Amazon Bets $10B on OpenAI, Ford’s Reality Check, Paramount Deal Unravels | Diet TBPN

Summary

TBPN Episode Summary – December 18, 2025

Episode: Amazon Bets $10B on OpenAI, Ford’s Reality Check, Paramount Deal Unravels | Diet TBPN
Hosts: John Coogan & Jordi Hays
Special Guests: Ben Thompson, James Allworth, Sahil Bloom
Theme: Major breaking tech and business stories: Amazon’s $10B bet on OpenAI, Ford killing the F150 Lightning EV, Paramount's failed Warner Bros. bid, and shifts across tech/media.

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Episode Overview

This episode covers several rapidly developing stories in tech and media:

• Amazon’s unprecedented $10 billion investment in OpenAI, and the implications for AI infrastructure and e-commerce.
• Ford’s retreat from electric pickups, getting candid about the failed F150 Lightning, and what it reveals about the truck market.
• The unraveling drama around Paramount’s attempted acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery—with political twists and financial skepticism.
• Notably, the group also dives into advertising (out-of-home campaigns), tech geographies (SF vs. NY), and the new wave of influencer- and content-led brands.

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Key Topics and Discussions

1. Ford Ends the F150 Lightning: Did Truck Buyers Ever Want EVs?

[00:02 – 05:03]

• Ford kills its flagship EV pickup after a massive (72%) year-over-year drop in sales—tied to the sunset of tax credits.

  • “The first question that I was sort of toying with... did truck buyers ever really want to go electric? Was that ever a good idea?” – Ben Thompson, [00:46]
  • Traditional truck branding—”dude guys being dude, driving through the mud,” the importance of engine noise and exhaust—doesn’t translate to EVs.

• Consumer profiles revealed a mismatch:

  • “Of the people that reserved the F-150 Lightning, 50% had never owned a truck before. 75%... had never owned a Ford before.” – Ben Thompson, [02:31]
  • What seemed like a win (new customers!) was a red flag—all core truck/Ford buyers weren’t interested; only niche consumers tried the EV.

• Comparison with Rivian:

  • Rivian successfully created a premium, outdoorsy, REI-like brand for electric trucks.
  • Ford’s speed to market was laudable, but the Lightning didn’t match Rivian’s product appeal.
  • “I always looked at Rivian as something like the Whole Foods of cars. Or the REI of cars.” – James Allworth, [04:23]

• Ford pivots—back to hybrids:

  • Betting on new “extended range” hybrid trucks (up to 700 miles).

• Car tech annoyances: lack of Apple CarPlay in Rivians, the struggle with proprietary in-car systems.

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2. Amazon’s $10B Bet on OpenAI: Chips, Cloud, and Commerce

[06:09 – 14:09]

• The mega-deal: Amazon is in talks for a $10B investment in OpenAI, structured as AWS credits and strategic partnership.

  • “This is kind of like a rebate... ‘Hey, we're going to buy 40 [billion in service], here take 10 back and we'll take a piece.’” – Ben Thompson, [06:51]
  • OpenAI recently committed to spending $38 billion on AWS over 7 years.

• Dual-prong rationale:

  • Cloud & Chips: OpenAI promises to use Amazon's “Trainium” AI chips (rivals to Nvidia’s).
    • Discussion on whether OpenAI will tailor models to Trainium, or create a more hardware-agnostic stack.
    • “Do you have any instinct... does Trainium get abstracted to a point where it’s model-agnostic... a liquid pool of compute that cuts across the entire stack?” – Ben Thompson, [11:51]
  • Commerce: OpenAI wants to build shopping features into ChatGPT—potentially turning it into a storefront or recommendation engine.
    • “The more notable news here is that Amazon and OpenAI have discussed commerce partnership opportunities.” – James Allworth, [06:59]
    • Potential conflict: If people search in ChatGPT instead of Amazon, it could cut into Amazon’s critical ad business.

• Amazon’s advertising moat:

  • Ad revenue at $60B+, growing faster than retail—Amazon does not want to cede the “start of the commerce journey” to LLMs or chatbots.

• Aggregation Theory Talk:

  • Both Amazon and Shopify fiercely protect being the main aggregator for e-commerce, resisting “platform on top of platform” scenarios.

• Industry perspective:

  • “Amazon is in deep talks, but the real win is securing big new chip customers and protecting the e-commerce funnel.” – Paraphrase, various.

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3. Paramount’s Bid for Warner Bros. Unravels & Media Power Moves

[14:19 – 19:39]

• Jared Kushner, after political noise, pulls out of the Paramount-Warner Bros. bid.

  • “Jared Kushner is pulling out of the Paramount bid, hours after his father-in-law took aim at the Ellison clan.” – Ben Thompson, [14:29]
  • Political friction between the Ellison family and the current administration surfaces.

