TLDR:
Key Points:
- Annual Sun Valley conference hosted by Allen & Co. is a hotbed for dealmaking among media, tech, and business moguls.
- This year’s event will feature key guests like Shari Redstone, Sam Altman, and NBA Commissioner Adam Silver.
Article:
The Sun Valley resort in Idaho is set to play host this week to Allen & Co.’s annual “summer camp for billionaires” – and as usual, the biggest names in media, tech and business are jetting in. The invite-only events on the lodge’s sprawling grounds are a closely-guarded secret to the public, but the annual conference has traditionally served as a hotbed for dealmaking among moguls like Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Disney’s Bob Iger.
This year’s key guests include Shari Redstone, who will likely court suitors for Paramount Global even after she agreed to sell her family’s National Amusements Inc., the Hollywood studio’s controlling shareholder, to David Ellison’s Skydance Media for $2.4 billion. The deal, which would see Redstone step aside after years of speculation, includes a 45-day “go shop” window for other bidders to make competing offers. That window conveniently opens just as Redstone is set to rub elbows with media and entertainment bigwigs in Idaho.
Elsewhere, OpenAI boss Sam Altman – who has exploded to the forefront of the artificial intelligence race due to the success of ChatGPT – will be in attendance as his firm looks to ink more licensing deals to power the chatbot. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, who dished about the league’s work with Apple to bring games to the “Vision Pro” virtual reality headset last year, will be under scrutiny as he works to finalize what is expected to be a $76 billion media rights package with broadcast partners.
Other media honchos who received invites include New York Post and NewsCorp owner Rupert Murdoch and his sons Lachlan and James, Comcast’s Bob Roberts and Netflix co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters. From the tech world, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and Salesforce boss Marc Benioff are expected to join the likes of Altman and Zuckerberg in Idaho.
Meanwhile, legendary 93-year-old investor Warren Buffett – a Sun Valley fixture whose wife Astrid was heard grumbling about having to pay $4 for a cup of coffee last year, is not attending the conference. Other Berkshire Hathaway executives, including Buffett’s successor Greg Abel and longtime colleagues Todd Combs and Ted Weschler, will be there.