Netflix-WBD $82B Blunder, Apple Succession Plan, Inside Dude Perfect’s Booming Empire | Dec 5, 2025

0:13Welcome everyone to the information's TITV. My name is Akash Pasricha. It is Friday, December 5th. We have a jam-packed-packed show for you to end the week. We have some major news, of course, that Netflix is the winning bidder for the Warner Brothers Discovery acquisition, announcing it will acquire the studio and streaming operations for more than$80 billion in cash and stock. Does that deal make sense? Will it go through? We have got our co-executive editor, Martin Pierce, coming on in just a moment to break it all down. We'll then turn to some exclusive reporting on why Silicon Valley is buzzing about Apple's succession plans, even though CEO Tim Cook has made no public indication he's stepping down.

0:53We also have a standout weekend read, a deep profile of the Broadcom CEO Hawk Tan, and why Broadcom might be NVIDIA's most credible challenger. After that, we'll get into this week's Editor's Cut, diving into the intensifying rivalry between OpenAI and Google. And to close out the show, I've got a great conversation with the CEO of Dude Perfect, one of the biggest names in YouTube. It's going to be a busy show, and so let's get right on into things. Netflix has agreed to acquire Warner Brothers Discovery Studio and streaming businesses for$82.7 billion. It puts an end to a bidding war that also included Paramount, Skydance, and Comcast.

1:29It is a big deal, and I want to bring on someone who I know has thoughts on all of this. Martin Pierce is the co-executive editor at The Information. Martin, what do you think? I think this is the stupidest deal. And I have to say that in the history of dumb media deals, it's very hard to sort of, you know, pass them. AT &T's purchase of Time Warner in 2018 at the time appeared to be the world's dumbest deal. They ended up, of course, spinning that off. This is even stupider. In fact, this is such a stupid deal. I'm even beginning to wonder whether Netflix knows this deal will not get through, but they are just trying to screw up Paramount and delay Paramount's ability to actually buy Warner.

2:24Okay. So I want to unpack all of those things and all those thoughts. Let's go to what they're actually agreeing to buy. What part of the business is this? They're only buying the film studio, you know, Warner Brothers. It's an iconic film studio, and they're buying the own Mac streaming service. Those are the dual assets, but they're not buying the parts of the business that actually make the most money, which are the cable channels, which are declining. So that makes sense. Thank God for that. um but the price they're paying is absolutely enormous and the problem is this is not going to add to anything it's anybody I mean almost everybody who can have Netflix has it already who is pay for Netflix now that you can get uh you know HBO Max on it uh they they actually admitted this morning there's an awful lot of um overlap between the two um subscriber groups So this doesn't give Netflix anything except debt and the need to spend the next 18 months negotiating with the government to try to get this deal approved.

3:42And I think in the end, it will get opposed and the thing will just, you know, collapse. So I think it's a gigantic mistake. So you don't think the deal will go through at all? I don't think there's any chance that the government is going to allow the largest streaming service to buy one of the other very big streaming services, particularly as Paramount, which was competing to buy Warner, is close to the administration and will obviously do a very, you know, intense job in arguing why this deal should be opposed. So on the call this morning, I mean, what is the putting aside the idea that maybe Netflix did this as a as a way to sort of stop the other companies from getting their hands on this property?

4:34What is the strategic rationale then that executives are saying? And look, you look at the stock this morning. It's not like the stock has fallen off a cliff this morning for Netflix. The stock had already fallen 15 percent in the last six weeks or so. So I think this is already expected. it um the strategic rationale that they gave was not really there they said this would give consumers more choice which makes no sense because consumers can already get all of this content they just have to pay for both services so putting on um how does that give them more choice this they said that this would create jobs which is really a fascinating argument given that you know they've already said they're going to cut costs so this will actually destroy jobs they really didn't say anything that actually made any logical sense so that's why i'm beginning to think maybe this entire thing is just a a fake effort to sort of delay paramount i mean i do think that there's a defensive element to it they wanted to prevent anyone else getting their hands on these on these assets because that might have affected them because it might have made somebody who's competing with them even more effective.

5:59But really, they're also just paying such a high price that I don't think it's worth it. Right. So let's talk about why was Warner Brothers Discovery, why was it going up for sale in the first place? Talk us a little bit through the history here. It's a long history. Time Warner was sold in 2018 to AT &T because the management at that time decided that they could see the writing on the wall. The company was predominantly the cable channel business, which is in decline. So they decided they would just exit. AT &T bought it. AT &T was obviously a disastrous buyer. They don't understand the entertainment industry.