• CCBS/CBS Brand (Barry Weiss as News Head):

  • Diversity of opinion about CBS’s new direction under Barry Weiss—seen as more relevant, though divisive.
  • “You can like it or hate it... but you can’t deny people are talking about CBS content in a way I have not seen ever.” – James Allworth, [16:03]

• Deal structure criticism:

  • Warner Bros. calls out Paramount/Skydance’s lack of a real financing commitment; the "revocable trust" cited is inadequate for deal certainty.
    • “A revocable trust is no replacement for a secured commitment by a controlling stockholder.” – James Allworth, [18:14]
  • Netflix’s competing offer seen as more credible (“bird in hand worth... not two in the bush.”).

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4. Advertising, Out-of-Home, and the Friend.com Billboard Gambit

[19:39 – 21:21]

• Modern tech billboard strategy:

  • Friend.com’s unconventional out-of-home campaign—focusing on cheap, high-frequency inventory rather than prestige placements—may become a template.
    • “He might have unlocked an entirely new strategy... a go-big, massive billboard campaign.” – Ben Thompson, [20:27]

• Ad arbitrage:

  • “Every out of home agent I’ve ever talked to has offered 50% reductions in price... most inventory is actually pretty cheap.” – Ben Thompson, [19:45]

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5. Tech Hubs: Is San Francisco ‘Over’? Debating Tech Migration

[21:21 – 22:57]

• Avi Schiffman’s viral “SF is over” post:

  • Declares NY is the new center for tech; dismisses the SF scene as stale, “just YC slop startups.”
  • Strong disagreement from the panel: “I put this up as one of the worst takes of the year... It’s like saying in the early days of the Internet ‘it’s over, just don’t build anything.’” – Ben Thompson, [22:21]

• Humorous aside:

  • Shark-diving in the Bay Area as the new “adventure,” if hackathons aren’t interesting enough.

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6. Startup Ideas—Half-Joking, Half-Serious

[23:09 – 23:53]

• "friend.com for sharks" and telemedicine for anabolic steroids for pets.

• “Why reserve digital companions for just humans?... All life. All life matter. Think bigger.” – James Allworth, [23:12]

• “You know way too much about performance enhancing drugs anyway.” – Ben Thompson teasing Sahil Bloom, [23:46]

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7. Influencer-Led Brands: Wild Roman Skincare & DTC Dynamics

[23:53 – 26:54]

• Sahil Bloom gifts his new men’s skincare product “Wild Roman.”

  • “I got sick of putting things on my skin that I never put on my body, so I spent 18 months creating the perfect solution.” – Ben Thompson, quoting, [24:17]

• The challenge for influencer brands:

  • Massive social followings give initial traction, but real scale requires breaking out of the built-in audience and finding new customers.
    • “No matter how big your audience is, you can be Kim Kardashian... eventually you have to go find new people that aren’t already getting exposure.” – James Allworth, [26:04]

• Distribution as king:

  • “Feels like a good brand to introduce... to the Target audience. This screams end cap to me.” – James Allworth, [25:35]
  • Example: some brands doing >$100M annually only via Target.

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8. Media Shifts: Barstool x Netflix, The Oscars Go to YouTube

[26:54 – 29:38]

• Barstool/Neflix: Video Podcasting Exclusives

  • Dave Portnoy announces Barstool’s 3 top pods will be “video exclusive on Netflix.”
    • “That’s what we do at Barstool: evolve, rotate, evolve.” – Dave Portnoy, [27:12]
  • Admired for his “one-shot” DIY announcement video—authenticity over production value.

• The Oscars move to YouTube (2029):

  • The traditional film industry cedes its highest-profile event to a “new media” platform.
  • “The movie industry is saying: Yep, YouTube beat us. It’s over, it’s over.” – Ben Thompson, [29:34]

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “Did truck buyers ever really want to go electric? Was that ever a good idea?” – Ben Thompson, [00:46]
• “All that advertising worked on me. I grew up in a Toyota family... as soon as I was an adult... I bought a Ford Raptor.” – James Allworth, [01:53]
• “It’s like this weird, what does the [Rivian] name actually mean? I guess it means ‘river Indian’... like something from a pharmaceutical company brainstorm.” – Ben Thompson, [04:06]
• “This is kind of like a rebate... ‘Hey, we're going to buy 40, here take 10 back and we'll take a piece.’” – Ben Thompson, on Amazon’s OpenAI deal, [06:51]
• "If consumers start just going to chatbots to find products on Amazon... Amazon needs to be really careful... OpenAI wants them to pay for that customer, and that’s a customer that didn’t just go look at a bunch of ads.” – James Allworth, [08:03]
• “The bird in the hand is worth... not two in the bush.” – Ben Thompson, [18:57]
• “I hereby declare New York the new bastion of what matters in the near future. Could not disagree more with every single pretty much every single word in here.” – Ben Thompson (reading Avi’s post, then responding), [21:57]
• "It’s literally like saying in the early days of the Internet... ‘yeah, it's over, just don't build anything.'” – Ben Thompson, [22:17]
• “Who’s making friend.com for sharks? ... Maybe they’re lonely out in the high seas.” – James Allworth, [23:09]
• “20 years of experience. Most people can't just one-shot that on day one of their career.” – Ben Thompson on Portnoy's legendary video skills, [28:24]

