Billionaire Larry Ellison’s backing of Stargate — a landmark, $500 billion artificial intelligence infrastructure project touted by President Trump — could help grease the wheels for the embattled merger between Paramount Global and Skydance Media, sources told The Post.
The Oracle founder on Tuesday shared the stage at the White House with President Trump to announce the Stargate deal — which Elon Musk quickly through shade on, claiming on X that “they don’t actually have the money” and to date have “well under $10B secured.”
Ellison — whose net worth is currently pegged by Forbes at $205 billion — is likely hoping his show of support for Stargate will help his son David’s Skydance Media to gain regulatory approval for his controversial, $8 billion deal to merge with Paramount, sources said.
That’s despite the fact that President Trump’s new Federal Communications Chair Brendan Carr has said publicly he had concerns about the merger, focusing on Paramount-owned CBS’ alleged bias in the 2024 Presidential election.
“I don’t believe in coincidences any more,” a former FCC Commissioner told The Post, requesting anonymity.
Paramount also reportedly is considering settling a $10 billion suit President Trump filed against the company over the alleged bias ahead of the merger review.
“This is very smart for Larry to do,” a source close to Paramount said of Ellison’s White House appearance. “It tells me he won’t have any issues with the Paramount deal.”
Media investor Daphna Ziman’s consortium Project Rise Partners has been preparing to submit a higher bid for Paramount this week, she told The Post in an interview.
But Paramount has a binding deal with David Ellison’s Skydance Media and can only back out if regulators stop the merger, sources said.
“I think if Trump advises Carr and the FCC to go along with the merger they might because people follow his wishes,” Ziman said, adding, “Ellison is completely maneuvering.”
Ellison’s Skydance declined to comment. Ellison’s Oracle spokeswoman and a Trump spokesman did not return calls.
Meanwhile, US Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), chair of the House China Select Committee, last week also said the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) should review the Skydance-Paramount merger to see if China could have too big an influence on Paramount.
Earlier this month the US Department of Defense added Tencent to a list of firms that allegedly work for the Chinese military.
Chinese-based Tencent would have a less than 5% stake in the combined Paramount-Skydance when the companies merge, a Skydance spokeswoman confirmed.
Skydance said Tencent will not hold an attributable interest in CBS’ licensed broadcast stations, according to a Jan. 2 public filing with the FCC.
“Tencent and several other current Skydance investors — along with numerous other institutional and individual investors — will hold non-voting publicly traded shares of New Paramount, and such shareholders have no ability to influence the operation or management of New Paramount.”
“Tencent’s entirely passive non-attributable, minority interests present no basis for concern of undue influence,” Skydance said.
Now, Oracle, OpenAI, and SoftBank have announced a $500 billion AI project that will include building large data centers.
On Tuesday, Oracle’s shares rose 7% on the news and then rose again by 5% after hours when Trump announced he would be open to Ellison or Elon Musk buying TikTok.
Ellison talked about the benefits of AI at the press conference.
“Little fragments of [cancer] tumors float around in your blood. So you can do early cancer detection. If you can do it using AI, you can do early cancer detection with a blood test and using AI to look at the blood test,” Ellison said.
“Once we gene sequence that cancer tumor, you can then vaccinate the person — design a vaccine for every individual person that vaccinates them against that cancer. That mRNA vaccine, you can make that robotically, again using AI, in about 48 hours.”
The Ellison family and Redbird Capital are buying Shari Redstone’s National Amusements that controls Paramount through super voting shares.
But part of the deal is also that Paramount buys Skydance in which Tencent has a stake.
Skydance in the merger is offering common Paramount shareholders $15 in cash for roughly half their shares.
Paramount’s stock is trading below $11 showing that investors believe the company will fall in value after the merger.
