The entertainment giant that’s part-Big Five Hollywood studio and part-Deadliest Catch is considering a sale after receiving interest from “multiple parties” that presumably stood outside its window with a boombox, Warner Bros. Discovery announced yesterday.

The statement sent WBD stock to its highest point since the days after WarnerMedia and Discovery joined forces in 2022. In typical Hollywood fashion, that marriage is already coming undone: WBD said earlier this year that it plans to split into two entities—one for its coveted studios and streaming businesses like HBO Max, and another for lagging TV networks like CNN.

One guy wants it all: Fresh off his own merger, Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison (Larry’s son) is trying to buy WBD before it unmerges, but WBD CEO David Zaslav believes he can maximize shareholder value by selling each half separately, according to Bloomberg.

Meet the potential suitors

Paramount reportedly made multiple offers for WBD’s entire operation in recent weeks that were rejected for being too low. A successful bid would bring CNN under the same roof as CBS, which is now run by Bari Weiss following Paramount’s acquisition of The Free Press this month.

Other possible bidders include:

• Netflix. Co-CEO Ted Sarandos has expressed interest in the iconic Warner Bros. studio and content library, though decidedly not its cable TV networks, Bloomberg reported. But Greg Peters, the other co-CEO, shrugged off the idea earlier this month.
• Comcast. The NBCUniversal owner, which is also spinning off some cable channels, is reportedly taking a look at WBD’s assets.
• Apple and Amazon. Executives and analysts expect tech companies like them to be enticed by the opportunity to snatch up HBO Max, though Apple exec Eddy Cue has thrown cold water on the idea of the iPhone-maker buying WBD.

Zoom out: WBD is keeping its options open, but the pool of interested parties suggests that the entertainment industry is likely headed for more consolidation.—ML

OpenAI launched a web browser. That sound you just heard was Google executives waking up in a cold sweat. OpenAI announced its own web browser yesterday, ChatGPT Atlas, which incorporates the company’s signature AI chatbot. “With Atlas, ChatGPT can come with you anywhere across the web...all without copying and pasting or leaving the page,” OpenAI wrote in a blog post. The browser, which directly competes with Google’s Chrome, is only available on macOS for now, but is “coming soon” to iOS, Windows, and Android. Shares of Google parent company Alphabet dropped by a few points following the announcement.

The Trump–Putin meeting was called off. Less than a week after announcing that President Trump would soon meet with Vladimir Putin in Hungary to discuss ending the war in Ukraine, the White House said the rendezvous is not happening any time soon. According to ABC News, a White House official argued that the meeting was no longer necessary after Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his counterpart, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, “had a productive call.” Russia has not budged from its maximalist position that the “root causes” of the war must be addressed before it agrees to a ceasefire.

Netflix posts rare earnings miss due to Brazilian tax dispute. The streaming giant fell short of both Wall Street’s and its own expectations in Q3 after it had to pay $619 million to settle a dispute with Brazilian authorities, dampening what otherwise might have been another strong quarter for the company. Netflix said it would have exceeded projections for its operating income without the tax dispute and does not expect it to impact future results. The wildly popular animated film KPop Demon Hunters helped power Netflix to more than $11.5 billion in revenue last quarter despite the hiccup in South America.—AE

Amazon hopes it can use robots instead of poaching Dunder Mifflin’s Darryl. The e-commerce giant expects automation will help to avoid hiring 600,000 workers while it plans to double deliveries by 2033, according to internal documents the New York Times reported on yesterday.

Robot-dominated warehouses may be imminent, as the documents suggest that:

• Amazon plans to forego onboarding 160,000 humans in the US between 2025 and 2027. The company expects that this will save it 30 cents per item shipped, or $12.6 billion.
• The robotics team ultimately aims to automate 75% of Amazon’s operations.

Destroyers of jobs

Nobel Prize-winning economist Daron Acemoglu told the NYT that automation could turn Amazon—currently the 2nd largest employer in the US—into “a net job destroyer.” He also predicted that Amazon’s move would cause its rivals to embrace robots, too.

The Times says Amazon knows it looks bad: It reported that the documents suggest the company seeks to offset PR concerns by supporting community programs like Toys for Tots, and that executives were told to avoid terms like “automation” and urged to call robots “cobots” to underscore collaboration with humans.

But…Amazon told the New York Times that the docs don’t reflect its larger hiring vision. The company denied to the outlet that there’s a connection between its community involvement and automation and that it instructs execs to avoid automation language. One Amazon executive said that the company uses savings from automation to expand hiring elsewhere.—SK

Reddit investors are still chasing the high of locking in and driving up GameStop stock four years ago. This time, their meme stock of choice is Beyond Meat. The company behind the plant-based meat you briefly glance at before settling for cheaper ground chuck is the focus of another social-media-driven short squeeze that has helped push the stock up ~250% this week, alongside news of an expanded distribution deal with Walmart.

The stock pop was spurred by Dubai-based real estate developer Dimitri Semenikhin, who goes by Capybara Stocks on social media. His original Reddit post hyping up Beyond Meat was removed, but he told Business Insider that he bought 4% of its stock and concluded that the company’s most recent debt deal could be a better sign than most investors thought:

• Last week, Beyond completed a convertible debt swap that quadrupled its share count, resulting in a significant drop in share price from just above $2 to around 50 cents per share.
• The stock closed at $3.62 per share yesterday.

Big picture: The rally came after years of Beyond losing steam. The company led a fake meat revolution to its 2019 IPO, wielding a $230 price per share, before the entire market seemed to stagnate as consumers lost their appetite for alternative protein.—MM

The NBA season tipped off last night, and before a bucket was even scored, the league was already breaking records.

Opening night rosters featured 135 players born outside the US—the most ever, per the Associated Press:

• They hail from 43 countries. Canada has the most with 23, followed by France with 19 and Australia with 13.
• The Atlanta Hawks tied an NBA record with 10 international players on their roster.
• The last seven MVP awards have been won by players born outside the US.

The international surge comes as the NBA is reportedly in talks to start a new league in Europe as early as 2027.—AE