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Important Timestamps

• Ford’s EV retreat, truck market insights: [00:02–05:03]
• Amazon’s OpenAI investment & AI chip wars: [06:09–14:09]
• Paramount/Warner Bros. deal drama: [14:19–19:39]
• Billboards & OOH advertising democratized: [19:39–21:21]
• Tech geography debates (SF vs. NY): [21:21–22:57]
• Influencer/DTC brands & distribution challenges: [23:53–26:54]
• Barstool x Netflix, Oscars move to YouTube: [26:54–29:38]

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Overall Tone

Fast-paced, witty, and densely insightful, with the hosts freely mixing sharp business analysis, personal anecdotes, and humor—even as they break down billion-dollar deals and industry upheaval.

Transcript

[Ben Thompson]

SpaceX is potentially going out, going to Hoover up 30 billion of capital. They're going, they're going out at 1.5 trillion. They're talking to bankers now. They're going to hoover up all the capital they're hoovering. The public market's going to be tapped out. Right. Well, Sam Allman would like a word with Andy Jassy and he says, I need 10 billion. And Andy says, sure, as long as you buy a bunch of trainium chips. That's basically the story. Closing out the story with the Ford F150. Of course, this broke earlier this week. CEO Ford did a, did a round of press interviews talking about the news, which is that Ford, the historic automaker, is killing the F150 Lightning. Their electric truck sales fell 72% year over year. That is a 72% decrease specifically in last month, which is post EV tax credit going away. I mean, the first question that I was sort of toying with, that we've been debating is did truck buyers ever really want to go electric? Was that even. Was that ever a good idea? Because it always seemed like who's the last person that's gonna buy an electric car? The truck buyer. Right.

[James Allworth]

So one thing that I was thinking about is I feel like the cybertruck probably got truck buyers to like traditional truck buyers to go electric. But it wasn't because it was electric. It was cause it looked electric.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah, like it looks crazy.

[James Allworth]

It look wild.

[Ben Thompson]

I completely agree with this. Yeah, there's this weird thing where like the F150 silhouette is iconic, but you forgot I had.

[James Allworth]

Yeah, he has forgot I had my, my elf ears on ballpark.

[Ben Thompson]

How many, how many ads, how many billions of dollars have been spent on ads that associate trucks with like being.

[James Allworth]

A, being a cool dude guy.

[Ben Thompson]

Dude. Guys being dude driving through the mud. And a big part of that is the engine note and, and a big part of that is the actual exhaust coming out of the back, like rolling.

[James Allworth]

All that advertising worked on me. I grew up in a Toyota family. We only had Toyotas growing up. It's truck, we at one point had two Priuses. Right?

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah.

[James Allworth]

But as soon as I was an adult and I could afford it, I bought a Ford Raptor. It was black on black on black on black. It was lifted. I just wanted the truck that I wanted that was advertised to me as a kid. Yeah, right.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah. Yeah. There was some interesting data that Ford was sharing that they were framing as positive when the F150 Lightning launched. But I think in retrospect Might have actually been sort of a canary in the coal mine.

[James Allworth]

Totally.

[Ben Thompson]

So the first stat was that of the people that reserved the F150 Lightning, 50% had never owned a truck before. And then 75% of the reservation holders had never owned a Ford before. And so Ford was celebrating this his last. Like, we did it.

[James Allworth]

We did it. New Hero product.

[Ben Thompson]

New Hero products. It's going to bring new people into the Ford ecosystem. It's going to bring new people into the truck ecosystem. We are expanding the market. And in hindsight, what it feels like is the truck buyers didn't want it, the board buyers didn't want it, and they're the two biggest markets. And so, yes, there were a class of people that were like, oh, I would always. I've always. An electric truck. That sounds really interesting. I love the idea of a 220 volt. I'm a. I'm a unique purchaser. And they're like, this is a niche product. And they go hard for the niche product. They show up immediately and they'll do it no matter what.

[James Allworth]

And you wrote in the newsletter the first electric truck was the Rivian.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah.

[James Allworth]

Well. And that had only launched a few.

