This year’s installment of the Sun Valley Conference is about a month away, and excitement is building up ahead of this annual event.
The event, from private investment firm Allen & Company, is colloquially called the “summer camp of billionaires” because it hosts the high-and-mighty of the corporate world.
Variety reports that among those invited to Sun Valley, a resort city in Blaine County, Idaho, include:
- Meta Platforms, Inc.’s (NASDAQ:META) Mark Zuckerberg
- Apple, Inc.’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) Tim Cook
- Alphabet, Inc.’s (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Sundar Pichai
- Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates
- Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc.’s (NASDAQ:WBD) David Zaslav
- Paramount Global, Inc.’s (NASDAQ:PARA) Shari Redstone
- Walt Disney Co.’s (NYSE:DIS) Bob Iger
Also on the attendees’ list are Open AI’s Sam Altman, the man behind the AI revolution that is taking hold, and media mogul Rupert Murdoch.
Former Treasury Secretaries Larry Summers and Hank Paulson, and former Italian President Mario Draghi, who also served as the president of the European Central Bank, may show up to the gala event.
Famed investment titans such as Warren Buffett and tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel are also expected to make their appearance.
Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX) brass, including chairman Reed Hastings along with co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters, will also likely to be in attendance.
Spicing up things, Activision Blizzard, Inc. (NASDAQ:ATVI) CEO Bobby Kotick and Microsoft Corp.’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) Satya Nadella will likely get an opportunity to discuss the pending deal, which provides for Redmond buying the video game publisher. The deal announced in early January 2022 hasn’t closed amid regulatory roadblocks.
The event cordons off the attendees from the press, save the ones from the Fourth Estate, who would be moderating “off-the-record discussions, Variety said.
The report said New York Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin, Paramount unit CBS’ Gayle King and David Begnaud, Warner Bros unit CNN’s Van Jones and Erin Burnett, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post’s David Ignatius, The Free Press’ Bari Weiss, and Becky Quick, who co-hosts “Squawk Box” with Sorkin.
Media host and entrepreneur Oprah Winfrey could also grace the conference with her presence.
Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk was conspicuously absent from the list shared by Variety. Given that he was part of the 2022 event, a last-minute appearance by the billionaire may not come as a total surprise.
Apart from providing some of the famous personalities to hobnob with each other in an informal setting, the Sun Valley conferences in the past have served as platforms where deals were discussed, the report said.
Comcast’s purchase of NBC Universal, Disney’s ABC buy and Jeff Bezos’ acquisition of the Washington Post were all discussed at the event in the past, it added.
Produced in association with Benzinga
Edited by Jessi Rexroad Shull and Alberto Arellano