6:43So after a few years, they decided to um sell it uh discovery bought it uh they understand the entertainment industry but in buying it they took on debt a huge amount of uh debt and they've had to spend the past three years cutting costs to try to make the uh deal work and i think and and so far the stock has done really badly um so i think people saw the opportunity um to sort of move in and this was sparked by paramount which is the ellison families company um they are trying to expand and they made an offer which led the company to put the sorry led the board to put the company on the market but But it seems that the board didn't want to sell to Paramount.

7:39I'm not sure why. But in any case, this is where we are now. Right. And so now thinking about this, you know, in the scenario here where you're saying the deal doesn't go through, I guess I'm trying to keep it open to a possibility that maybe it goes through, right? And then Netflix has to take on all this debt to fund this acquisition. Debt, of course, just like you pointed out, debt is the thing that dragged down a number of the media companies in the first place. I mean, three, four years from now, what happens, I mean, to the business that it's acquired? Well, I think if the deal does go through, Netflix will then spend several years cutting, cutting, cutting.

8:25I think that they will raise prices. You know, I just think that we'll end up maybe in the same place that we are in now. They'll probably end up, I mean, I'm not sure. It's really hard to tell, but I think this will be good for them in the end. Great. Well, Martin, I want to thank you for coming on. And I know you just published a piece on this as well, which I encourage everyone to read. We will link it in the show notes. That is Martin Peers, the co-executive editor here at The Information. Okay, Apple's succession plan has gotten a lot of buzz lately. And even though Tim Cook hasn't said anything about leaving, a lot of people in the Apple orbit have a short list of people that they think could take the reins next.

9:10My colleague Aaron Tilly published a deep dive on the topic with a ton of inside reporting, and I want to bring him on to talk all about it. Aaron, welcome to the show. It's great to have you here. Yeah, thanks for having me. So why is everyone talking about Apple succession these days? uh there's a lot going on um there's been over the past year an acceleration of just turnover at the direct report ranks to the ceo tim cook and um and then on top of that uh this is now 15 years into tim on nearly 15 years into tim cook's reign and he's just turned 65 um there's a lot kind of coming down the pike in terms of with AI and questions about is Tim Cook kind of hustling enough and getting Apple prepared for that for that stage of technology.

10:02So, you know, there's a lot going on with changes with executives and the overall tech industry. And the week of news that we had this week, I mean, we saw a lot of departures. We had retirements to John and Andrea stepping away from the company. We had the, I think it was the general counsel that, that is, is also moving away. And then I think the third was, it was an executive moving to Meta. Are these sort of, you know, a reflection of that or, you know, is this just a long time coming really? I mean, this is a, this is a long time coming, but definitely reflection, I think, of setting up plan, you know, the succession plan, because you're getting the sort of stable group of executives who are going to be with the next CEO.

10:56You don't want when the next CEO is appointed for a spat of executive departures right then. These executives are also preparing to retire. And so do it ahead of time before the new CEO comes on board. Okay, so now you dove into, dived, dove, I don't know what the past tense is. You went into a couple of the candidates. John Ternus was the candidate that you said has been talked about the most. Who is John Ternus and why are people talking about him? Yeah, he's kind of in the role of Tim Cook. I mean, he comes from a different group coming up in a different group, not operations like Tim Cook, but hardware engineering.

11:36And he is young, relatively, with the rest of the senior vice presidents at the company. he's 50 that sets him up to be the young well the the youngest senior vice president at Apple reporting to Tim Cook and so he comes from this background doing hardware engineering leading their hardware product group and that's like you know he is in his demeanor very Tim Cook like which I think is you know it's it it it bonds him to Tim a bit on that point but he also comes up with more product oriented than Tim. So I think there's some appeal there that he's going to be a more product driven CEO than what Tim was.

12:22I don't think the differences are that big in terms of demeanor and disposition. But I think, you know, potentially more product driven company with him taking over. And who else is in the running? I mean, Craig Federici is a name that we know from a lot of their videos and keynotes and stuff like that. He's he's up there. Yeah, for sure. He is. He's I think definitely has been considered, but he is doesn't have, you know, from what people executives we've spoken to that he maybe isn't the right candidate. He's very fixated on software, not on sort of hardware and not on sort of the policy issues that you really have to dive into a CEO.