[Ben Thompson]

Months, six months earlier.

[James Allworth]

Yeah.

[Ben Thompson]

So the Rivian came out in September of 2021. That's the R1T. Ford shipped in April of 2022. That's actually very impressive to me. I was very impressed with how fast Ford was able to respond to the idea of electric trucks happening. This feels like they were like, no, we're moving in the first wave, they did successfully. A lot of that's because they built off of the. The F150 platform. They were able to reuse a lot of equipment there in the supply chain, but ultimately they didn't ship a product that delivered at the level of the R1T. I was thinking the Rivian name. Do you like the Rivian name?

[James Allworth]

I think it's fine.

[Ben Thompson]

It's weird. It sticks out to me. It was also weird when it was. I'm neutral on was weird. When it first stuck out, it sounded like something that came from like a brainstorming session at a pharmaceutical company. Because it's like this weird. What does the name actually mean? I guess it means river Indian kind of portmanteau.

[James Allworth]

But it's really grown upon itself as a blend of syllables from the river, symbolizing adventure and connection to nature. I always looked at Rivian as something like the whole foods of cars. Right. Like the REI of cars. Right. It's like people go to rei like the average person going into REI is not necessarily like buying gear for the most rugged adventure. Like they might be buying gear for their backyard or like going on a hike that weekend. And again, like I feel like the Rivian cars again, I mean we had the CEO on but like have that range where it's like, it really is just like a good daily. Yeah, but they've built it, it's super powerful, it's very capable.

[Ben Thompson]

Ford's plan is to pivot, so they're going to be pivoting to hybrid, hybrid trucks and hybrid designs. But what's interesting is that it's one of those, it's this extra long range hybrid where you have an electric powertrain that is charged by a gas motor and so you can get like 700 miles of range. Here's a question, here's something that people don't like about Rivian's. They don't have CarPlay. Is that a deal breaker for you?

[James Allworth]

I think it's solid. The thing that I find annoying is the fact that the cars that I've owned are all defaulting back to the actual operating system.

[Ben Thompson]

Oh really? What do you mean they're defaulting?

[James Allworth]

So I have two Mercedes, they have like the regular Mercedes operating system and.

[Ben Thompson]

Then like Apple CarPlay.

[James Allworth]

CarPlay is layered on top but I still find myself like turning on the car sometimes and it's the stock system, I'm like, so I just wish there was a single operating system.

[Ben Thompson]

I wish, I mean, so Apple's trying to do this because I've noticed but.

[James Allworth]

The manufacturers are like, well we sell the Android and we don't want you to control us forever.

[Ben Thompson]

Amazon is in talks to investors. Over $10 billion in open AI.

[James Allworth]

Yeah, the valuation be higher than 500 billion. The Amazon investment would help OpenAI afford some of the commitments it has made, some to rent servers from cloud providers, including from us.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah, this is like, it's like there's somewhat, there's some popularity, but it's not.

[James Allworth]

Entirely fully beating the circular allegations. Opening last month announced it would spend 38 billion renting servers from AWS over the next seven years, making AWS one of at least five cloud providers OpenAI uses to develop AI. The deal also could help Amazon find a new customer for its training AI chips which compete with the Nvidia chips.

[Ben Thompson]

This is kind of like a rebate, you know, it's like they said, hey, we're going to buy 40, and they said, here, take 10 back and we'll take a piece.

[James Allworth]

Honestly, the more notable news Here is that Amazon and OpenAI have discussed commerce partnership opportunities.

[Ben Thompson]

That's very interesting.

[James Allworth]

OpenAI wants to turn ChatGPT into a shopping hub and has discussed earning fees for referring customers to retailers. It isn't clear whether Amazon OpenAI deal would involve an any arrangement related to such features in ChatGPT or AI powered shopping features that Amazon is developing. So I just look at this in the same way as like the Disney deal, which is like, hey, we're invest, but we're going to give you access to this thing. And I would expect that. I mean you can imagine OpenAI has been working on getting referrals from basically getting a revenue stream from referring products out to Amazon for a really long time, right? They've done the Etsy deal, they're doing deals with Shopify. They have not done ebay notably and they have not done Amazon notably. And I think there's been some, there's just been some general hesitance to let again, let the fox into the henhouse, right? Because you can think about it like the Google search experience is like. Or sorry, sorry. Searching for products on Amazon is extremely profitable for Amazon, right? If, if consumers start just going to chatbots to find products on Amazon that like Amazon needs to be really careful around that because yes, they can get a referral fee or they're getting a customer, but then they, Amazon or sorry, open. OpenAI wants them to pay them for that customer and that's a customer that didn't just go look at a bunch of ads, right? And I do not like searching for products on Amazon because the experience is I'm just trying to find, I always use the example like paper towels, right? And it's like, it's so frustrating to search on there because I just want to buy like I'll spend 20 to $30 on this thing and then it's like three pages of like $6 versions of the product that I know are going to be terrible and a bunch of ads for those things, right? And so being able to go into ChatGPT and just say like, hey, I want to buy this item from a manufacturer or a brand that has been in business for more than 30 years, like pre E Commerce.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah.

