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Paramount Skydance may finally have the upper hand on Netflix in the bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery.
The WBD board announced on Thursday afternoon that it believes Paramount’s offer to buy the entire company for $31 per share is better than Netflix’s proposal to buy its studio and HBO assets for $27.75 per share.
This story will be updated.
Sure, ChatGPT could help a board member write up a memo ahead of a meeting. But OpenAI’s chairman says there’s value to going old-school.
Bret Taylor, OpenAI’s board chair, said in a recent appearance on the “Uncapped with Jack Altman” podcast that he prefers concise but detailed written documents from board members over slide presentations. And he doesn’t want them relying on AI.
“I really like written documents for boards over presentations,” Taylor said. “You end up letting people synthesize information ahead of the board meeting, so you end up with more substantive discussions in the board room.”
Taylor, the former co-CEO of Salesforce and cofounder of AI startup Sierra, said that writing without AI is a worthwhile thinking exercise and helps board members clarify their thoughts.
His expectation for the boards he runs is that members have read the written material ahead of time, which helps keep things focused and substantive during the actual meeting.
“The main thing is it’s been read — and it’s been read ahead of time,” he said. “You end up with a meeting about the actual meat and potatoes of the topics, and you’re not staring at a bunch of sales numbers for the first time.”
Amazon cofounder Jeff Bezos is famously a big fan of meetings focused on a single memo prepared ahead time, but while Bezos preferred dense, 6-page memos, Taylor specifically favors concise material, arguing that brevity is a sign of careful thought — and respect to stakeholders.
“It’s like what’s that famous line — if I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter,” he added. “Like, spend the time because that’s actually how you can show respect to your stakeholders that you’re thinking about the strategic issues going on in your business.”
And while Taylor might not be a fan of leaning on AI for board meeting prep, that doesn’t mean he is dismissing the technology’s potential to be valuable in high-stakes situations.
“If you want a hot take, I think my intuition is regulators will start asking for agents,” he said. “The idea that you have a human set of controls over a regulated process will start to feel like a risk, rather than the risk being AI.”
President Donald Trump has warned Netflix to remove former US ambassador and national security advisor Susan Rice from its board “or pay the consequences.”
The stakes are high for Netflix: It’s in the middle of trying to execute a mega-deal to buy Warner Bros.
Rice, who served in senior roles in the Obama and Biden administrations, was critical of Trump’s second term in office when she appeared on the “Stay Tuned with Preet Bharara” podcast in an episode published on Thursday. Rice made comments about corporations that “take a knee to Trump,” saying they could face retribution under a subsequent Democratic administration.
After being alerted to Rice’s comments by far-right activist Laura Loomer, Trump posted: “Netflix should fire racist, Trump Deranged Susan Rice, IMMEDIATELY, or pay the consequences. She’s got no talent or skills – Purely a political hack! HER POWER IS GONE, AND WILL NEVER BE BACK. How much is she being paid, and for what??? Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DJT.”
Loomer’s post highlighted comments Rice made about corporations.
Here’s exactly what Rice said on that topic:
“When it comes to the elites, you know, the corporate interests, the law firms, the universities, the media, I agree with you, Preet, it is not, it’s not going to end well for them. For those that decided that it was, you know, that they would act in their perceived very narrow self-interest, which I would underscore is very short-term self-interest, and, you know, take a knee to Trump, I think they’re now starting to realize, ‘Wait a minute, you know, this is not popular.’ “Trump is not popular. What he is doing, whether on the economy and affordability or on immigration, now, is not popular, and that there is likely to be a swing in the other direction, and they are going to be caught with more than their pants down, they’re going to be held accountable by those who come in opposition to Trump and win at the ballot box. “And I can tell you Preet, you know, as I talk to leaders in Washington, leaders in our party, leaders in the states, if these corporations think that the Democrats, when they come back in power, are going to, you know, play by the old rules and say, ‘Oh, never mind, we’ll forgive you for all the people you fired, all the policies and principles you’ve violated, all, you know, the laws you’ve skirted,’ I think they’ve got another thing coming.”
Netflix’s pursuit of Warner Bros. would require approval from the Department of Justice’s antitrust division.
Trump in December said that Netflix had a “very big market share,” and that its potential acquisition of Warner Bros. “could be a problem.”
However, this month, he said he “shouldn’t be involved” in the deal and would defer to the Department of Justice to investigate the proposed merger.
Paramount, backed by Trump ally Larry Ellison, the billionaire Oracle cofounder, is also trying to buy Warner Bros.
A White House official told Business Insider last week that Trump “has great relationships with all parties in this potential transaction and remains neutral in this process with no preference for either bidder.”
