. Since the tech billionaire’s death in 2018, the boat had been listed for as much as $325 million.
Octopus in Canary Wharf, London, in 2012. Ki Price/Reuters Source: SuperYacht Times
The wealthy can book the yacht for a weekly rate of $2.2 million or more, through the luxury company Camper & Nicholsons, Bloomberg reported last year.
414ft luxury yacht ‘Octopus’ owned by Microsoft co-founder, Paul Allen, is moored to fuel up at Ege Ports in Kusadasi district of Aydin, Turkey on April 27, 2015. Ibrahim Uzun/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Amazon founder Bezos’ $500 million megayacht, the roughly 127-meter “Koru,” sparked attention in May for its artistic decor. A sculpture of a woman on the boat appeared to observers to be the likeness of Bezos’ reported fiancée Sanchez, who was also seen that month on the yacht sporting a large ring.
Jeff Bezos was spotted aboard his megayacht “Koru” in May. Lift Aircraft.
Even before its completion, “Koru” drew the ire of Dutch people vowing to hurl eggs at the boat if it would require a historic bridge in Rotterdam to be taken apart to let it through. An egg crisis was averted however, as the company making the ship found a less-irksome alternative.
View of the Koningshaven Bridge, known as De Hef in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Peter Dejong/AP
Bezos has long been interested in yachts. In 2019, he was spotted aboard entertainment mogul David Geffen’s superyacht.
David Geffen’s superyacht Flickr via BI
Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison owns a 288-foot yacht named Musashi that he acquired in 2013. The yacht has several amenities, including an elevator, swimming pool, movie theater, and both an indoor and outdoor gym.
The Oracle cofounder also has a knack for competitive yacht racing, and helped to found and back a racing team, called Oracle Team USA, in 2000. The team has found success and won several prestigious titles over the years.
Xaume Olleros/Getty Images Sport Source: Telegraph
Ellison previously owned a bigger, 454-foot yacht called Rising Sun, which was designed specifically for the CEO in 2005. That yacht reportedly has 82 rooms, a movie theater, a wine cellar, and a basketball court. However, Ellison sold off the Rising Sun to Geffen for a reported $300 million.
Ellison’s boat, Musashi, is a sister ship to the yacht of another billionaire, former Sears CEO Eddie Lampert. However, the yacht, named Fountainhead, is often mistaken for belonging to billionaire investor Mark Cuban. “The guy who owns the boat tells everyone that it’s mine,” Cuban told Page Six in 2016. “It’s so crazy … I don’t even own a boat.”
Ellison’s yacht reportedly influenced the decision of late Apple CEO Steve Jobs to get a boat himself. However, Jobs never set foot on the boat — the yacht was commissioned in 2008, but wasn’t completed until 2012, a year after his death.
When Jobs died in 2011, his yacht — along with his $14.1 billion fortune — was inherited by his wife, Laurene Powell Jobs, founder and president of a social-impact nonprofit called the Emerson Collective. The 256-foot yacht is named Venus, and is worth $130 million.
Google’s billionaire cofounders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, are known to splurge. An Insider feature in December documented some of the trappings of their luxury, including planes and yachts.
Sergey Brin (left) and Larry Page. Getty / Michael Nagle
Page owned a yacht named Senses, a $45 million, 194-foot boat that he bought in 2011 from a New Zealand businessman. He’s since sold the yacht, Insider reported in 2021, a vessel that had a private beach club with a Jacuzzi and sun beds, both indoor and outdoor dining areas, and a helicopter pad. It’s unclear what other sea vessels he owns, though Insider has previously reported he might have another yacht.
Dragonfly, the $80 million boat that has a movie-theater, shares a name with Google’s once-secret project to launch a censored search engine in China. Google said in 2019 it had officially terminated the project.
Eric Risberg/Associated Press Source: Insider, Forbes.
The former Google CEO picked up the Alfa Nero yacht for nearly $68 million in an auction in June, according to a Bloomberg report. The yacht had apparently been left amid Russia’s war in Ukraine, according to the report.
