Dylan Byers on the Paramount/Netflix/WBD battle: personal grudges, sovereign money, and why it's not over

Welcome. Welcome. Please have a seat.

Thank you. And uh

if you could kick us off with a little bit of an introduction on yourself, uh however you describe yourself these days, whatever's whatever is quickest.

Uh I'm a senior correspondent for Puck.

Okay.

Where I cover the media industry.

Yeah. media business, media gossip. Uh,

how is covering the media different than covering the oil and gas industry or tech or anything else?

Uh, more naval gazing, more ancestral

because you're in the media. [laughter] You can Are you Are you doing the naval gazing or are you reporting on naval gazing?

I I I naval gaze at the naval gazers.

Okay.

It's sort of an oral boros of naval gazing. Um,

interesting.

Very ancestral. What's uh has naval gazing been the top story over the last couple weeks or is it more deal making?

You you would It's Well, here's what's amazing. It's amazing that at a time when like

Paramount and Netflix are going to war for Warner Brothers Discovery.

Yeah.

The media industry is obsessed with like Ryan Liz and Olivia Nudie.

Oh yeah, that's a big one.

Barry Weiss CBS.

Oh yeah. Yeah. The media industry is funny because you it has a way of the the the the smallest most inconsequential gossip has a way of consuming the industry at large.

That doesn't feel like what the last couple months have been [laughter] though like like the Olivia Newsy Liza thing like that feels like much bigger than some small story. Is it really? It used to be big. So, so part part of it part of why media loves covering media is media likes to cover things that get a lot of attention and media businesses in their very nature, their job is to get attention.

I think that's part of I just I just think we're obsessed we're obsessed with ourselves.

Yeah. I would

but but an example I would give very often I'll find like a a fashion brand that that is like a household name

will have like $5 million of revenue, right? because it's because they're just like people like fashion. It gets shared a ton. Uh and so I think it's a very

same thing with individual influencers. Like they might be recognized on the street. If you put them in a headline, it's going to get clicks. Versus if I was like, I have a I have a report here on a oil and gas company that's doing 50 million a year. You'd be like, no one's going to click on that. No one knows what that company is.

People need stories. People need like p you need personalities. I mean my

the media lends itself to that.

Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately, you can do that at the executive level with the Paramount, Netflix, WBD deal. You can do it down at on the newsroom floor.

Yeah.

I think people need personalities to make these stories

Yeah.

human. Also, there's just, you know, there's only so much intrigue in numbers.

Do you feel like the Paramount, Netflix, Warner Brothers story has been particularly personal? Have you been

focus? It's the most personal at that level. at a major M&A level, even more so than when Bob Iger and Brian Roberts went to war for Fox,

which was personal, too, and had a lot of subplots there, especially on the Murdoch side. Of course, this is personal. This is you you've got in David Ellison a guy who is basically staking

a lot of personal money, a lot of his dad's money

trying to get this asset and then being doing all the right things,

sending [snorts] all the right signals to David Zazzl and the WP board, having all the right dinners, going to all the right fights

and then being sort of spurned at the last minute for someone else. and that negotiation and the Trump element and uh the relationships between Ted Sarendos and David Zazlov and then David Ellison and Larry Ellison and David Zazov it's like it's absolutely fascinating

so do you think I mean there is a world where

also business it should be purely economic right because it's the

yeah and it will be it will it will be in the end

the funny part is like the the personal element is there but at the end of the day whoever spends the most money is going to get the asset.

But if you're more personal, you might be able to marshall more capital. You might know more people. You might be more more people might be willing to rally behind you. And we're kind of seeing that with Ellison pulling in folks all over the board because, you know, he's has personal relationships with them. Is that roughly right?

That's rough. That's roughly right.

I think that I think what you have my my partner Bill Cohen put it really elegantly. You've basically got a a company with a $400 billion valuation going to war with a a man with $400 billion valuation and Larry Ellison and and his son

and yeah mar marshalling the capital for it, you know, with Gulf sovereign wealth funds and Jared Kushner and all that um

is is interesting and at a certain point Netflix is going to re reach a threshold for what it can compete with. I mean, another point Bill made is at a certain point if Paramount were just willing to come in and offer like $34, $35 a share for this thing, I think it would be game over.

Netflix can't do it.

