Elon Musk Puts $1 Billion Into Skydance as Ellison Alliance Deepens

Elon Musk has made a roughly $1 billion investment in Skydance, the media company led by David Ellison that recently absorbed Paramount and is now pursuing Warner Bros. The deal landed alongside equity injections from other Skydance investors, including Apple co-founder widow Laurene Powell Jobs, who sits on the company's board. The investment had been in discussion since at least September, when Paramount was openly weighing an equity infusion from Musk.

The move cements an already deep financial entanglement between the Musk and Ellison families. Larry Ellison — Oracle founder and David's father — personally guaranteed more than $40 billion in equity financing for Paramount's acquisition of Warner Bros., one of the largest media deals in recent memory. Larry Ellison previously invested $1 billion in Musk's 2022 privatization of X (formerly Twitter), and has been a Tesla investor and former board member since 2018. The two billionaires' financial fates have been intertwined for years, and this deal adds another layer.

Skydance under David Ellison is in cost-cutting mode and pushing hard into technology. Ellison recently poached Mattel CEO Ynon Kreiz to serve as co-CEO, signaling an aggressive restructuring. Ellison has framed AI as a creative tool for artists rather than a replacement, positioning Skydance as a tech-forward studio rather than a legacy media company.

The deal has already sparked speculation about a broader commercial partnership between Skydance's media properties and Musk's Starlink satellite network. Veteran cable mogul John Malone, speaking at a Paley Center appearance, said he believed a larger announcement was coming — noting the financial web connecting Larry Ellison, Tesla, and Musk — before it emerged that the Skydance investment had already been finalized. Malone suggested Skydance's traditional linear TV channels would need to be retooled into streaming platforms, a transformation where Musk's tech infrastructure could play a role.