13:05So I don't think he's a super strong candidate at the company at the moment. And I don't think he really wants it, to be honest. So it's just a name, certainly, that's been floated about. And are they convinced that they have to go internally to look for the CEO? Are they looking outside at all? No, they're pretty fixated on an inside candidate. You know, Apple is a very particular culture, and outsiders really struggle inside there. It's, you know, they're kind of pushed out. when you come in from the outside, you just do not mesh well. So it's a task. So I think it really needs to be an internal version.

13:43Right. Well, let me ask you this. I mean, Apple is kind of at this inflection point here with AI, and we've had you on the show before talking about some of the growing pains they've had with their products. Is there an argument to make in saying that the person that you need to pick should be, you know, I guess for lack of a better word, I mean, they should be AI native in some ways, right? They should see the future with AI. They should help the company go in that direction. Do you think that is one lane they might explore? And how do they balance that with obviously the, you know, the hardware or the supply chain?

14:20I mean, these are all sort of non-AI things they have to be versed in. For sure. I think the next CEO has to have AI as a strategy going forward. but I think this company, it will always come, its DNA will always be rooted in hardware. I think that is where they excel and that's where they have to, they have to still maintain their excellence. So I don't think they can choose somebody who comes from AI as their leader. I mean, I think they need to take it seriously and build great products around AI, but this company's DNA, I think, will always be rooted in hardware. and I think that's their strength and why I'm away from that.

15:03Great. Well, Aaron, I want to thank you for coming on. I suspect this story will get even more dynamic, so I look forward to talking with you more and we'll see you soon. Thank you. Well, NVIDIA may be the undisputed darling of the AI boom, but there is a chip stock that is actually outperforming NVIDIA this year. Broadcom shares are up more than 60 % in 2025, roughly double the gain that NVIDIA has had. And it is also emerging as one of the companies that is seen as a credible challenger to NVIDIA's dominance. This weekend's Big Read is a deep dive, not just on Broadcom the company, but also the man leading the charge, CEO Hawk Tan.

15:42And I want to bring on my colleague, Jemima McAvoy, to tell us more about the piece that she wrote. Jemima, welcome back to the show. It's great to have you here. Thank you for having me as always. Let's talk about Broadcom. Can you explain what kind of chips exactly does Broadcom make? Yeah, of course. So basically, what has been the main chip that has been used throughout the AI build-out so far? It's called a GPU. It's what NVIDIA and AMD make. And it's basically a very flexible chip that you can use for anything, for lots of different types of applications. Broadcom specializes in a custom chip that's known as an ASIC.

16:16And the difference is it is cheaper to make, but it is generally only programmed to one application, so it's a lot less flexible. So as the AI infrastructure buildout has moved on to kind of its next stage, where we're a little bit more certain about what we want to be doing, custom ASICs have become a much more attractive option just because of their cost efficiency. So these are chips that are not as powerful necessarily, but they're customized and they kind of fall into the camp of chips that it's like, well, you know, we don't need the most powerful thing. We just need something that is specific to our operations.

16:53operations. They actually are very powerful, but it's just geared towards that specific task. So because of how quickly AI changes, it's kind of difficult to commit to, you know, we know we're going to want this task done forever. So that's why it's kind of been a bit of a transition in this later part of the AI build out. And why are they seen as such a credible threat to NVIDIA? Yeah, I mean, Broadcom is seen as probably one of the most credible threats to NVIDIA because A, there's the cost question. The chips are, you know, I think around 30 or 40 % cheaper than NVIDIA's. And now, since companies are needing to buy so many chips, they're looking for other options.

17:33And Broadcom is the leader in custom silicon. They've been doing, they've been making custom silicon for decades. You know, the company was founded in 1990. And they're really good at it. And they're, the quality of their product is known to be really good. So that's, you know, That's kind of what makes them the biggest challenger. So let's talk about Hawk Tan, the CEO that you profiled. You had a lot of great details about how he's running the company. What stood out to you about his leadership style and the way he's been managing things? Yeah, I mean, it's no secret that Hawk Tan is a very, you know, he's a pretty cutthroat leader.