But the person I mean, the personal element is just interesting because you've got Trump who wants to be involved in this deal somehow. You've got David who really doesn't like the idea, David Zazz, who really doesn't like the idea of selling to David Ellison. But fundamentally what you're doing is just a very extended negotiation that's going to play into

why why well into

why doesn't he want to get involved with with with David

I don't think this is how how Zazlov wanted to go out

right like I I think I'm not saying you know all when David Zazlov got Warner Media he did this whole song and dance coming to Hollywood and saying you know I'm a film guy I'm going to save the film industry I don't think anyone thought he was in it for the long haul.

Mhm.

I think everyone knew this was sort of like a a flip,

but he liked playing the Hollywood kingpin. And I don't think he wanted to go out because David Ellison came to the table and forced him to go to market.

And I also don't think that, you know, I think David Ellison and his team and and Jerry Cardell at Redbird, I think they came in and said, you know, somewhere around that sort of 2350, $24 a share mark. And I think he took offense to that because the number he wanted and the number he thought he could get was higher to 30.

And David, like look,

I I have spent a lot of my time at Puck writing about all of the various misguided exploits of David Zazlov at the top of Warner Brothers Discovery. But at the end of the day, like one thing he knows how to do very well is work a deal.

The entire time that David Ellison was coming was at the table saying, "I'll do this, I'll do this, I'll spend more." He was talking to Ted Sarendos at Netflix and um basically by by virtue of playing those two off against each other, he's probably going to end up driving this the the the deal up to a price that is actually higher than $30. So kudos to him.

Do you think he's talking to anyone else? There's been a lot of skepticism about there ever having been a second bidder. People were saying, "Oh, the whole NE the idea that Netflix would even build bid that's a fake stocking process."

I remember

I remember in September

when Paramount first started this whole process, someone came to me and said, "This isn't over. Netflix is at the table." Everyone thought that was [ __ ]

right?

Greg Peters went out at a Bloomberg event here in Hollywood

and said, "We don't do, you know, historically we don't do M&A deals like this. We're not interested in M&A." And everyone thought, "Okay, well that's it."

Yeah. Netflix has been at the table the entire time. And in fact, if you talk to the guys at Paramount, what they'll tell you is like they [snorts] feel like Zazlov was playing rope dope with them. It's basically saying, "Yeah, come to the table. We're good. Everything you're offering is better than Netflix." And then finally in the 11th hour saying continue to bid and bid and bid and bid and

Yeah. And we're not done. We're not done. That's the That's the sort of funny thing. The way when when Ted Sarendos and Greg Peters go out there and talk about this, they're talking about it like it's over.

It's not over. No,

we're we're I I I You could have me on You could have me back on in six months. I think we're still talking about this.

Yeah. Yeah.

That's great.

Do you think that uh the the actual Netflix contract, the deal, the breakup fees, the announcement, the pageantry around like we have a deal.

Yeah, totally. Make it inevitable.

Is that a tactic?

Yeah, I think so.

Okay. to drive a higher price from to to let Paramount know to let Ellison know, hey, that you're best and final. Like, now's the time to go rally the go around the world, get fire up the jet.

How do you make How do you make another offer and then say, I just want to be clear that this is not my best and final.

Oh, that was a funny line. Like I've never I've never I've never I've never in a negoti like never in a negotiation had somebody make a a a new higher offer

and then also say like typically you'd be like yeah there's not a lot of like it just shows that

like what is the incentive to take the offer at all

buy your house for a million dollars but I could go higher

I could go higher and by the way re uh another partner of mine Matt Bell like

he's reported Paramount will go higher

okay

they will like the Ellison's will go higher And and part of the thing, and this gets back to the personal element, which is what's so fascinating to me,

David Ellison came to the Paramount deal, the first deal,

with a strategy to basically wrap up as much of Hollywood as he could, scale it up, and then try to go to war with Netflix and YouTube and the guys up in Silicon Valley. the entire thesis of his battle strategy rests on him being able to acquire more than just Paramount. If at the end of the day Netflix gets Warner Brothers Discovery and he's sitting there with Paramount,

he's not he's not he's not in the game.

Well, yeah. So, so I was thinking so he uh he acquired the rights to UFC.

Yes.

