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Max Knoblauch2/27/25

Warner Bros. Discovery shares surge after company adds 6.4 million subscribers

Shares of Warner Bros. Discovery are up more than 10% Thursday as investors smile on strong streaming subscriber growth and cheery guidance aiming for 150 million subs by the end of next year.

WBD added 6.4 million global streaming subs in Q4, bringing its total to just under 117 million — nearly 20% more than the same quarter last year. In its most recent quarter, rival Netflix reported more than 300 million subscribers.

Warner’s DTC segment, which includes its streamers Max and Discovery+ along with the HBO network, saw ad revenue surge 26% from the same quarter last year, a sign that subscribers are buying in to cheaper streaming ad tiers.

WBD’s annual streaming ad sales figure, $855 million, was 56% higher than 2023’s total. Still, WBD’s streaming ad biz is dwarfed in comparison to its linear ad biz, which dropped to $7.3 billion in 2024 and dragged the company’s overall annual ad rev down 7%.

Addressing the fact that Warner will lose its NBA distribution rights next season (it aired NBA games on TNT for three decades), CEO David Zaslav said that the company “[doesn’t] need any more sports anywhere in the world.” Zaslav added that rising deal values will likely make it harder to secure sports rights in the years ahead.

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Which companies have the best and worst reputations, according to Americans?

The 2026 Axios Harris Poll 100 reputation ranking suggests the US prefers Big Tech to Big Media.

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Spotify introduced verified badges for musician profiles in late April.

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business

Tom Jones5/19/26

Demis Hassabis, Google DeepMind’s CEO and founder, was also an early Anthropic investor

A chess prodigy and an actual a knight of the realm in the UK, it’s perhaps no surprise that Demis Hassabis has made some strategic moves about his exposure to AI upside. According to people familiar with the matter, the influential AI architect became an angel investor in Anthropic, currently behind many of the leading AI models, per Arena AI leaderboards.

The Nobel Prize winner’s position in the Claude creator was previously undisclosed and, per the Financial Times, highlights Hassabis’ “growing influence across the AI industry.”

Google, which bought DeepMind, the company that Hassabis cofounded and heads to this day, for a reported ~$400 million in 2014, is also a key Anthropic investor. The tech giant reportedly plans to invest up to $40 billion in the AI company as part of the mutually beneficial relationship the pair have forged, with reports that Anthropic has committed to spending $200 billion in the other direction on Google’s cloud services over the next five years.

I’m playing all sides, so I always come out on top

In addition to his financial support for Anthropic, Hassabis has also invested in a range of AI startups launched by colleagues, such as Inflection AI, a company set up by DeepMind cofounder Mustafa Suleyman (who is now CEO of Microsoft AI), as well as efforts from other collaborators, like David Silver’s Ineffable Intelligence.

Hassabis also emerged as a recurring figure on the fringes of the recent Elon Musk v. Sam Altman trial, cropping up repeatedly in testimonies and court documents and appearing to live, as The Verge put it, “rent-free” in Musk’s head.

Founded in 2021, Anthropic has recently raised funding at a reported $900 billion valuation, sending it soaring ahead of competitor OpenAI.

Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis emerges as early Anthropic investor

Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis emerges as early Anthropic investor

The Nobel Prize winner’s position in the Claude creator was previously undisclosed and, per the Financial Times, highlights Hassabis’ “growing influence across the AI industry.”

Google, which bought DeepMind, the company that Hassabis cofounded and heads to this day, for a reported ~$400 million in 2014, is also a key Anthropic investor. The tech giant reportedly plans to invest up to $40 billion in the AI company as part of the mutually beneficial relationship the pair have forged, with reports that Anthropic has committed to spending $200 billion in the other direction on Google’s cloud services over the next five years.

I’m playing all sides, so I always come out on top

In addition to his financial support for Anthropic, Hassabis has also invested in a range of AI startups launched by colleagues, such as Inflection AI, a company set up by DeepMind cofounder Mustafa Suleyman (who is now CEO of Microsoft AI), as well as efforts from other collaborators, like David Silver’s Ineffable Intelligence.

Hassabis also emerged as a recurring figure on the fringes of the recent Elon Musk v. Sam Altman trial, cropping up repeatedly in testimonies and court documents and appearing to live, as The Verge put it, “rent-free” in Musk’s head.

Founded in 2021, Anthropic has recently raised funding at a reported $900 billion valuation, sending it soaring ahead of competitor OpenAI.

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