[James Allworth]

I want a brand that has just been making this thing well for a really long time. And so I would be defaulting to the LLM and skipping Amazon entirely.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah, you want to fight to be the aggregator. You want to like. I guarantee that although Amazon shows up on Google search results like they want people to open the app and search in the app and be the main starting point for their commerce, their entire commerce journey. We've seen this with Shopify as well. Shopify, obviously we would love for the commerce journey to not start on Facebook or Meta properties, instead start in the Shop app. They're working towards that. The same thing is true of Amazon. And every aggregator is acutely aware of aggregation theory and acutely aware that they should not let someone Amazon is aggregate.

[James Allworth]

On top of that apparently projecting 60 billion of advertising revenue which is growing way faster than the core retail business. They've sort of like the core retail business is probably growing at the rate of overall e commerce penetration, whereas this is just like extremely high margin, fast growing and they want to protect that.

[Ben Thompson]

And probably bigger than what they could make off of a referral fee on top. Deeper in the stack if they're deeper down. Well, the other side of the Amazon OpenAI deal is that the deal could also help Amazon find a new customer for its Trainium AI server chips, which compete with Nvidia AI chips that OpenAI primarily uses. Today, as part of the deal being discussed, OpenAI plans to use Trainium chips. Two of the people said the cloud deal Amazon announced with OpenAI last month only made mention of service powered by Nvidia. So if the interesting thing here is what will they be doing with those Trainium chips? Will they have a specific model that runs on Trainium? Will they set up some sort of abstraction layer that they can run any of their models on any hardware or any asic? Basically, will you see? Or will it be like, okay, we still have GPT 4.0 workloads, let's recompile 4.0 for Trainium and let it just chill there. And Trainium is our pool for 4.0. Or you know what, Trainium is going to be our workhorse for ImageGen or VideoGen and let's do our image gen optimized for that particular stack. The Wall Street Journal highlighted real time video as an interesting place where Trainium could potentially outperform. They weren't making the case, at least to the Journal, that Trainium is what you want if you're going to do the biggest and most massive training run. That was sort of the narrative that the TPU was pitching with the latest anthropic runs, but they did highlight real time video generation. And so what I'm interested in is that does Trainium get abstracted to a point where it's sort of like model agnostic? Or is OpenAI the ChatGPT? The app has a whole Host of models. Because these models are now mixtures of models and there's model routers and there's different products. Video, audio, image, you know, deep research. Is one of those going to be on Trainium or will Trainium be a, like a liquid pool of compute that cuts across the entire stack? Do you have any, you know, instinct on this or.

[Sahil Bloom]

Yeah, I mean I think the abstraction thing is pretty hard.

[James Allworth]

Right.

[Sahil Bloom]

Because you always hear about TPUs and how the TPU team and like the Gemini team are so closely integrated. Right. Like every, all the model architecture is like interlinked with the, with the GPU architecture.

[James Allworth]

Tpu.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah.

[Sahil Bloom]

So I think it's hard to actually abstract all the way up, but it's interesting. I mean anthropic has been like multi platform platform for a while now. So I'm curious how they think about this stuff.

[James Allworth]

Something that's interesting. If I search on Gemini for a product on Amazon, find me the best blank on Amazon. It takes me, it says top recommendations on Amazon and then I click the link and it takes me to a Google search for that product that is a sponsored result on Amazon. Then I click. So Amazon is paying, Amazon is paying Google to appear in search results AdWords.

[Ben Thompson]

Okay.

[James Allworth]

And AdWords.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah.

[James Allworth]

And then Gemini is routing basically to AdWords to get the click through there. So there's no direct integration at all.

[Ben Thompson]

Google has so many odd advantages. It's crazy. Like the, the fact that the Google bot just sees so much more of the Internet feels extremely important and yet I just don't know if it will be enough to win in consumer in some meaningful way. Does it mean 50% of the value of consumer? Does it mean that they can win, come from behind defeat? OpenAI ChatGPT feels so important and yet it also feels extremely hard to actually pass that message through.

[James Allworth]

The Amazon investment would help OpenAI afford commitments, including from AWS.

[Ben Thompson]

That's very funny.

[James Allworth]

Well, liquidity is showing the gang standing around. All right, Jeff, you're up next to invest in OpenAI.

[Ben Thompson]

Amazon, $10 billion investment in OpenAI in the form of AWS credits. You got Satya Nadella.

