Exclusive · Satire
Same $1 billion completes another lap of the billionaire carousel
Elon Musk reportedly put about $1 billion into the Ellisons' Skydance. Larry Ellison once put $1 billion into Musk's Twitter deal. A top hat is keeping count.
By Connor O'Brien · · Updated
Why it matters: Musk's reported Skydance stake deepens the money ties between Musk and the Ellisons as Skydance carries a heavy debt load.
For information only, not investment advice.
Economists who exist only in this sentence confirmed Thursday that the same $1 billion has now circled the same tiny club of billionaires so often it qualifies as renewable energy.
The real part: Elon Musk has invested roughly $1 billion in Skydance, David Ellison's media company, according to people familiar with the matter cited by Semafor. Skydance declined to comment, and a Musk representative didn't respond. The real history, too: Ellison's father, Larry Ellison, invested $1 billion in Musk's 2022 deal to take Twitter private. And when John Malone asked how Larry Ellison came up with some of the money for Skydance, Malone's own answer was "Tesla stock."
"It's the same billion. It waves at me now," said the operator of the billionaire money carousel, a sentient top hat who asked not to be named because he is a hat.
Malone publicly predicted an announcement was coming. Semafor's dry reply: "A deal, in fact, had already come." Malone also suggested $8 billion to $10 billion, which the top hat called "directionally a billion."
The money arrives as Skydance pledges $6 billion in cost savings over three years against what CNBC calls a debt burden of nearly $80 billion; The Seattle Times puts total debt at nearly $87 billion. At press time, the carousel had sold Skydance a ticket for its own ride and reported the proceeds as revenue.
The actual news, minus the hat: our report.
Sources
Tags: mergers-acquisitions · big-tech