Larry Ellison Personally Guarantees $40.4 Billion in Paramount’s Bid for Warner Bros

In a stunning escalation of the battle for Hollywood's future, Larry Ellison has stepped in with a personal guarantee of $40.4 billion to back Paramount Skydance’s revised bid to acquire Warner Bros Discovery (WBD), outflanking Netflix in the race to consolidate entertainment power.

The bold move, disclosed in a filing Monday, is an attempt to shore up Paramount’s credibility and silence skepticism from WBD’s board, which had previously dismissed the bid as speculative and unbacked by full Ellison family support. Now, with the billionaire Oracle co-founder putting his personal name and capital on the line, the game has changed but is it too little, too late?

According to market experts, Paramount’s bid of $108 billion dwarfs Netflix’s $83 billion offer, and now comes with a hard financial guarantee, making it legally binding. For anyone operating in good faith, that should be a clear-cut choice.

“If the board is rational and ethical (a big if), it must accept the offer,” said Wedbush Securities’ Michael Pachter. “Paramount has a chance to win, approaching 100%.”

But behind the scenes, WBD’s executives reportedly favor Netflix, perhaps due to internal alliances and long-term content strategies. Even with the bigger payday on the table, some insiders seem more interested in maintaining relationships than maximizing shareholder value.

This is what’s at stake:

• A Paramount victory would shift the power balance in streaming, creating a formidable rival to Disney and Netflix.

• Foreign sovereign wealth funds are involved in the financing, bringing fresh antitrust and national security scrutiny into play, particularly around data access and cultural influence.

• WBD’s board must weigh diplomatic concerns over handing partial control to Middle Eastern interests though Paramount claims these funds have no voting rights.

But the stakes are more than financial. As analyst Reuben Miller warned, foreign money entering U.S. media carries “a big diplomatic question” about who controls the information and cultural products that shape public perception.

“This opens a regulatory box that needs to be checked,” Miller said, highlighting the sensitivity of having sovereign wealth fund backing tied to an iconic piece of American media infrastructure.

From a competitive standpoint, Paramount is clearly fighting for survival. Losing the bid would not only be a blow to its ambitions it could leave the company sidelined in the streaming wars, reduced to a second-tier player in a market rapidly dominated by megacorporate mergers.

“Paramount remains in a precarious position and is making a last-ditch effort,” noted PP Foresight analyst Paolo Pescatore. “The improved offer is a step in the right direction, but it is unlikely to be enough.”

Whether or not WBD’s board accepts the deal, Ellison’s personal guarantee is a power move, underscoring just how serious he is about keeping Paramount relevant in an industry increasingly ruled by tech giants and global conglomerates.

As one analyst put it, this is just the latest twist in a saga that won’t be resolved until 2026 but for now, Ellison’s play may have just put Paramount back in the running.

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