Eric Schmidt REUTERS/Brian Snyder Source: Bloomberg.
For Skype cofounder Niklas Zennstrom, his interest in yachts skews toward racing and competitive sailing. Zennstrom has gone through a succession of boats all named Ran.
Co-Founder and CEO of Skype Technologies, United Kingdom Niklas Zennstroem listens during a plenary entitled ‘Digital 2.0:Powering a Creative Economy’ at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, AP Photo/Michel Euler
The Ran VII yacht is among the most advanced of Zennstrom’s boats. The racing yacht uses electrical power, which Zennstrom has said makes it “lighter, less drag, quieter, and most importantly it is environmentally friendly.”
The 40-foot yacht has been meant to compete in regattas through the racing team owned by Zennstrom and his wife, Catherine. The Ran racing team launched in 2008, and has won some prestigious regattas.
Barry Diller, chairman of digital media company IAC, co-owns a $70 million yacht with his wife, fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg.
Diane von Furstenberg, left, and Barry Diller. Scott Olson/Getty Images Source: Business Insider
The sailing yacht, named Eos, is 350 feet long with six bedrooms. The power couple has hosted many celebrities over the years — a few that have been spotted aboard Eos include model Karlie Kloss, actor Bradley Cooper, journalist Anderson Cooper, and singer Harry Styles.
For Jim Clark, the cofounder of Netscape, one yacht hasn’t been enough. Clark has owned boats for more than 30 years, and in 2012, he put up two of his sailing yachts for sale.
Jim Clark, right. Cameron Spencer/Getty Images Source: Business Insider
Clark listed the boats for a combined $113 million: the 136-foot Hanuman for $18 million, and the 295-foot Athena for $95 million. However, Clark has yet to offload Athena. Clark also previously owned a 155-foot yacht named Hyperion, and currently also owns a sloop called Hanuman.
Charles Simonyi worked at Microsoft until 2002, and oversaw the creation of Microsoft Office software. A few years before he left, Simonyi decided to purchase a yacht. He told the designer that wanted his yacht to be “home away from [his] home in Seattle.”
The product of that conversation in 1999 is Simonyi’s yacht named Skat, meaning “treasure” in Danish. The yacht measures 233 feet long, and is unique with its nontraditional design and gray color. Skat features a matching gray helicopter, a gym, and motorcycles.
Opulent British billionaire Richard Branson owned a yacht until he sold it in September 2018. The 105-foot catamaran sold for $3 million, significantly lower than the $9.6 million price Branson listed the boat for in 2014.
On Oct. 4, Elon Musk reversed himself and offered to honor his original proposal to buy Twitter for $44 billion — a deal he had spent the previous several months trying to wriggle out of. He made the latest offer just two weeks before a Twitter lawsuit aimed at forcing Musk to go through with the deal was scheduled to go to trial in Delaware Chancery Court. After receiving Musk’s offer, Twitter said it intends to close the transaction.
The two parties now have to close the deal Friday. If they don’t, the Delaware Chancery Court judge overseeing the case plans to reschedule the trial in November.
If the case has your head spinning, here’s a quick guide to the major events in the saga featuring the billionaire Tesla CEO and the social platform.
January 31: Musk starts buying shares of Twitter in near-daily installments, amassing a 5% stake in the company by mid-March.
March 26: Musk, who has tens of millions of Twitter followers and is active on the site, says he is giving “serious thought” to building an alternative to Twitter, questioning the platform’s commitment to “free speech” and whether Twitter is undermining democracy. He also privately reaches out to Twitter board members including his friend and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey.
March 27: After privately informing Twitter of his growing stake in the company, Musk starts conversations with its CEO and board members about potentially joining the board. Musk also mentions taking Twitter private or starting a competitor, according to later regulatory filings.
