“I would not doubt for a minute that before very long you’re going to see an announcement,” cable billionaire John Malone said on Tuesday.
Two days later, Semafor reported that Elon Musk had invested roughly $1bn in Skydance, the media group David Ellison formed from Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery. Rohan Goswami’s scoop cited people familiar with the matter.
CNBC then reported the same figure, citing its own source. Representatives for Musk and Skydance did not immediately respond to either outlet. TNW has not independently confirmed the deal.
Cash for a company cutting costs
The Musk Skydance investment came together around the same time as new equity from other investors, including board member Laurene Powell Jobs, Semafor reported. In September, it reported that Paramount had considered asking Musk for an equity injection.
Paramount closed its takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery on 6 October and took the Skydance name. The company is targeting $6bn in cost savings over three years. It carries nearly $80bn of debt, CNBC reported, and its shares fell about 1% on Thursday.
The Ellison connection
Musk and Larry Ellison, David Ellison’s father and Oracle’s co-founder, have long been close. Larry Ellison put $1bn into Musk’s 2022 takeover of Twitter, now X. He invested in Tesla in 2018 and sat on its board.
He also personally guaranteed more than $40bn of the equity financing for the Warner Bros. deal, Semafor reported. Malone made his prediction at an appearance at the Paley Center.
“Who helped Elon finance Twitter when he bought it? Larry Ellison,” Malone said.
Musk’s public praise for the Ellisons had prompted talk of a wider partnership between Starlink and Skydance, according to Semafor. David Ellison wants Skydance to run like a tech company.
“We are building a true product and tech team,” he told CNBC earlier this month.
A documentary about Musk
Skydance now owns HBO, which produced “Musk”, Alex Gibney’s documentary about the billionaire. It opened in US cinemas on 9 October. Gibney said “very specific plans” are in the works for HBO to air it in January.
He was worried about the film’s future when the Warner Bros. deal closed, he told Jason Guerrasio of Business Insider in an interview published on 15 October.
“I’ve been told that they will air it and that even David Ellison very well knows about it and promises he will air it,” Gibney said.
HBO declined to comment to Business Insider, and Skydance did not respond. Musk has criticised the film, and X refused its ads in September.
“He has ZERO integrity. Horrible human,” Musk wrote on X about Gibney.