Sun Valley 2024 Invites Shari Redstone, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Jason Blum and More (EXCLUSIVE)
It’s that time of year again!
The old guard in media and finance and the tech innovators disrupting them are gearing up to hit Allen & Co.’s leadership retreat Sun Valley – where private jets sit bumper-to-bumper and power is carved up and handed out among global players. It’s an ultra-secretive event for the one-percent set (think Davos with higher fences).
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But Variety can exclusively report that the guest list for the Idaho gathering includes National Amusements president Shari Redstone — in the thick of a deal to sell Paramount Global and with it her family’s media empire to Skydance — as well as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Hollywood super-producer Jason Blum. They join veterans like Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Bob Iger (and his potential Disney CEO successors in Alan Bergman, Dana Walden, Josh D’Amaro and recent dark horse Hugh Johnston), Amazon’s Andy Jassy and Jeff Bezos, Warner Bros. Discovery’s David Zaslav, Apple’s Tim Cook and Netflix co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters. One familiar face who won’t be attending (or who isn’t on the guest list) is the “oracle of Omaha,” Warren Buffett, who, in the past, has driven himself in a Subaru station wagon, to the event. Elon Musk, the Tesla founder and X owner, also isn’t on the guest list despite showing up in past years.
The guest list is overwhelmingly white and male, a reflection of the monochromatic nature of corporate leadership. Those who make the trek to Idaho can expect to hear lectures on topics ranging from national security to healthcare with detours into education, the environment and geopolitics. The reason that Sun Valley commands so much attention is that it is often the focus of dealmaking. It’s where Bezos decided to buy the Washington Post, where Disney first got the idea to make a play for ABC/Capital Cities and where Comcast and NBC Universal set the stage for their union. Not every one of those pacts ended well — the less said about Time Warner’s disastrous merger with AOL, which was hatched at Sun Valley, the better.
To be clear, an invitation does not guarantee attendance. Scheduled for July, Redstone could still be entangled in the dramatic sell-off of Paramount Global if her deal with David Ellison falls through. Marc Benioff of Salesforce, whose stock plummeted a stunning 19% on Thursday, could still be in damage control mode. Lightning rod Altman of OpenAI could inspire ridicule for his proximity to Hollywood’s decision makers as the industry tries to reconcile artificial intelligence with labor unions (in any event, he should probably steer clear of CAA’s Bryan Lourd, who represents Scarlett Johansson. The actress recently threatened to sue OpenAI for allegedly cloning her voice).
The Sun Valley confab comes during an extremely turbulent time on the global stage. Wars in Gaza and Ukraine are producing ceaseless violence and eroding the social fabric in America. Morale in the entertainment media sector is perhaps at an all-time low as work is harder to come by for many creatives, austerity reigns and the box office is tanking. That’s to say nothing of the U.S. presidential election, which is looming in November. But the guest list offers clues as to how the retreat might address many of these hot topics.
Leadership from American universities — many of which have been grappling with demonstrations as the situation in the Middle East deteriorates — are expected to hit the bucolic retreat. University of Florida president Ben Sasse (a former U.S. senator), University of Chicago president Paul Alivisatos, Georgetown University president Jack DeGioia, Harvard University professor and former U.S. military attaché for Israeli forces Amos Yadlin, and USC dean of the Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism Willow Bay are all invited.
Further representing show business on this list are Sun Valley mainstays Oprah Winfrey (and BFF Gayle King!) and Brian Grazer of Imagine Entertainment. Comcast president Mike Cavanagh, Mattel CEO Ynon Kreiz, newly minted CAA owner François-Henri Pinault, LiveNation’s Michael Rapino, and Charlie Rivkin of the MPA may show. Most of those executives are linked to traditional media. But they will get a chance to hang out with the tech entrepreneurs who are reshaping daily life or, in some cases, making their businesses more complicated. Among the Silicon Valley crowd are Uber’s Dara Khosrowshahi, Activision’s Bobby Kotick, YouTube’s Neal Mohan, Palantir’s Alex Karp, Roku’s Anthony Wood and SalesForce’s Marc Benioff.
There’s also a number of political figures, such as Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, who are rumored to be considering presidential runs in 2028. If they do attend Sun Valley, it may be partly to establish ties to the donor set. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the Senate, is also on the guest list as he looks to protect his majority. Brad Little, the Idaho governor, made the cut, as befitting his status running the state playing host to the gathering, as did Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon.
The political set will commingle with the anchors that cover them on national news shows. As mentioned, CBS News’ King and CNN’s Anderson Cooper have been tapped, as has ESPN’s Elle Duncan, CNN’s Erin Burnett, and CNBC’s Becky Quick and Andrew Ross Sorkin. The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos and The New York Times’ Tom Friedman are invited, but they are expected to leave their notebooks in their rooms, as Sun Valley is an off-the-record affair.
The Murdochs — Rupert, sons Lachlan and James, and his ex–wife Wendi — are welcome to stroll the resort town’s grounds in their finest stealth wealth weekend gear. That should give off “Succession” vibes: On the HBO series, the Murdochs’ TV doppelgangers, the Roy clan, attended a Sun Valley-like retreat as they struggled to contain the fallout from a corporate scandal.
Among the other industry titans who could soon be rocking windbreakers are Barry Diller, Spanx’s Sara Blakely, Michael Bloomberg, Airbnb’s Brian Chesky, investor Peter Thiel, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, Liberty Global’s Mike Fries and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Most of these chieftains and pashas will ignore the media that shouts questions to them between lectures, lunches, hikes and rafting excursions, but you can often see them positioning themselves so that the army of photographers gets them in their shots. A picture taken at Sun Valley is its own status symbol. It’s a visual reminder that you belong to the most elite club in media.
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