April 4: A regulatory filing reveals that Musk has rapidly become the largest shareholder of Twitter after acquiring a 9% stake, or 73.5 million shares, worth about $3 billion.
April 5: Musk is offered a seat on Twitter’s board on the condition he amass no more than 14.9% of the company’s stock. CEO Parag Agrawal said in a tweet that “it became clear to us that he would bring great value to our Board.”
April 9: After exchanging pleasantries and bonding by text message over their love of engineering, a short-lived relationship between Agrawal and Musk sours after Musk publicly tweets “Is Twitter dying?” and gets a message from Agrawal calling the criticism unhelpful. Musk tersely responds: “This is a waste of time. Will make an offer to take Twitter private.”
April 11: Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal announces Musk will not be joining the board after all.
April 14: Twitter reveals in a securities filing that Musk has offered to buy the company outright for about $44 billion.
April 15: Twitter’s board unanimously adopts a “poison pill” defense in response to Musk’s proposed offer, attempting to thwart a hostile takeover.
April 21: Musk lines up $46.5 billion in financing to buy Twitter. Twitter board is under pressure to negotiate.
April 25: Musk reaches a deal to buy Twitter for $44 billion and take the company private. The outspoken billionaire has said he wanted to own and privatize Twitter because he thinks it’s not living up to its potential as a platform for free speech.
April 29: Musk sells roughly $8.5 billion worth of shares in Tesla to help fund the purchase of Twitter, according to regulatory filings.
May 5: Musk strengthens his offer to buy Twitter with commitments of more than $7 billion from a diverse group of investors including Silicon Valley heavy hitters like Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison.
May 10: In a hint at how he would change Twitter, Musk says he’d reverse Twitter’s ban of former President Donald Trump following the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, calling the ban a “morally bad decision” and “foolish in the extreme.”
May 13: Musk declares his plan to buy Twitter “temporarily on hold.” Musk says he needs to pinpoint the number of spam and fake accounts on the social media platform. Shares of Twitter tumble, while those of Tesla rebound sharply.
June 6: Musk threatens to end his $44 billion agreement to buy Twitter, accusing the company of refusing to give him information he requested about its spam bot accounts.
July 8: Musk says he will abandon his offer to buy Twitter after the company failed to provide enough information about the number of fake accounts.
July 12: Twitter sues Musk to force him to complete the deal. Musk soon countersues.
July 19: A Delaware judge says the Musk-Twitter legal dispute will go to trial in October.
August 23: A former head of security at Twitter alleges the company misled regulators about its poor cybersecurity defenses and its negligence in attempting to root out fake accounts that spread misinformation. Musk eventually cites the whistleblower as a new reason to scuttle his Twitter deal.
October 5: Musk offers to go through with his original proposal to buy Twitter for $44 billion. Twitter says it intends to close the transaction after receiving Musk’s offer.
October 6: Delaware judge delays Oct. 17 trial until November and gives both sides until Oct. 28 to reach agreement to close the deal.
October 20: The Washington Post reports that Musk told prospective Twitter investors that he plans to lay off 75% of the company’s 7,500 employees.
Wednesday, October 26: Musk posts a video of himself entering Twitter headquarters carrying a kitchen sink, indicating that the deal is set to go through.
Thursday, October 27: In a message to advertisers, Musk says Twitter won’t become a “free-for-all hellscape.”
Thursday, October 27: Musk ousts CEO Parag Agrawal along with other top executives and takes control of Twitter, according two people familiar with the deal.
Thursday, October 27: Musk tweets “the bird is freed”
Elon Musk posted a video Wednesday showing him strolling into Twitter headquarters ahead of a Friday deadline to close his $44 billion deal to buy the company.
Musk also changed his Twitter profile t o refer to himself as “Chief Twit” and his location as Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters, a building that he once wondered should be closed and converted into a homeless shelter because so few employees were coming into the office under the company’s remote work policy. The video showed him carrying a sink through a lobby area.
“Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in!” he tweeted.
