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- Skydance is cutting tech and product leaders after closing its merger with Warner Bros. Discovery.
- Four WBD technology executives are out, per a memo from Skydance chief product officer Dane Glasgow.
- Its new team will mostly feature Paramount execs who worked on its recent tech transformation.
Consolidation is underway at David Ellison's Skydance just a few weeks after the company closed its $110 billion merger with Warner Bros. Discovery.
Skydance's chief product officer, Dane Glasgow, laid out the product and tech leadership structure of the combined entity in a memo viewed by Business Insider.
Four top WBD executives are leaving, according to the memo.
They include:
- Avi Saxena, Warner Bros. Discovery's chief technology officer
- Tyler Whitworth, chief product officer for WBD's streaming business
- Dave Duvall, WBD's chief information officer
- Trish Collins Weedon, WBD's chief information security officer (CISO)
Duvall, Saxena, and Whitworth will stay on in an "advisory capacity as we undergo this transition," Glasgow wrote.
The company is mostly keeping Paramount executives in charge of its combined tech and product organization.
These leaders include:
- Lakshman Nathan, Paramount's chief information officer
- Carlo Joseph, its chief information security officer
- Jim Harrison, its executive vice president of infrastructure, broadcast, and distribution
- Nick Lee, Paramount's executive vice president of media systems
A few WBD executives are staying on in Skydance's post-merger leadership, per Glasgow's memo.
They include Brinton Miller, formerly WBD's media technology and operations lead, who will serve as Skydance's executive vice president of production and studio technology, and James Crossland, formerly head of global content operations at WBD, who will serve as its EVP of global content operations.
Skydance has spent the past year revamping its tech and product team, often recruiting talent from tech companies.
Glasgow joined Paramount from Meta, while Lee joined from Microsoft's AI division. Other team leaders in its post-merger structure include head of design Suzanne Pellican, formerly a Google exec; Hugh Williams, a former Google, eBay, and Microsoft exec; and Barak Turovsky, who came to Paramount after serving as chief AI officer at General Motors and VP of AI at Cisco.
Bringing technical expertise to Paramount has been a priority for Ellison, who wants to turn the century-old media brand into a modern, tech-forward business like Netflix. The company revamped its data and insights strategy in January, and merged some engineering teams in March to bolster its streaming tech.
"We are building a product and tech organization that can compete with anybody coming out of Silicon Valley," Ellison told CNBC earlier this month.
In his memo, Glasgow expressed gratitude for the work of both Paramount and WBD staffers, writing that he was "encouraged by the early collaboration, the bold new ideas you're bringing forward, and your openness to exploring new ways of working with your colleagues."
He also acknowledged the structural changes could be disruptive.
"I know a change of this scale brings questions, especially as we get to know new teams and colleagues," Glasgow wrote. "Your leaders will share more about their organizations in the coming weeks and we'll bring our teams together soon to keep building with and learning from each other."