Good morning. Who will win the competition to scoop up Warner Bros Discovery?
A number of prominent suitors are reportedly vying for the troubled media company, whose corporate provenance is so complicated that some of its assets (e.g. CNN, HBO, Turner) were owned by the parent company of this very publication when I joined it an eon ago.
Among them: Netflix, NBCUniversal owner Comcast, David Ellison’s Paramount-Skydance, and—in a surprise twist—the Saudi Public Investment Fund, or PIF, which recently became majority shareholder of American gaming giant Electronic Arts.
Bids are due Thursday; we’ll soon see who ends up with a legacy media-sized gift under the Christmas tree.
Today’s tech news below. —Andrew Nusca
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Jeff Bezos will co-lead a new AI startup
We love a second act in tech.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos will co-lead a new artificial intelligence startup dubbed Project Prometheus, according to a New York Times report.
Not content with being the largest individual shareholder of the No. 2 company on the Fortune 500—or founding a space startup, or owning a newspaper, or maneuvering to own an NFL team—Bezos is putting his billions and his time toward Prometheus, which is “focusing on AI that will help in engineering and manufacturing” for a number of fields.
Like, say, aerospace. (That sound you hear? A New Glenn rocket firing up.)
The new company is reportedly starting out with a staggering $6.2 billion in the bank, much of it from Bezos. Its focus, “physical AI,” is believed to be the next wave of the technology.
Several well-funded startups are already working in the category, though it’s not yet clear exactly what Prometheus will bring to the table.
What we do know: Joining Bezos as co-chief executive is scientist Vik Bajaj, a veteran of Google’s moonshot factory, X.
Like Bezos, Bajaj certainly has the entrepreneurial itch. His founding credentials include Verily, Xaira Therapeutics, and Foresite Labs. —Andrew Nusca
Supreme Court won't hear patent appeal vs. Apple, Google, LG
Calling all law school students…this one’s for you.
The U.S. Supreme Court said Monday that it would not take a case involving the right to challenge expired patents.
Our story begins with inventor Timothy Pryor, who owns several sensor-related patents and founded a firm called Gesture Technology Partners in 2013.
In 2021, Gesture sued tech giants Apple, Google, and LG, arguing that the trio had infringed on its patents related to the use of motion-sensing in mobile phone cameras.
Apple, Google, and LG had filed petitions to invalidate the patent in 2021. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office subsequently canceled most of the patent.
Gesture said the companies’ infringement occurred before the patent expired in 2020. It argued that the review of expired patents no longer implicated “public rights” as it would for active patents, rendering a U.S. PTO review moot.
In January, the U.S. Court of Appeals invalidated the entire patent, ruling that public rights were still very much involved even when a patent had expired.
This week, that ruling still stands. The takeaway: Patents are government-granted privileges (and not private property rights) whether they’re expired or not.
Class dismissed. —AN
Amazon raises $15 billion in bond sale
Amazon wants money (that’s what it wants).
The megaretailer has raised $15 billion—$3 billion more than analysts expected—in its first U.S. dollar bond offering in years.
Why would Amazon, a company with $67 billion in cash and equivalents on the books, need more dough?
If you guessed “AI,” you’re spot on.
Officially, the company plans to use the money “for everything from acquisitions and capital expenditures to share buybacks,” according to a Bloomberg report.
But when peers like Alphabet, Meta, and Oracle are also selling tens of billions of dollars of debt—while promising many tens of billions of dollars more in AI capital expenditures—it’s not hard to put the puzzle together.
Indeed, Amazon said its capex this year would be about $125 billion—up from a previous forecast of $118 billion.
“We’ll continue to make significant investments, especially in AI,” finance chief Brian Olsavsky said at the time. Naturally, he added that the total would be even bigger next year. —AN
More tech
—What Thinking Machines Lab is worth. Mira Murati’s AI startup reportedly seeks to raise about $5 billion at a $50 billion (or more) valuation.
—Grok 4.1 arrives.Elon Musk’s xAI says its latest model is “more perceptive to nuanced intent, compelling to speak with, and coherent in personality.”
—More accurate weather forecasts, courtesy of Google DeepMind and its new WeatherNext 2 model.
—Govini founder arrested in sex sting. The defense tech firm terminated Eric Gillespie last week, calling him a “depraved individual.”
—Peter Thiel sells entire Nvidia stake. Thiel Macro dumped roughly $100 million worth of shares last quarter amid concerns of an AI bubble.
—Ramp valued at $32 billion, up from $22.5 billion in July, in the wake of a $300 million fundraise for the fintech firm.
—Social media age verification lawsuit. NetChoice sues Virginia over a law that would require parental permission for minors to use social media for more than one hour per day.