They're killing the pay-per-view model, which is interesting. the pay-per-view model was being killed by illegal streaming, which was like the bane of Dana White's existence. He basically, to my knowledge, was always angry about it. Was kind of the nature of the internet. It's just like if you're streaming something, it'll show up in other places in other parts of the internet. There's not much you can do. So Paramount, you know, basically going uh throwing down and saying like we're going to own the UFC, which is there's a lot of people that will just subscribe because there's oneish major UFC event every month and it'll it's a much better deal than uh than just going and buying each individual pay-per-view for $80 a pop or whatever. But that subscription offering becomes much more compelling if if you're bundling in all this other IP. Totally. My question is like you're definitely going to get the the UFC fan base, but how big is that fan base? Certainly, it's a popular sport in America, but how do you like build enough value around this to really have a competitive offering? I think what's interesting about the UFC deal what the UFC deal was a signal to the the broader market which is so much again having it can be depressing to cover the media industry because a lot of the times it's going through periods of contraction or decline or you look at since we're talking about sports rights you look at someone like ESPN right who's being forced to make all of these very calculated decisions about you know should we pay X amount for Major League Baseball when you're competing still competing for the NFL with like Amazon and and

well and sports are the the last remaining content monopolies, right? So in news, you don't really have a monopoly on anything. You might break is a commodity.

Yeah. You might break the story, but everybody else will have the facts.

Sports rights are the one sports rights are the one rights and leagues. So So the UFC property like like like

Sure. Sure. Yeah. Warner Brothers.

But but still that is highly competitive with somebody else else online saying, "I'm gonna make an AI cartoon."

Sure,

people aren't creating homegrown sports content. They're creating commentary and reaction content, but you still need to pay to see it live.

At the end of the day, there's only one network you can watch Sunday Night Football on, and it's NBC. And that matters in a way that when news break, when a bomb goes off or a coup happens, there are a lot of different ways to go. But what was interesting about the UFC deal is at this period of sort of contraction negotiation among legacy media players, David Ellison was coming in almost like a sovereign himself and saying, "I'm willing. I'm here.

I'm willing to make bold bets and I'm willing to even overpay or what others would consider overpay in order to go after these assets." It also helps that he's younger. He's thinking on a longer time horizon. like he's actually someone who's thinking how do I build up not just a media empire he thinks about as a media and tech empire how do I build that up over the course of decades so he's making these really long-term bets and again part of that it was never ever just about Paramount I remember sitting in the polo lounge with somebody before the Paramount deal even closed and like he's going after WBD next like this is always this is a this is a scale play and so that just brings me back to like you can't you can't execute the plan

if you're [clears throat] just sitting with Paramount.

And so if you're Zazlov and the guy's like, "Well, yeah, our best and final offer is whatever starts with a two." He's like, "The [ __ ] it does." Like, [laughter] "No, it doesn't.

You need me more than I need you." Very clearly.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I I think that uh I mean, I count myself as oddly like a media I'm just getting up to speed on a lot of these media stories, and this one's been fascinating. Um, but uh just digging into David Ellison's history, I mean starting Sky Dance in 2004, he really has been in Hollywood as at least like,

you know, given it his all for 20 years. He starred in Fly Boys, the movie that he shot. Like it's like he's he clearly wants it. It's about that. He's not he's not a it's hard to call him a tourist.

I don't know if you've seen Fly Boys. It wasn't great. No, but but to show up with and and not like there are lots of like I mean you could easily levy the like tourist uh label at like Elon Musk buying Twitter, right? What does he know about social networking? He's been a he's been a PayPal guy, then he's been a space guy, then he's been a car guy, now he's a social media guy. What does he know about the news? And it's like that kind of was true. Like he did just show up and was all of a sudden like I use Twitter a lot so I'm buying it. This is this is a 20-year journey, right? David Ellison fancies himself a true film buff. Hollywood guy

grew up watching movies, going to the movies. His association with Tom Cruz and Mission Impossible to him is a massive badge of honor because he feels like he's really been supporting the industry.

And part of the argument you're going to see or we're already seeing it that that he and his team will make against Netflix

is that Netflix is paying lip service to like the theatrical window. They're not a they're not a business that's built on putting movies in theaters. True. And he's like, we actually will we we are committed to Hollywood in the traditional sense.

We're so committed that we'll we'll put Tom Cruz yelling at you about TV settings on front of you. You seen this?

No, I haven't. But

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Tom Cruz like there's a lot of TVs that come with like specific refresh rates technology like high refresh rate, not 24 frames. It'll do like 80 48. It's like smooth motion. And he hates it because it's like not as the filmmaker intended. Yeah.

And so he'll do like pre-roll ads for that. Uh clearly like a Yeah. Truly like loves the theater stuff.

We are going to We are all going in in this process because one thing that gets lost, you know, the creative community in Hollywood

gets really upset about the Netflix of it all. They don't like seem to like Netflix.

Yep.