18:12He's been known to acquire companies and lay off, you know, half the employees. And that's been known, but I really wanted to drill into, you know, who is this guy? How has he built Broadcom into what it is today? And there's, you know, lots of colorful things. I mean, he's extremely cutthroat. He's extremely frugal. You know, no sodas in the cafeteria at Broadcom. There's no business class flights. There's no holiday party. They don't even have espresso machines in there. He ripped them out when he bought VMware, the software company. They're just working in like a box, it seems. And his philosophy is, I'm going to pay you super well, and I'm not going to give you anything else, and you're going to work really hard.

18:56And it's interesting because it's kind of different from the whole NVIDIA vision, which is funding a bunch of moonshots. Jensen Wang is this very philosophical talking about AI. It's not that he doesn't care about AI, but he doesn't really care about the technology necessarily. He just cares about his what he cares about and what he's good at is making money out of technology. At a conference last in September, he was asked about, you know, what he thinks the future of AI is and where it's going. And his response is, I'm not a cheerleader. So it's really just an interesting case study of this CEO who is managing the company very differently than some of his peers that are leading.

19:40How long has he been CEO for? He has been CEO for 20 years. He took over the predecessor to Broadcom, which was called Avago in 2005. And then they bought it in 2015. But one of the most interesting parts of the story, though, is that you talk about this no-nonsense attitude. And yet people don't seem to be leaving the company. Yeah, I mean, you would think. I mean, one thing that I describe in the story is they have a quarterly coffee chat, which is basically Broadcom speak for an all hands meeting where Hawk, you know, ranks each department based on the amount of money they're making. and then there's this big fat red line two-thirds or three-quarters of the way down the page, and any department beneath that is considered to be underperforming.

20:26And all the employees in that department are like, oh my god, I'm going to get fired, because Hawk is known for not, you know, he'll fire people if they're not performing up to his standards. So yeah, you would think that kind of environment, it's a very stressful and pressure-filled environment, would turn more people away. But in fact, the company has a very low So voluntary attrition rate, it's pretty much in line with NVIDIA's. It's under 3%. So yeah, that's pretty interesting. And it is, it's, you know, employees describe it to me as they get paid so well, they don't want to leave. Right.

20:58And when you talk to people in the company's orbit, he's 74 years old. We just talked about Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, who's much younger than 74. And already, I think, given the scale that Apple is at, people are thinking about who might succeed him. Has succession come up in the Broadcom story with Octan? Yeah, succession has definitely come up. I mean, as you mentioned, he's 74. He's older than Jensen Wong and Lisa Su. And, you know, he recently, the board of directors at Broadcom recently extended his tenure, his contract by two years. So he is officially going to be serving at least until 2030.

21:40There's lots of talk behind the scenes about what happens to Broadcom after Hocktan is no longer the CEO because he essentially has built this company. It's completely different from when he took it over. It was a$1.6 billion revenue company. Now it's a nearly$2 trillion market cap company. Can Broadcom continue to grow at the same rate without the leadership of Hocktan? And, you know, some people I spoke with in his orbit think that he will never retire, that he's going to pull a dollar and just keep on working forever. But, you know, it's hard to say what's going to happen, but it looks like we are beginning to think about succession planning and potentially who will take over.

22:21And that will likely be Charlie Kawas, the leader of the, you know, semiconductor division. Let me ask you this. You know, you didn't have the chance to speak with Hawktown for the story, although I know you reached out and it's ultimately the company's decision if they want to put the executive up for an interview or not. But you talked to so many people in his orbit. If you did have an interview with him, what might you want to ask him? Well, obviously, I think our audience would be super interested to hear some more nitty gritty on the details of this, you know, the chip fight that's happening right now.

22:54you know um broadcom's biggest competitor in the custom chip space is marvel right it's this competition happening right now where what what would you what would you want to what what would jemima be most curious about well that that's where i was getting is that's what our audience would be most curious about curious about but for me i really love learning about the character behind you know the company and hawk is a very private person hence not wanting to interview I think, you know, learning about his childhood a little bit more. We know nothing. We don't know what his parents did. We don't know the circumstances of him growing up.

23:28I mean, I heard a lot of different tales from people as I spoke to them, but none of them I was able to confirm. So I would love to, you know, kind of hear about his experience growing up and how that impacted, you know, where he's gone to today. Right. Well, it was a great story and I encourage everyone to read it. It is our weekend big read this week. Shemima, thank you so much for coming on. That is Jemima McEvoy, our weekend reporter here at The Information. Okay, this week's news cycle has been dominated by the escalating OpenAI-Google rivalry with Sam Altman declaring a code red as Gemini 3 raises new questions in Silicon Valley about whether ChatGPT's dominance is beginning to slip.

