David Ellison Mulls Tapping Elon Musk for Paramount Investment While Closing in on Warner Bros. Takeover: Report

David Ellison, seeking fresh capital for a merged Paramount-Warner Bros., is considering reaching out to tech mogul Elon Musk — the world’s richest person — to “become part of a syndicate of equity investors into Paramount,” according to a report by Semafor.

According to the report, citing anonymous sources, “Musk’s name is one of a number of wealthy individuals that Paramount CEO David Ellison has considered tapping for the syndicate,” but it did not identify others Ellison is supposedly mulling as investment partners. The Semafor report said the amount of Musk’s potential investment in Paramount could not be learned.

Paramount declined to comment. A rep for Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Musk, the one-time Trump administration official who leads SpaceX, Tesla and X, among other businesses, had a net worth estimated at $950 billion as of Wednesday, per Forbes.

Paramount’s deal to merge with Warner Bros. Discovery is close to the finish line, after the company reached a settlement with the 12 state attorneys general to settle their antitrust lawsuit over the pact. The judge in the case has scheduled a hearing Thursday to go over the points of the proposed consent decree; pending the judge’s approval, the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger is expected to close in about two weeks.

Oracle founder Larry Ellison (David’s father), who is also one of the world’s richest men, has business ties to Musk: Larry Ellison invested $1 billion in Musk’s 2022 deal to take Twitter (since renamed X) private. Larry Ellison also invested in Tesla in 2018, and served on its board for several years.

For Paramount’s WBD deal, valued at $111 billion, Larry Ellison has personally guaranteed $46.7 billion in equity financing. In addition, Paramount has lined up $24 billion in commitments from the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. According to Paramount, the three Middle Eastern funds would own 38.5% of the combined Paramount-Warner Bros. Last week, the FCC approved Paramount’s petition to allow 49.5% of its equity to be held by foreign entities if the Warner Bros. Discovery merger is consummated.

Even if Paramount is able to reach a settlement with the state AGs, the Paramount-WB merger will not close immediately, a knowledgeable source told Variety. Because of the $110 billion pact’s intricate financing — including some $24 billion from Middle Eastern government funds — and other factors, Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery will need at least a week or so after any deal with the states is in place.

Among the top-line terms in Paramount’s settlement with the states: Paramount is prohibited from selling the Paramount Studios or Warner Bros. lots in the state for at least five years, and is obligated to invest at least an additional $300 million on film production in the U.S. annually — for a total of $1.5 billion over five years. The combined Paramount-WB also must release at least 30 movies for theatrical distribution in the first two years (something Ellison has repeatedly promised he would do) and at least 32 in years 3-5, with a 45-day window for wide-release films. The merged Paramount-Warner Bros. also will be subject to monitoring by a “news editorial independence board,” which will establish “guiding editorial and journalism principles for” for CNN and CBS News.