[James Allworth]

I couldn't find where 2% for Amazon.

[Ben Thompson]

Maybe less if it's at above a $500 billion valuation. So Andy Jassy's getting 1 1/2% of OpenAI. Satya sitting there with over 20. He's pretty happy. Pretty happy. Looking at the screen, Jared Kushner is pulling out of the Paramount bid hours after his father in law took aim at the Ellison clan. Apparently the Latest news in the Paramount bid for Warner Brothers. This story that just keeps on giving is in back to back salvos Tuesday. The President and his former and his family distanced themselves from Paramount's hostile bid for Warner Brothers discovery. I think we know what's going on there. It's about Foghorn Leghorn. It's about Tweety Bird. It's a rebuke to owner David Ellison's attempt to leverage relationships with the White House to close the $108 billion takeover effort. President Trump Tuesday afternoon said he had been treated far worse by the Ellison owned CBS since the family closed a deal for CBS parent Paramount.

[James Allworth]

Which is so interesting because I've seen a bunch of people have been riled up about Barry Weiss running cbs. The reason that you maybe would say that she's doing a, an effective job as a manager of that asset is because people are talking about CBS content in a way that I have not seen ever. Do you ever remember, like maybe a couple times here you'd see something and she's, she's clipping CBS content. It's like she's doing stories.

[Ben Thompson]

It feels it's working. No, no shade to the people that were running CBS before. But like, what, what content was on that?

[James Allworth]

Yeah, we just don't know what they were doing before.

[Ben Thompson]

It's like it didn't exist and now it exists. And you can like it or you hate it, depending on your political persuasion, but you can't deny.

[James Allworth]

And I always listen to this as like it's a thing. The Ellisons were like, hey, we can get a truth engine.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah, I mean, I mean there's definitely like, the brand is still great. Like CBS feels like a solid news source. So I agree with that. But the distribution was so far behind that people weren't talking about what was going on there.

[James Allworth]

And I can say that the reason, the reason, one way to think about the value of CBS is what would it cost and how long would it take to recreate a brand like CBS probably cost. It would take you decades.

[Ben Thompson]

I don't think you can buy it. Like, I actually don't think. I think you could. I think you could be Sam Altman and Marshall. A $50 billion fundraiser.

[James Allworth]

Yeah. You can't just snap your fingers and get it.

[Ben Thompson]

And it would still take 50 years to get there. If you get 50 billion, what do you have to do? You have to go buy the legacy IP because there's only. You can't just, you can't just, you can't snap your fingers and create A brand overnight, like it just takes time.

[James Allworth]

So Warner Brothers sent a letter to shareholders this morning basically saying that they're riding. They. They want to. The board of directors still wants to go with Netflix. They believe it's superior in a number of different ways. One thing that stood out to me is that Paramount has consistently. They said Paramount has consistently led WBD shareholders, that its proposed transaction has a full backstop from the Ellison family. It does not and never has. Paramount's most recent proposal includes a $40 billion equity commitment for which there is no Ellison family commitment of any kind. Instead, they propose that you rely on an unknown and opaque revocable trust for the certainty of the crucial deal funding. Despite having been told repeatedly by WBD how important a full and unconditional financing commitment from the Ellison family was, and despite their own ample resources, as well as multiple assurances from Paramount Skydance during our strategic review process that such a commitment was forthcoming, the Ellison family has chosen not to backstop the Paramount Skydance offer. And a revocable trust is no replacement for a secured commitment by a controlling stockholder. The assets and liabilities of the trust are not publicly disclosed and are subject to change. So they basically, like, have this entity being like, yeah, we're guaranteeing it, but it's not actually them saying, like, they could move assets out of that trust.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah, yeah, got it. So strength are not as strong potentially as Netflix. You know, Netflix is good for it. It's a huge company. They've already signed a deal with a massive termination clause. And I believe they've raised debt for this. Like, they're ready to rock. So bird in the Hand is worth. Not too in the bush.

[James Allworth]

Yeah. The other thing is Paramount has not offered to reimburse the breakup. The termination fee, it's a $2.8 billion fee. There's also financing costs that they're going to have to take that Warner Brothers would have to take on if they don't complete the debt exchange. So, yeah, at the end of the day, what do the Ellisons do at this point? Right. They've been doing deals, right? They've got cbs, now they've got the ufc. They're trying to build this streaming platform again. Going back to some of the conversations that we've had, like this entire. The entire strategy to date has been predicated on getting this Warner Brothers asset.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah, yeah. And it seems like it might not happen, but game's not over.

[James Allworth]

Announce the $1 trillion backlog.

