No room this summer season on David Geffen’s mega-yacht, Rising Solar? Oligarchs and moguls needn’t fear, there’s at all times July in Sun Valley – Allen & Co.’s annual management retreat for media and tech barons in Idaho.
The “billionaire summer camp” has lengthy been the scene for belief falls and starry panels, whereas the true gamesmanship of company acquisitions and diplomacy performs out in quaint mountain cabins whereas personal jets idle on the tarmac. Selection has obtained a replica of the 2026 visitor record, which guarantees one other blockbuster 12 months of chief executives and some off-the-wall invitations. Inclusion on the record doesn’t at all times assure attendance, however right here’s who will doubtless stroll the grounds in puffer vests and denims:
Paramount Skydance Chairman and CEO David Ellison; newly minted Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro; Comcast Chairman Brian Roberts and his co-CEO Mike Cavanagh; WBD’s David Zaslav (the person whose firm Ellison is making an attempt to purchase); incoming Apple CEO John Ternus and his predecessor Tim Cook dinner; Netflix brass Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters; Sony Photos Leisure Chairman Ravi Ahuja; Rupert and Lochlan Murdoch of Fox (in addition to Rupert’s ex-wife Wendi Murdoch); YouTube’s Neal Mohan; and Amazon govt chairman Jeff Bezos characterize the foremost media gamers.
Moguls together with Barry Diller, former Disney chief Bob Iger (together with associate and USC Annenberg dean Willow Bay) are anticipated. So are Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai, Palantir’s Alex Karp, Jeffrey Katzenberg, the NFL’s Roger Goodell, MLB’s Rob Manfred, CAA chief govt Bryan Lourd and the company’s proprietor and Kering chairman François-Henri Pinault.
Different prime administration embody Ellison’s CBS Information downside little one Bari Weiss, D’Amaro’s content material leaders Dana Walden and Alan Bergman and ESPN’s Jimmy Pitaro, Think about Leisure’s Brian Grazer, Apple’s Eddy Cue, Dwell Nation’s Michael Rapino, Mattel’s Ynon Kreiz, and Jared and Josh Kushner.
Anchors and reporters, usually relied on as moderators for the retreat’s programming, on deck embody CBS’ Gayle King, CNN’s Anderson Cooper and Van Jones, Fox Information’ Bret Baier, CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin, The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos, The New York Occasions’ Thomas Friedman and the Washington Publish’s David Ignatius. There are additionally some public intellectuals who could also be known as on to weigh in on the problems of the day resembling Jonathan Haidt, the social psychologist and writer of “The Coddling of the American Mind,” and Roland Fryer, a professor of economics at Harvard whose work on race and inequality has drawn controversy.
Invoice Gates and Casey Wasserman, two figures just lately embattled by ties to Jeffrey Epstein, have made the record. The previous is representing his eponymous basis, whereas Wasserman is listed in his capability because the Olympics chair for LA28 (his personal company was rebranded as The Workforce and is searching for new possession after the Hollywood scion’s Epstein fallout).
Predictably, a bunch of AI management figures will head to Solar Valley – notably Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Greg Brockman. Mackenzie Worth, the co-founder of Alpha Faculty, which makes use of a “two hour learning model” that depends on AI-powered tech, can also be on the visitor record.
Some acquainted names aren’t among the many attendees even if they’ve been to Solar Valley prior to now, together with buyers John Malone and Warren Buffett and former Paramount proprietor Shari Redstone.
A lot might be on the desk to debate, from geopolitics to mergers and offers to the brand new applied sciences which are reworking the ways in which leisure is produced, distributed and monetized. Solar Valley has established itself because the place the place media offers from Time Warner’s disastrous union with AOL to NBCUniversal’s sale to Comcast have been hatched, so the press might be seeing which moguls linger on the picnic desk or head off on a hike collectively for clues about who’s on the market and who’s within the temper to purchase.
