Ari Emanuel (center) could play role in the upcoming Sam Altman-Elon Musk trail. Adding further intrigue, SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI are all actively preparing for an initial public offering (IPO), with reports suggesting potential listings as early as this year. (SpaceX, which is expecting an evaluation of over $1.75 trillion could go public as early as June, and a number of Musk’s closest friends and associates are sitting on huge amounts of stock, which could net them a fortune.)
In recent weeks, the courtship between top AI players and Hollywood stalwarts has accelerated, which has some wondering whether the AI companies — with their endless algorithms, bottomless pockets and robotic charms — are realizing that some of the artistry and humanism that Hollywood specializes in may still have value. Former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter recently announced that the co-hosts for his annual Cannes Film Festival party will be CAA co-chairman and Hollywood insider CEO Bryan Lourd along with Anthropic CEO and physicist Dario Amodei, who has been trying to position himself as the safe and responsible AI steward that the world desperately needs. (Like Musk, Amodei is another friend-turned-foe of Altman’s, and is a former member of OpenAI’s brain trust.)
Elon Musk and Sam Altman speak onstage during “What Will They Think of Next? Talking About Innovation” at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on October 6, 2015 in San Francisco. Getty Images for Vanity Fair Shortly after OpenAI’s billion-dollar partnership with The Walt Disney Company went belly up when the Sora video app was shut down, Altman made a splashy media acquisition buying “TBPN,” the streaming show that covers big business with a heavy emphasis on tech for a reported $200 million. And while the Sora/Disney deal might be dead, former Disney CEO Bob Iger’s return to Josh Kushner’s venture capital firm Thrive Capital as a board member gives Altman another potential ally in the industry. (Thrive Capital invested roughly $1 billion in OpenAI and is on of the company’s biggest financial backers.)
Bob Iger’s return to Joshua Kushner’s venture capital firm Thrive Capital as a board member gives Altman another potential ally in the industry. Getty Images for Disney “Content is still a huge thing. If you get something right it’s lightning in a bottle and I don’t think you can ever discount the power of celebrity,” says an industry source who recently met with one of the major AI platforms. “It’s also a classic revenge of the nerds tale. These guys have more money than God, so if you’re them, what are the adjacent industries that you want to control: politics, entertainment, media and finance. They still need us thankfully because if we are just going to expect them to be empathetic to the masses — I think that is a very scary thing.”