They don't like Netflix from a tech perspective, not a political perspective. They they see them as politically aligned with Netflix generally.

But more politically aligned with Netflix in fact, but in terms of their nostalgia for what this industry is about.

Yes. We're going to see a lot of nostalgia over the course of this deal negotiation and there's going to be a lot of heming and hawing among the Hollywood creative community about what's happening and all I all I would say is whether Paramount or Netflix get WBD

like the train has left the station like the industry has changed

and even Ted's whole thing about you know we're committed to the theatrical window like [ __ ] like I guess movies will be in theaters for like 10 minutes before they're on on [laughter] Netflix but [clears throat]

what uh do you think that do you think that h you know Hollywood in in the actual traditional sense like the local comm I mean we're recording this live from Hollywood. Yeah.

Uh it seems like the industry is the culture of the industry is like dominated by nostalgia. That's like the that's the feeling that I have. The interesting thing about tech is that tech has a nostalgic element to it tech culture but it's like videos of us going to the moon and we're like well we got to do that again. whereas Hollywood seemingly is just wants the whole production pipeline and process to go back the way that it was. And I guess how how are how are people processing like having a even smaller kind of potential buyer pool out of all of this?

Well, you know, what you're making me think of

I think earlier when we were talking about media, we're talking about other industries like oil and gas industry is my example. The difference is is that creatives are a real pain in the ass to deal with from the perspective of the front office.

Sure,

you build your business around them,

but they have feelings about how things should be that I think people probably in the oil and gas industry or the trucking industry don't. So there are a lot of like Tom Cruises and Martin Scorsese who have feelings about how how this industry should work and what you need to preserve in order to preserve the integrity of it. What happens when new leaders take over is they have to do a song and dance where they pay a lot of lip service to this. And so you see Ted Sandos coming in and talking about how great it is to acquire the studio that made Casablanca.

Yeah.

The future of the film. I [ __ ] love Casablanca. I've seen it 100 times. The future of this business does not rest on like future generations going back and watching Humphrey Bogart. That is not where the future is going. Similarly, when David Ellison took over Paramount, there's all this lip service paid to like Walter Kankite and the integrity of CBS News.

With all due respect to David, I don't think he gives a [ __ ] about Walter Kankite. Like, but you have to do that song and dance in order to sort of finesse the transition of the creative community.

And in truth, I think what's more interesting is I think whether you're talking about a David Ellison or a Ted Sandos, they're actually thinking about the future. They're thinking about how to go to the moon again. They're thinking about you guys were just talking about Disney's deal with Sora.

I want to talk to you about that too.

When when right after he he dropped his peons to Walter Kronite at this Paramount event just down the street a few months ago, David Ellison talked about how we were just a matter of years away from his kids being able to talk to the characters on Paw Patrol and have those characters talk back to them.

Sor the Disney Sor deal is like an early step towards that future. They know that's where we're going.

Yeah.

It is not my kids watching Blueie over and over and over again. It is them talking to Bluey and telling Blueey what to do.

They're thinking about it, but the the dissonance between what they have to sort of say to plate the Marty Scorsese and where they're actually thinking about putting the money is um is notable.

I feel like it's notable. I mean, there's So, we talk to founders at least once a week that are building like video models and and products that could eventually be used by entertainment or are being used by entertainment. And I get as an outsider to entertainment, I get excited because I'm like, if if budgets for films hold flat and the tools that these entrepreneurs are building get better and better, you'll eventually be able to say, you know, a movie that would have cost $100 million could now be four different movies that cost $25 million. And you you're using AI to reduce the cost and using it for scenes that that are just like, you know, historically expensive to actually shoot and do. Uh, and so I see an opportunity for this like Cambrian, like even if budgets just hold flat, a Cambrian explosion of more creativity, more people having uh the opportunity to uh create films and television shows and things like that, but it feels like there's like zero excitement here about that. And maybe it's and maybe it's because it's in pockets because

entirely outside of the Hollywood system. Like the iPhone really did democratize film making, but like the end result of that was like Mr. Beast on YouTube.

No, but I'm just saying I'm just saying it's still I'm saying I'm saying even though the technology is not being created here, it still could be a catalyst

for the industry.

I think it's a competitor industry,

but but it is it is and and it's and it's and it's a tool, right?

