Was John Malone just spit-balling — or does he have some inside info about some financial machinations brewing among the Ellisons, Skydance and Elon Musk’s SpaceX?
Malone, the media mogul known as “The Cable Cowboy” for his investments across the cable and telecom sector over five decades, suggested there will be a sizable investment coming from Musk’s SpaceX conglomerate into Skydance, the company formed from the $111 billion merger of Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery. Larry Ellison, Oracle founder and the father of Skydance CEO David Ellison, holds the largest equity stake in the new company, while the Ellisons and RedBird Capital own 100% of the voting shares.
“These guys are very intertwined,” Malone said about Larry Ellison and Musk, speaking Wednesday at the Paley Center for Media’s International Council Summit in New York.
Malone speculated that SpaceX could invest “$8 billion or $10 billion” into Skydance, which he predicted would include a “global output deal” for Skydance’s content — presumably for SpaceX’s X social platform (formerly Twitter). That investment, Malone continued, would help Skydance “delever” by helping the company pay down its “pretty big pile of debt.”
The new Skydance is saddled with about $80 billion in net debt, and the company faces the challenge of managing that while cutting costs — execs are aiming to save $6 billion over three years through layoffs and other measures — and also investing into content.
A Skydance spokesperson declined to comment. A rep for Musk didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Malone, at the Paley event, noted that Larry Ellison ponied up cash (about $1 billion) to help fund Musk’s $44 billion takeover of Twitter in 2022. And he said Ellison raised “some of the money” for the Paramount-WBD deal using Tesla stock.
Malone is semi-retired: As of the beginning of 2026, he stepped down as chairman of his Liberty Media and Liberty Global holding companies, adopting the title of “chairman emeritus.”
It’s not the first time Musk has been floated as a possible financial partner for the merged Paramount-Warner Bros. According to a report last month by Semafor, David Ellison was considering reaching out to Musk to “become part of a syndicate of equity investors into Paramount.”
Meanwhile, Musk on Tuesday said SpaceX and Tesla have formed committees to explore a potential merger, which analysts say could result in a company worth almost $5 trillion. “I do think there’s a lot of merit to combining the companies,” Musk said on SpaceX’s Q3 2026 earnings call Tuesday, but he added that a merger was not “a certainty.”