[Ben Thompson]

Every out of home agent I've ever talked to has offered 50% reductions in price when doing a large scale campaign. Most of the inventory is actually pretty cheap if you don't focus on the most premium assets. Where haven't you seen a Friend.com billboard? The 101. You haven't seen it. You know in the iconic places. He hasn't done the Times Square buyout. He's in the subway. Right. Like when, when we saw him. You always make fun of this one is there's one that's like up against the wall. I saw one just in a random bus in my hometown. It's like there's just. There's like random places but there's so many.

[James Allworth]

Some of the alpha and out of home in LA is there's so much traffic.

[Ben Thompson]

Yes.

[James Allworth]

That you're kind of moving slowly by some areas and you'll just see random.

[Ben Thompson]

Stuff and so yeah, I was kind of fighting you on this. Like was this truly one of the greatest campaigns of the year? And hearing his extra context, it's incredible. He might have unlocked some entirely new strategy of just like the go big massive billboard campaign. I wouldn't be surprised if next year is the year of the copy paste the strategy for you know a company that has a million dollars to spend on a big campaign. Let's do an interesting billboard campaign.

[James Allworth]

Maybe they have a million dollars in revenue too. Maybe.

[Ben Thompson]

Ideally yes. Ideally. Ideally yes. I mean he, he clearly like it was you know he's. He's like risk on exploring, testing new things like learning but just the core, the core arb of like a big billboard campaign paying off. I think you got to credit him. You got to check in with with Avi Schiffman.

[James Allworth]

Did you see his other post? He said SF is over.

[Ben Thompson]

Yes.

[James Allworth]

Still a beautiful place to live. Hype around alums has subsided. It's not an interesting place to be anymore. Why go to a hackathon? It's not like GPT4 just came out. There's nothing too interesting to discuss at a party anymore. All the big companies are too mature now. Most of what is new is just YC slop startups. If you're still in precede exploring stage it's mostly too late. The directions have been positioned in. It's just a performative scene left there. Always a cycle to these things and this is fine. I've joined, I've enjoyed 2022 to 2025. I hereby declare New York the new bastion of what matters in the near future. Could not disagree more with every single. Pretty much every single word in here. I think Avi has shown, you know, brilliance in some ways, even though many don't. But this, this was, I put this up as one of the worst takes of the year. It's just like, it's literally like saying, like, it's like saying in the early days of the Internet or in the early days of the iPhone, like, hey, like, yeah, it's over. Just don't build anything.

[Ben Thompson]

Also, you should get in if you're bored with the hackathon, you're bored with the YC demo day, get into shark diving. Go dive in the bay, put on the 7 mil wetsuit, swim out to Alcatraz, take on a shark head to head and emerge victorious. I think that will really give you the sort of the glory. You'll be excited again. You will have survived a shark attack that will energize you in a way that GPT 5.2 might not be energizing you. Totally fighting head on with a great white shark in the San Francisco Bay. That's something you can only do in the Bay Area.

[James Allworth]

Or who's. Who's making friend.com for sharks. Right. Like a wearable pendant that a shark could use to, you know, better navigate. Maybe they're lonely out in the high seas, Right. It's cold.

[Ben Thompson]

Yes.

[James Allworth]

Dark.

[Ben Thompson]

Yes.

[James Allworth]

Maybe, you know, in between hunts, Right. They're just kind of hanging out, right? Yeah, just having it. Having a digital companion. Why reserve digital companions for just. For humans, right? Like all life. All life matter. Think bigger. The other thing I was thinking, why has no one made like a telemedicine for anabolic steroids for your pets?

[Ben Thompson]

Somebody has, right? Wasn't. Isn't that a real thing?

[James Allworth]

I want to see a golden retriever as a mass monster.

[Ben Thompson]

I think that's just a Rottweiler.

[Sahil Bloom]

Well, so, I mean, you can make your like cattle really jacked, right?

[James Allworth]

Yeah.

[Sahil Bloom]

That's like what sarms are. So you could just, you couldn't you just give it to your dog?

[Ben Thompson]

You know way too much about performance enhancing drugs anyway. Yeah.

[James Allworth]

Just saying the word sarms is like, just, just say that you've been deep in bodybuilding form, Styler.

[Ben Thompson]

Okay. Okay. We got a Christmas present from friend of the show, Saw Hill Bloom. Let's open it up. It's underneath this. I got a belt on today. I'm looking much more.

[Sahil Bloom]

Santa felt it up.

[Ben Thompson]

Okay. So this is from Sahil Bloom himself. Look at this, look at this.

[James Allworth]

New brand alert.

[Ben Thompson]

I love this. So he said, I got sick of putting things on my skin that I never put on My body. So I spent 18 months creating the perfect solution. The perfect solution. Wild Roman. I can smell it. Everyone says the TBP and ultram smells bad now. Smells great. This, this actually smells fantastic. So Wild Roman is 100% natural skincare for men. Made with grass fed tallow, cold pressed oils and wild botanicals. You can order [e-mail]. just want to give him a shout out and then. Yeah.