It's a tool. I mean, it's a tool. And as with the iPhone, the question is who who gets who has the who has the access to the tool and and who gets to harness the tool and then do something great with it. Yeah, the iPhone sort of democratized your ability to create content. And you can argue that the vast majority of what's out there is slop and is not nearly as good as what Hollywood can create. But then again, you just have to look at where people are spending their time. People are spending more time with userenerated content. People are spending more time on YouTube than they are on any other streaming platform. So

you'll be able to talk to Humphrey Bogart.

You can talk to Humphrey. [laughter]

That's what I put in Citizen Kane.

Yeah, you can put him on the plane. Wy Wy Coyote. Wy Coyote teaches algebra.

Yeah, that'll happen for sure.

I the the the problem with nostalgia and with trying to preserve the order as it is is that the tools are there. They're going to be harnessed. M

they are more democratized than they have been in the past

and at a certain point the eyeballs are going to go where they're going to go and you can't force it and there is this weird sort of like Amish like let's just like preserve this moment in time that

Yeah.

Okay. So [clears throat] so so is uh if we if we uh hopped in a car and drove over to Burbank and uh snuck into Disney. Do you think Bob Iger has like a total revolt on his hands today? because I feel like Disney is one of the truly creative places. They hire tons of those artists that have opinions. They're talentdriven. Uh and yet they just put out an announcement. Yeah, we're going to do AI content. It feels like a very it feels like a divisive issue if I was you know

I'm sure management I'm sure it is for some people. I increasingly find that the stakes are are so high and and that the change is so fast that

the need to meet it is existential and I think leaders like Iger increasingly care less about

that blowback you know I'm so funny I

a long time like 20 years ago I was an intern at the New Yorker and I remember when they opened up you could they did the back page where people could submit

captions for the New Yorker cartoons and the cartoonists hated it because they felt like that was their the integrity of their work should not be opened up to the public.

And in fact, that became like one of the greatest sources of engagement with the New Yorker was was through that.

I think people recognize that the being able to say, I want Darth Vader on a beach or I want, you know,

Captain Underpants doing XYZ, like that is going to happen. Yep.

You can already sort of do it. Um, and the question for Disney is, are we going to have a piece of that revenue? Are we going to make money off of it? And in fact,

if we know that that's where the puck is going and at a certain point, you will be able to talk to your favorite animated characters, how can we if if we engage with that, then maybe we can start driving um maybe that helps keep engagement. Maybe that helps drive people to theme parks. There's a whole another piece of it I was talking about with my colleague Julie Alexander just earlier today, but there's a there's a whole another element here too with YouTube where, you know, YouTube is or sorry, Google is starting to generate Disney characters and

Disney doesn't want that happening. So, I think trying to set a precedent.

They launched a cease and assist last night. They're they're they taking legal action against basically seemingly every scaled player except OpenAI. Opening Ideal is a one-year exclusive

and so I think that opens up uh I'm assuming

Disney's using these lawsuits and and the cease and desist to start a negotiation of of what of what this will look like once everybody gets access to it. But it's it's notable that I think this is even today just seeing the timeline I think this is underrated as a deal for open AI to be able to drive just at a time when it feels like their their product is being

I completely disagree but continue

at least at least somewhat threatened by by Gemini.

Sure.

If you're if you're

if you're an American household Yeah. and and you're like a Disney family, what what family of apps are you going to be paying money to, right? if one of them creates these magical experiences for your kids and the other, you know, is completely blocked from generating any IP around that because like when kids I don't I don't know my my kids are young, but if you're a 10-year-old and you realize that like you can like my son I generate like p I take pictures of us and I turn us into dinosaurs and I have used chatbt to do that a lot. It's stuck in his head. He'll be like, "Let's make some D like let's make dinosaur pictures."

Yeah. It's like a fun.

And so when kids realize that any Disney content that they can watch can immediately be like brought into their life.

Yeah.

That's going to be

or if he comes to you and says, "Hey, let's let's turn ourselves into the Avengers and you're like, well, there's only one app that allows me to do that." Then boom, you're in you're back in Sora as opposed to

and you're going to pay for it because I think parents will pay almost any price to bring joy to their children.

Yeah. So I I mean I agree with that. I just think it's it's going to be a slow takeoff of that type of content because

but I don't think I don't think the the whole thing like Studio Giblly was that a slow takeoff.

Absolutely. It was it was it was a huge it was a huge meme moment where everyone had to have one. Everyone needed to see what they looked like in the Studio Giblly mode and then the usage like dropped off and then started climbing at like 1%. you know, and and it is climbing and it is going to grow and it and it will be informative.

I'm just saying you now have 200 different characters, the most valuable IP in the world.