The Delaware Chancery Court had given both sides until Friday close the deal or face a November trial that could end the same outcome, only with a judge forcing Musk to go forward with the original deal.
Despite Musk’s splashy entry to headquarters, it wasn’t clear whether his purchase of Twitter had been finalized. Twitter confirmed that Musk’s video tweet was real but wouldn’t comment further. Alex Spiro, Musk’s lead lawyer, didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
Robert Anderson, a law professor at Pepperdine University, said he fully expects the deal to close by Friday’s deadline but didn’t make much of Musk’s video.
“I think he’s just visiting the headquarters, and I don’t see anything unusual about it, other than that he brought a sink,” Anderson said.
Musk had been expected to visit Twitter this week and is expected to return again Friday if the deal is finalized, according to an internal memo cited in a report by Bloomberg News.
Prelude to layoffs?
The Washington Post reported last week that Musk told prospective investors that he plans to cut thre-quarters of Twitter’s 7,500 workers when he becomes owner of the company. The newspaper cited documents and unnamed sources familiar with the deliberation.
One of Musk’s biggest obstacles to closing the deal was keeping in place the financing pledged roughly six months ago.
A group of banks, including Morgan Stanley and Bank of America, signed on earlier this year to loan $12.5 billion of the money Musk needed to buy Twitter and take it private. Solid contracts with Musk bound the banks to the financing, although changes in the economy and debt markets since April have likely made the terms less attractive. Musk even said his investment group would be buying Twitter for more than it’s worth.
Less clear is what’s happening with the billions of dollars pledged to Musk by investors who would get ownership stakes in Twitter. Musk’s original slate of equity partners included an array of partners ranging from the billionaire’s tech world friends with like-minded ideas about Twitter’s future, such as Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, to funds controlled by Middle Eastern royalty.
The more equity investors kick in for the deal, the less Musk has to pay on his own. Most of his wealth is tied up in shares of Tesla, the electric car company that he runs. Since April, he has sold more than $15 billion worth of Tesla stock, presumably to pay his share. More sales could be coming.
Musk is the world’s richest person, with a fortune estimated at $210 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
“Radically better”
Musk, 51, has shared few concrete details about his plans for the social media platform. While he’s touted free speech and derided spam bots since agreeing to buy the company in April, what he actually wants to do about either remains a mystery.
Although Musk’s tweets and statements have been cryptic, technology analysts have speculated that Musk wants to use Twitter to help re-create a version of China’s WeChat service, which allows users to do video chats, message, stream video, scan bar codes and make payments.
He gave a little more detail during Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting in August, telling the crowd at a factory near Austin, Texas, that he uses Twitter frequently and knows the product well. “I think I’ve got a good sense of where to point the engineering team with Twitter to make it radically better,” he said.
A beautiful thing about Twitter is how it empowers citizen journalism – people are able to disseminate news without an establishment bias
Musk’s flirtation with buying Twitter appeared to begin in late March. That’s when Twitter said he contacted members of its board — including co-founder Jack Dorsey — and told them he was buying up shares and was interested in either joining the board, taking Twitter private or starting a competitor.
Then, on April 4, he revealed in a regulatory filing that he had become the company’s largest shareholder after acquiring a 9% stake worth about $3 billion.
At first, Twitter offered Musk a seat on its board. But six days later, CEO Parag Agrawal tweeted that Musk would not be joining the board after all. His bid to buy the company quickly followed.
Inside Twitter, Musk’s offer was met with confusion and falling morale, especially after Musk publicly criticized one of Twitter’s top lawyers involved in content-moderation decisions.
In July, Musk abruptly reversed course, announcing that he was abandoning his bid to buy Twitter. His stated reason: Twitter hadn’t been straightforward about its problem with fake accounts he dubbed “spam bots.” Twitter sued Musk in Delaware Chancery Court to force the deal through. Two weeks before a 5-day trial was scheduled to begin, Musk changed his mind again, saying that he wanted to complete the deal after all.