Netflix’s co-CEO Ted Sarandos said on a podcast appearance last week that Trump had not asked for any political concessions related to the deal.
In the podcast interview, Rice was critical of Trump on many fronts.
When asked what worried her most about the current political situation, Rice said:
“The thing that worries me, perhaps the very most, is the abrogation of the rule of law in this country, and the fact that, you know, we are now living in a lawless society when the authorities of what is an increasingly authoritarian state exercises, you know, personal police forces, to go and execute the will of the President and do so in blatant violation of American citizens constitutional rights, their First Amendment rights, their Second Amendment rights, their Fourth Amendment rights.” “And when you have, you know, masked armed men busting into the houses of American citizens and ripping people out of their homes in their underwear and beating them and throwing them to the ground and putting them in cars and disappearing them and denying them access to counsel or their families, when you have the same people shooting American citizens in the street for exercising their First Amendment rights, we are in a very different place, and that worries me enormously. “And what also worries me, Preet is, you won’t be surprised to hear, is that we’re only at the beginning of what I think they may intend to try and that our very elections and our the fundamental elements of our democracy are profoundly at risk.”
When asked for her assessment of the Trump administration’s past 12 months in office, Rice said:
“Well, I expected it to be very bad, and I guess I would confess that it’s probably worse than I anticipated, but not because they’re doing things that surprised me. They told us exactly what they were going to do.” “You know, recall Trump saying multiple times on the campaign trail, ‘If you vote for me, this one time, you’ll never have to vote again.’ Or his, you know, pledge to use the American military against the quote, ‘enemy within.’ “You know, you had Stephen Miller, foreshadowing not only the use of the Insurrection Act, but potentially the suspension of habeas corpus and the imposition of martial law. All of these are, you know, they tell you, interestingly, where they intend to head. “But what surprised me is the speed and the efficacy of their efforts to do what they set out to do, and the fact that they have faced very little resistance from members of their own party, from the private sector, from civil society leaders and university heads and law firms and all of the, you know, the pillars of society, media — that have rolled over and played dead or hidden under rocks. “So I think the speed and the ease with which they’ve made progress on their agenda, which they laid out very clearly in Project 2025, and elsewhere, is what surprised me more than what they’ve tried to do.”
Disclosure: Mathias Döpfner, the CEO of Business Insider’s parent company, is a Netflix board member.
President Donald Trump is calling on Netflix to remove former US Ambassador and national security advisor Susan Rice from its board, sharpening his criticism of the streaming giant as it seeks to merge with Warner Bros. Discovery amid antitrust scrutiny.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump demanded that Netflix “immediately terminate” Rice from its board of directors, “or pay the consequences,” amplifying a message from right-wing activist Laura Loomer. Loomer had urged action against Rice, criticizing her role at the company and pointing to recent remarks she made about Trump and corporate America.
Rice, who served in senior roles in the Obama and Biden administrations, recently warned companies against aligning themselves too closely with Trump. Speaking on Thursday on the “Stay Tuned with Preet Bharara” podcast, she said corporations that “take a knee” to the president and break the law should expect consequences, predicting an “accountability agenda” if Democrats take back power.
The clash comes as the streaming giant pursues a high-stakes merger that will require approval from the Department of Justice’s antitrust division.
Trump in December said that Netflix had a “very big market share,” so its potential acquisition of Warner Bros. “could be a problem.”
However, in February, he said he “shouldn’t be involved” in the deal and would defer to his Department of Justice to investigate the proposed merger, Business Insider previously reported.
Earlier this week, during an appearance on Puck’s “The Town” podcast, Netflix’s co-CEO, Ted Sarandos, said that Trump hadn’t asked for political concessions during discussions of the possible deal, but was focused on bringing jobs back to Hollywood after years of lower production.
Representatives for Netflix and Rice did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.
Top US lawyer Brad Karp has resigned from Union College’s board of trustees as he faces scrutiny from his ties to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Karp has been removed from the list of trustees on his alma mater’s website, from which he graduated in 1981.
Union College’s board chair Julie Greifer Swidler could not be reached for immediate comment. In a statement to local media, Greifer Swidler said Karp had resigned from the board.
“The Board of Trustees and College leadership look forward to continuing our efforts to prepare our outstanding students to lead with wisdom, empathy and courage, while ensuring that Union thrives for decades to come,” she said.
Karp’s departure from the board follows his resignation as chairman of the Big Law firm Paul Weiss last week.
Karp is among the names to appear in 3 million documents released by the Justice Department from its investigation into Epstein.
“Recent reporting has created a distraction and has placed a focus on me that is not in the best interests of the firm,” Karp said in a statement in Paul Weiss’ news release announcing the news.
This story is developing. Please check back fror updates.
