Aakash Gupta reports that Larry Ellison signed a $40.4 billion personal guarantee to back the Ellison family's roughly $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery after Paramount's purchase, outbidding Netflix. The combined company, to be called Skydance, would include major studios, news networks and a 15% stake in TikTok's US entity.
A dad just signed a $40.4 billion personal guarantee so his son could buy Hollywood.
In 14 months, the Ellison family bought Paramount for $8 billion, then won a bidding war against Netflix for Warner Bros. Discovery at roughly $111 billion. Warner Bros, Paramount, CBS, HBO, CNN, DC, Nickelodeon, and TNT Sports now sit under one roof. Next week the combined company takes the name Skydance.
Netflix should have won. Warner's board had already signed an $83 billion deal with them and rejected the Ellisons twice, because the money sat in a revocable family trust the board called "illusory."
So Larry Ellison, 82 years old, answered with an irrevocable personal guarantee of $40.4 billion. One signature.
For scale, Larry has sold about $4.7 billion of Oracle stock this entire century. The guarantee was almost 9x everything he's cashed out in 25 years, backed by his 1.16 billion Oracle shares.
The merged streamer launches with around 207 million subscribers and $70 billion in projected annual revenue. And through Oracle, the family also holds 15% of TikTok's US entity.
Harry Potter, Top Gun, Batman, SpongeBob, Game of Thrones, CNN, CBS News, and a piece of TikTok's algorithm, all of it now answers to one family.
Aakash Gupta argues that Purdue Pharma's guilty pleas and fines failed to deter fraud, as the Sackler family extracted $10.7 billion and the conspiracy continued. He uses this to argue against relying on lawsuits to govern AI, responding to Bill Gates's remarks on AI safety.
In 2007, Purdue Pharma pleaded guilty to lying about OxyContin's addiction risk. The fine was $635 million. Over the next decade, the family that owned Purdue pulled $10.7 billion out of the company.
Bill Gates got asked this week whether lawsuits and corporate self-interest are enough to keep AI safe. He pointed at opioids and called the idea insane. The record backs him up harder than most people realize.
Before the guilty plea, payouts to the Sacklers ran $1.3 billion over twelve years. After it, $10.7 billion in ten. A criminal conviction taught them to move money out of the company faster. OxyContin sales kept growing after the fine.
Here's the detail that should end the debate. When Purdue pleaded guilty a second time in 2020, it admitted the conspiracy to defraud regulators ran from May 2007 to March 2017. May 2007 is the same month as the first guilty plea. The fraud restarted before the ink dried.
The final ledger reads like satire. More than half a million Americans dead from opioid overdoses. Purdue in bankruptcy. The Sacklers settling for $6.5 billion paid out over 15 years, no admission of wrongdoing, nobody in prison.
Liability ran a 20-year live experiment as the safety system for a dangerous product. Every lawsuit happened. Deterrence never showed up, because fines land years after the damage, on whatever shell remains, while the profits moved out long before.
That's why the FDA reviews drugs before they ship, why planes get inspected before takeoff, why cars have to include seat belts.
Gates called AI "the most dangerous thing that humans have ever gone near." You can argue with him on that. But governing it with lawsuits was already tested once, and the people who ran that test kept most of the money.
Josh Elman praises Muse Gadgets, an open source hardware site where users build devices by programming ESP32 boards or Raspberry Pis to connect with Muse. He says consumer hardware may be returning and notes early marketplace questions to solve.
This is so incredibly cool and an amazing inspiration for a rich hardware ecosystem. Can’t wait to see the innovation here . Not just consumer is back, but consumer hardware may be back too!
Ernesto Lopez describes how his app Prayer Lock grew from $0 to $150,000 per month after a $40,000 co-founder equity investment, reaching No. 6 on the App Store. He also cites AI novel apps reportedly earning $800 million a year and links a full write-up.
How we scaled our app from $0 to $150,000/mo — This is the story of our app Prayer Lock. An app I invested $40,000 in to buy 50% equity as co-founder. The story of how we made it to #6 on the App Store and beat app studios with $100M+ in funding
