Paramount Skydance Corp.’s hostile takeover bid Monday for Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. brought together an array of banks, billionaires and sovereign-wealth funds, all with the aim of torpedoing Netflix Inc.’s deal last week.

Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc. and Apollo Global Management Inc. are providing the debt commitment, according to filings. RedBird Capital Partners and Larry Ellison — at one point this year the world’s richest person — will backstop the $40.7 billion of equity which will in part be provided by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the Qatar Investment Authority, Abu Dhabi’s L’imad Holding Company PJSC and Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners.

The names are notable as much for their size as well as their proximity to President Donald Trump, who even before Paramount went public with its bid warned of potential antitrust concerns around Netflix’s planned $72 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Trump, speaking to reporters on Sunday, said he would be personally involved in the decision-making process that now includes a close family member and wealth funds in countries he’s courted to make investments in America. On Monday, he downplayed that involvement, saying neither Paramount nor Netflix were “great friends” of his. Play Video

In a letter to the Warner Bros. board, Paramount Chief Executive Officer David Ellison said the financing partners his firm had lined up — which agreed to forgo governance rights — should help assure of its ability to clinch the deal. 

“We are providing you with funds certain from one of the wealthiest families in the world, a domestic counterparty, while also eliminating any cross-conditionality, which should give WBD’s board complete comfort and certainty as to our ability to close in a timely fashion,” he wrote. 

The latest financing package follows months of negotiations and reworked proposals as Paramount sought to win over Warner Bros. In all, Paramount made six overtures over 12 weeks. In one case, Ellison went to the Beverly Hills home of Warner Bros. CEO David Zaslav, the filing showed. 

The iteration now on the table, submitted Dec. 4, includes a $54 billion so-called bridge loan split equally between Bank of America, Citigroup and Apollo. For the equity portion, the entirety will be guaranteed by the Ellison family and New York investment firm RedBird in “a radical simplification” of a previous plan after the Warner Bros. board expressed concerns, according to the filing. 

Larry Ellison, the 81-year-old father of David and founder of Oracle Corp. who counts Trump as a friend, briefly became the world’s richest person in September after his fortune rose by an unprecedented $89 billion in a day, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Oracle shares have since slid, and he’s worth $277 billion, according to the wealth index.

His trust “has financial resources well in excess of what would be required to meet its commitments,” according to Paramount’s filing, citing 1.16 billion shares of Oracle worth about $252 billion. As of September he had already pledged about one-quarter of those as collateral against personal debt, according to the index.

Paramount had made other salvos to Warner Bros. too: The cast of financing partners no longer includes China’s Tencent Holdings Ltd. — which an earlier proposal listed as providing $1 billion — after the Warner Bros. board raised questions about the involvement of another non-US equity financing source. 

That proposal from Dec. 1 also specified an $11.8 billion commitment from the Ellison family, a combined $24 billion from three Gulf-based sovereign wealth funds as well as pledges from RedBird and Affinity Partners. It wasn’t immediately clear from the filings on Monday whether those allocations had changed. 

Kushner, PIF

The Paramount bid marks the second time this year that Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund has partnered with Kushner on an eye-catching deal. Affinity Partners was part of the consortium that agreed to buy Electronic Arts Inc. in September in a $55 billion transaction. Kushner brokered the initial connection between the video game maker and PIF, and for months acted as a central figure in the talks, Bloomberg reported at that time. 

In addition to the Qatar Investment Authority, a relative newcomer is joining the melee — L’imad. The company — wholly owned by the Abu Dhabi government — has only publicly disclosed one major deal: It agreed in late October to buy a controlling stake in Modon Holding PSC, an Emirati property developer with a $15 billion market value.

The PIF, Affinity Partners, L’imad and QIA have agreed to forgo any governance rights or board seats, which Paramount said would eliminate potential scrutiny from the US Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.

Credit Ratings

Paramount’s bid at $30 a share in cash comes after Netflix agreed to buy Warner Bros. for $27.75 in cash and stock in a deal backed by $59 billion of unsecured financing from Wells Fargo & Co., BNP Paribas SA and HSBC Plc. Paramount’s bid is for the entirety of Warner Bros., while Netflix is only interested in the Hollywood studios and streaming business. Warner Bros. announced plans in June to split into two separate publicly traded companies by mid 2026. 

Paramount’s debt package — secured by some of its assets — was designed with an eye on obtaining the combined company an investment-grade rating, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified discussing private information. Paramount is currently rated at BB+ by S&P Global Ratings, one level below investment grade, and BBB- by Fitch Ratings, which is on the cusp of junk. 

