Elon Musk has made an investment in Skydance of roughly $1 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
The financial injection comes as the company looks to cut costs. Paramount closed its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery on Oct. 6, naming the combined entity Skydance. Co-CEOs David Ellison and Ynon Kreiz are tasked with merging two major film studios in Paramount and Warner Bros., two popular streaming platforms — Paramount+ and HBO Max — and a host of corporate functions to support a portfolio of TV networks and two news divisions. Skydance has said it expects to see $6 billion in cost savings over three years, though it faces a debt burden of nearly $80 billion. Musk’s commitment is part of a wider effort by Skydance to raise equity investments, according to Semafor. Representatives for Musk and Skydance did not immediately respond to CNBC’s requests for comment. Ellison’s father, Larry Ellison, has a history with Musk. The Oracle co-founder invested $1 billion in Musk’s 2022 deal to purchase Twitter, now called X. Larry Ellison also invested in Tesla in 2018 and served on the company’s board of directors. The elder Ellison also personally guaranteed more than $40 billion of equity financing in Paramount’s offer to take over WBD.
The investment follows Paramount’s recent $111bn merger with Warner Bros Discovery, a huge acquisition that brought the media companies together under the Skydance name. At the head of the new media empire is David Ellison, the son of billionaire Oracle co-founder and Donald Trump ally Larry Ellison. The cash infusion solidifies an alliance between two of Trump’s richest monetary backers. In September, Semafor reported that Paramount executives had considered Musk as an equity investor, citing his close ties to Larry Ellison, who invested $1bn in Musk’s acquisition of X in 2022 and also $45m in support of Trump’s re-election bid in 2024. Musk spent more than $290m on Trump’s re-election bid and has spent more than $350m backing Republicans in the current US midterm elections.
After the merger, Skydance co-CEOs David Ellison and Ynon Kreiz, who previously led Mattel, informed employees that the integration would involve layoffs, stating: “Integrating two companies will bring change, including difficult decisions that affect our workforce.”
The company’s leadership – which now oversees Paramount and Warner Bros’s movie studios, HBO Max, CBS News and CNN – has set a target of more than $6bn in cost savings over the next three years, a goal that Los Angeles county officials estimate could lead to the loss of 4,500 film and television jobs in Los Angeles alone.