Elon Musk has dropped roughly $1 billion into Skydance, the company that now owns CNN, and yes, you are allowed to enjoy this. According to reports from CNBC and Semafor, the investment is confirmed, and former Liberty Media leader John Malone says the total could eventually climb to $10 billion.
Skydance is what you get when you combine Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery into one giant, debt-laden media company. CNN came along for the ride, which means the same CNN that spent years treating every Musk headline like a five-alarm fire now has Musk looking over its corporate shoulder. That sound you hear is a thousand blue-checkmark journalists refreshing their resumes.
Malone dropped an interesting breadcrumb about how the money trail connects. “Who helped Elon finance Twitter when he bought it? Larry Ellison,” he said. Larry Ellison is the father of David Ellison, who co-runs Skydance after leading Paramount through its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. The family ties here are tight. Malone also noted, “How did Larry Ellison come up with some of the money to put into the creation of Skydance? Tesla stock. And I would not doubt for a minute that before very long you’re going to see an announcement.” He said Wednesday that he expects a partnership between Skydance and Musk’s Starlink to emerge from all of this.
You can read more about Elon Musk’s Skydance investment to get the full picture of what this deal could mean for the media landscape.
The Hollywood Reporter called the investment a potential “backdoor for Musk to enter the media-entertainment world.” Depending on how many voting shares come with the deal, a $10 billion stake could net Musk as much as 15 percent of the combined company. The outlet also noted that if the investment runs through SpaceX, “a SpaceX entry into Skydance is a Musk entry into Hollywood.” As for X, the site noted the deal could give Musk “a content pipeline” he has long wanted, potentially including episodes of top Skydance TV shows, making him “more than just a dilettante in the content world” and turning X into a legitimate streamer.
Skydance is carrying about $80 billion in debt and is trying to cut costs by $6 billion, according to CNBC. Musk’s cash came as the company was seeking infusions from several investors, including board member Laurene Powell Jobs. So far, Musk has not commented publicly on the investment.
Malone summed up the challenge ahead plainly, saying Skydance will have to “re-engineer all of those channels, and figure out how they morph into streams themselves rather than just traditional linear.” That is a polite way of saying CNN’s old business model is on life support. The network that built its brand telling viewers what to think now has a guy who bought Twitter just to blow it up sitting near the top of the org chart. CNN anchors everywhere are doing a lot of deep breathing right now, and honestly, the rest of us are doing just fine.