I'm not saying it's bad. It's definitely like an improvement to that product and it will make Sora a better app and it will make

not just Sora, but it's it's it's I'm assuming I didn't see specifically, but I'm assuming yeah, it's chatd and Sora, so it's going to be take

to bring it Yeah. Yeah. But to bring it back to the uh the the Ellison uh like the Paramount WBD, like if you put them together, you get something like 15% of all watch hours in America controlled by that company. If you put take Netflix and and WBD, you put them together, you get 14%. You saw that quote, right? Uh

like Sora, I think, is going to be at like less than 1% for like years and then it will eventually be 5% and then 10%. But it just next year is not going to be like the year that 10% of watch hours were AI generated video. Like it's just not there yet.

I think I just I I commend Iger on at least trying to

trying trying trying to adapt the his company for this future because that is where it's going. I mean

it's very hard to reject the thesis even with the available technology which feels like very beta very 1.0

that that's not where this is headed. And if you've got no one is sitting on a better

IP portfolio than Disney, particularly when you're talking about kids, obviously.

Y [snorts]

So, and there's no easier way to do this than with animation.

Yeah.

So, why not go there?

Yeah. Yeah.

I just think so, so I looked it up.

Yeah.

Disney Plus has just under 60 million total paid subscribers in the US and Canada. Mhm.

I think a lot of those subscribers are are subscribing for content for their children.

For sure.

Don't underestimate how many people without kids go to Disneyland.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. That's true. There's a big It's a big number. I'm just saying like that cohort OpenAI has like what a third of that in paying subs

globally.

Mhm.

And so I just think this is I I do think this is a m at least for the next 12 months. I think this is going to be a this is ChachiBD doesn't have a lot of moes, right? Like the the product is better than other comparable products and this is a new moat where if you're those 60 million people that are paying for Disney Plus

like you're an ultra fan

and you're you're a super fan and you're going to park it for you.

How many people visit uh

Yeah. Yeah.

Here's an anecdotal thing.

Yeah, please. [snorts] most to the best of my knowledge the one one way I've been able to make my son cool in his second grade class is by getting him on sor like introduc letting him play around with Sora earlier than his friends

didn't do that with Minecraft you know but like did that with Sor

and I have all his friends coming up to me and being like what is Sora tell us about Sora can we use Sora I'm sure the other parents hate me

it's a wild thing to do

but you do see you this is purely anecdotal you see that level like oh my god can we create some can we just say something and create Yeah.

And you think about how sticky Disney has been, right? Like I I I don't know a single parent in my kids class who doesn't have a Disney Plus subscription.

You are just you are you are if you if that if you can do that on Sora and you can't do it on its competitors, that's really potentially valable.

In 2023, the last reporting period for the parks that I can find,

140 million people globally paid to go to a Disney park and experience.

Okay. the Disney.

I'm sold. Extremely bullish for OpenAI. Extremely bullish [laughter] LGBT. No, no, no, no, no. I Yeah, you you win me over on this. I still I I still don't think I still don't think a significant percentage of content consumed by Americans next year will be fully AI generated. I think that's where we're going to see a slow that's where we're going to see a sling up. It's a great deal.

Hats off PGCO.

Well, yeah. So if if you get 140 million people visit Disney parks this year,

I bet you they will have things in the park which is like recreate this moment. Turn this into an animation. This is very good. It is very I I just think what the timeline this morning that was interesting. Everybody looks at the headline number $1 billion. Yep.

And they're like this is a round this is barely this is like slapping duct tape on on the on a boat that's leaking water, right? It doesn't feel like that big of a number because it's not in the context of OpenAI, but the the competitive edge that gives them over the next 12 months is massive.

This is fantastic. This is a great conversation.

Thank you for having me. I'm such an honor to finally be in the dome. Amazing. I'm sure with the way the WBD deal evolves, you'll be regular. I'm just up the street, so anytime. Thanks for having me. This is great. Thanks so much.

Thank you. Thanks.

Uh we have our next guest, Fiji Simo. Uh, hit the application. Hit the gong for us. It would be our I don't know if I've earned this.

What's a big number? You got to give us a number.

How many years you've been writing?

14.

14 years. Overnight success. [applause]

Thank you.

Let me tell you about linear. Meet the system for modern software development. Streamline uh work. Linear streamlines work across the entire development cycle from road map to release. Let me also tell you about Julius AI, the AI data analyst that works for you. Join millions who use Julius to connect their data, ask questions, and get insights in