[Sahil Bloom]

So this is good stuff.

[Ben Thompson]

You've been using this.

[Sahil Bloom]

I've been using this for about like two weeks.

[James Allworth]

Wow.

[Sahil Bloom]

I don't think it's working so far.

[Ben Thompson]

Two weeks on Wild Roman and you look like that.

[Sahil Bloom]

Yeah, I mean, I think it's been, you know, it's helped with like beard growth and just general skin clarity.

[Ben Thompson]

You look fantastic.

[Sahil Bloom]

I'm feeling.

[James Allworth]

Yeah, you're. You're glowing.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah.

[James Allworth]

You're really going truly never stop using this product.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah.

[James Allworth]

Because I do not want you to go back.

[Ben Thompson]

Never.

[James Allworth]

I don't want you to go back. Never Churn. I think you're a customer for life.

[Ben Thompson]

What do you think it takes to win in this category? Sahil's obviously a, an influencer, an author. He has a massive newsletter. He has 1.1 million followers on. On X and has an audience. But something we've been keep, we keep coming back to is like an audience might not be enough to truly win in a category. What are the.

[James Allworth]

I think he's got to go hard on target. Like this feels like a good brand to introduce like Talo to the target audience. Right. This feels again like going for the set bunch of products out the gates. This screams end cap to me. I was talking to a friend and they have a brand that does over 100 million a year. Only in Target.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah.

[James Allworth]

They don't sell anywhere else.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah.

[James Allworth]

And so it's just such a, such a massive channel. And so I think Sahil can probably leverage his brand and just go really hard into Target early. But I'm sure, but I'm sure he can, he can at least get some initial traction. Dtc, the main thing that people miss with like personality led kind of like influencer brands like this is that no matter how big your audience is, you can be Kim Kardashian. And in order to build a truly big business, you get this initial boost from your audience. Yeah, but, but, but the nature of like any audience is that the longer that you just advertise against it, you can saturate it. It just becomes Kim K can post like five times in the first week, but then eventually you have to go find new net new people that aren't necessarily getting exposure.

[Ben Thompson]

Dave Portnoy, the founder of Barstool says breaking I am proud to announce in our continuing 20 plus year evolution we are now partnering with Netflix for exclusive video podcasts. And the way he frames this in the video is remarkable. So let's play it.

[Dave Portnoy]

Emergency press conference time if you haven't heard the news. I'm proud to announce that Barstool is partnered with Netflix for three of our top Netflix exclusive video only on Netflix starting next year. I'm talking you want to watch a video part of my take Netflix. You want to watch a video of spit Chiclets Netflix actually spit there that's just my brain. You want to watch video of Ryan Rosillo show where Netflix video audio stay the same video Where Netflix Netflix Netflix 10 we're proud of to partner one of the best in breed companies. That's what we do at Barstool. Evolve, rotate evolve video next year PMT.

[James Allworth]

Chicklets Ryan Rizzo Netflix Netflix founders Technology founders.

[Ben Thompson]

Yes.

[James Allworth]

Next time you think, oh, I need to film cinematic.

[Ben Thompson]

Oh, I was gonna. Yeah, that's amazing.

[James Allworth]

I need to film this crazy cinema.

[Sahil Bloom]

I need it.

[James Allworth]

I need a studio shot of me sitting down on a couch looking all put together. Dave is sitting there with a bunch of windows behind it that are reflecting he one shot at this video. And it's way more engaging than him just being trying to be all professional.

[Ben Thompson]

No, this is jokes but I mean to be fair, in order to do that 20 years, 20 years of experience. Most people cannot just one shot that on day one of their career. The other big get for I guess the modern tech companies is the Oscars are moving to YouTube which is a box.

[James Allworth]

Okay, so explain the Oscars.

[Ben Thompson]

Okay, so it's like you know how we did the award shows for you know, random obscure achievements.

[James Allworth]

Journalist of the year.

[Ben Thompson]

Yes. Absolute hitter of the year. It's like that. But for movies, of course. The Oscars very cool. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and they said they reached a deal with YouTube for exclusive rights to show this to the show starting in 2029. Really feels like forever. But I'm sure it'll be upon us in no time. But probably the right time. But does feel particularly it hits particularly hard because it's like the whole show is about the theater. It's about the movie industry. And the movie industry is saying like, yep, like YouTube beat us. It's over, it's over.

[James Allworth]

We're so back. But also it's over. Cheers.

[Ben Thompson]

F. See you tomorrow.

[James Allworth]

Goodbye.