Paramount’s interim Chief Financial Officer Andrew Warren said on a call Monday that the company expects ratings firms to grade the debt as investment grade, based on deleveraging plans in the roughly two years following the acquisition’s close. Chief Operating Officer Andy Gordon said about $17 billion of the $54 billion debt commitment is reserved to take out and extend an existing bridge loan that Warner Bros. already has. 

Yet Mike Peng, the CEO of design consultancy IDEO, thinks that human creativity, enhanced by AI, could be the path forward for designers. 

AI’s pattern recognition capability can make it an incredibly powerful tool, noted Peng at Fortune Brainstorm Design in Macau on Dec. 2. But its reliance on averages can lead to “somewhat mediocre” results, he warned.

“Creativity is all about not being mediocre and being on the edge,” he added.

Similarly, AI is excellent at iteration, but only creativity can determine where to apply those iterated ideas. “This comes from taste, curation, discernment—you need to know where to look,” Peng advised.

And while AI might outperform humans in terms of execution, or how to get from “point A to point B,” bringing it to life requires creativity and empathy, which Peng said “can only be done by folks like us.”

So how best to inculcate a creative mindset and unlock the power of AI? “The only way we can get better at it—and the only way we as creative people, as designers, can become superpowered—is to be able to experiment” Peng said.

Playfulness, curiosity and experimentation, along with human-centered design are, hallmarks of IDEO, the world-renowned global design and innovation consultancy founded in Palo Alto in 1991. Peng took over as IDEO’s CEO earlier this year, after spending five years as CEO of Moon Creative Lab, a venture studio affiliated with Japan’s Mitsui.

“There is no play without friction,” Peng noted. “Play is about overcoming something, achieving something.” That’s counter to companies often trying to make their products and services faster and easier to use. To avoid mediocrity, “we have to play, we have to experiment, we have to be on the edge” with new technology, he said.

IDEO, he notes, is “in the business of creating something that AI cannot exactly do on its own.” Yet, for him, the human superpower remains understanding human complexity and interactions.

After all, Peng urged, creatives and designers will “be the ones to bring this experience to life.”

The aviation obsession began early. After watching Top Gun as a child, David Ellison became fixated on flying. His billionaire father, Larry Ellison, purchased a plane for him at age 13, and they took lessons together. By 16, he was flying a high-performance German aerobatic aircraft capable of rolling 360 degrees in under a second. Wayne Handley, a pilot who worked with the family, told Variety that to “pry this airplane out of David’s hands, Larry bought him a top-of-the-line aerobatic airplane out of Germany, the Extra 300.”​

David Ellison soloed on his 16th birthday and began competing in airshows at 17. In 2003, at 20, he became the youngest member of the Stars of Tomorrow aerobatic team at the EAA AirVenture Show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. He flew a Cap 232 painted in full Flyboys regalia to promote the 2006 film.

“I started flying aerobatics when I was 14,” he told Smithsonian Air & Space magazine. “I flew a bunch of airshows, a competition in an Unlimited, and I flew at Nationals.”​

The pivot to entertainment emerged gradually. It was while studying film at the University of Southern California that Ellison appeared in Flyboys, playing an American pilot fighting for the French in the World War I drama. The film cost $65 million but earned only $18 million, marking a brief acting career. ​

Ellison abandoned competitive flying and acting at the same time, dropping out of USC to focus on production. In 2006, he founded Skydance Media with financial backing from his billionaire father. The company’s name reflects Ellison’s passion for stunt flying, also known as “skydancing.”​

Skydance’s first major success came with the Coen brothers’ True Grit in 2011, which grossed over $250 million worldwide on a $38 million budget. This launched a partnership with Paramount that produced five Mission: Impossible films grossing $3.3 billion globally, two Star Trek movies, and the record-breaking Top Gun: Maverick, which is the 14th highest-grossing film of all time.​

The Paramount merger, approved by federal regulators in August, culminates Ellison’s transformation from daredevil to mogul. Now 42, David is the chairman and CEO of Paramount Skydance, overseeing CBS, MTV, and Paramount Pictures. The deal faced obstacles including competing bids and political pressure from President Donald Trump, who extracted a multimillion-dollar settlement from Paramount over a 60 Minutes lawsuit.​

Ellison’s strategy centers on technology integration. He plans to create a “studio in the cloud” with Oracle’s infrastructure, using AI to streamline production and reduce costs. The company will double theatrical releases while modernizing Paramount+’s streaming algorithms to minimize subscriber cancellations.​

But Ellison still has that flyboy DNA: He has his pilot’s license to operate helicopters, perform aerobatics, and fly commercial and multi-engine aircraft. Now, the daredevil who once thrilled Oshkosh crowds is navigating a different kind of turbulence—a 113-year-old studio in an industry being reshaped by streaming giants and tech conglomerates.

​For this story, Fortune journalists used generative AI as a research tool. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.