24:09We want to discuss all this on this week's Editor's Cut with our Editor-in-Chief Jessica Lesson and Managing Editor Laura Mandaro. Here is that conversation. Jessica and Laura, welcome to the show. It's great to have you here. Thanks, Akash. Hi, Akash. Laura, you know, if you could believe it, we've done 100 episodes, and this is your first time on the show. Amazing! Oh, my God. Well, I'm excited to have both of you here. It was a busy week of news. You know, I want to start by unpacking a little bit the OpenAI Code Red stuff, which we're still seeing play out in the news cycle. We obviously had some comments from Dario this week as well.

24:47And where I want to start the conversation is actually with the investors of OpenAI, because I've been thinking a lot about what they must be thinking with this news. Jessica, I wonder what your thought is here. What are you hearing from that group? So if I think if you're in OpenAI already, you're a believer and you're looking at OpenAI and you're saying fastest growing business in history. This company will get funded. It's all going to be great. I think what I'm hearing over the last couple of days is the people who are on the sidelines saying, uh-oh, which way is this going? We've obviously seen incredible growth.

25:23We have seen this company meet the moment. But they're the ones pointing out the competition. Is the attention too fragmented? What's going on with the compute commit? So it's always been a polarizing company, and I think it's especially a polarizing company right now. Okay. So, Laura, Jessica is talking about the people who are not in OpenAI. There is a group that OpenAI is relying on to keep this funding going for years to come here. I mean, we've talked a lot about their cash flow projections or lack thereof. I mean, does this pose a risk at all for them being able to raise this money, do you think?

26:03I mean, I think that with all the rounds that we reported on over the last couple of years, there's been no shortage of demand. In fact, generally, there's more. The round size goes up. You see it also for the tenders, the secondary sales. And I think, you know, we've reported on these SPVs, which are these vehicles designed to get like retail investors. So all I can tell from this reporting is that there's still huge demand from family offices and institutions that didn't get to get into some of these rounds for like the name brand logo of the AI boom. But, you know, for the very big pension funds that at the end of the day need to see a return and they need to see cash from these investments, they are watching, I think, everything closely.

26:54And they're looking at the, you know, indications from the major companies like NVIDIA and Microsoft about AI demand and if that's going anywhere. And they want to know that this is going to be a real investment. I mean, so far, if you invested a couple of years ago, there is a paper markup. But, you know, you'd have to kind of be living under a rock to not worry that there is a bubble. And if you're coming in at 500 billion, which was the price of the last round or the tender offer, you know, how much more does that valuation have to go up for you to get even double your investment? So I think there's questions, but it doesn't seem to me that they won't be able to raise.

27:36Right. And there's obviously there's the notion that if there's a company that is able to fundraise at two different valuations at the same time, well, maybe that signals something. Jessica, I'm curious what you made of Dario's comments this week. You know, from our reporting, we've shown empirically that Anthropic is running a tighter ship, but also it feels like on the ground in the way that Dario and Daniela have steered their ambitions. They're a little narrower, a little more focused. Sam Altman, I mean, we had the news this week that, you know, he might even be looking at a rocket company in some cases, right?

28:11That was a report that came out. Like, talk about the contrasting leadership styles here and which one you ultimately think is better for a company like this. Well, what stood out to me with Dario's Dealbook interview was actually, I think, how he's continuing to grow into the CEO role. I mean, Dario is a, I mean, he's a wonderfully brilliant guy. and just seeing his public speaking over the last several years, my first takeaway was, you know, he's feeling it, right? He's very comfortable. He, I thought, was very compelling in that interview. He seems more confident when you - Totally. He was owning the stage in that interview.

28:51And again, if your revenue's grown 10x for three years, you should own it and you should take the stage. But I think it's notable because he's not always been the most natural public speaker, the natural in talking. He's always been natural talking about the grand sort of vision, but he felt very comfortable. And I think that is a reflection of the state of the business in the moment, the state of Anthropik's relative focus. And make my mistake, I mean, he left Altman and OpenAI for a reason. I mean, there is a very, very fierce rivalry between those two individuals. and those two companies, you know, the reason being in Dario's estimation, you know, much more of how AI is getting built and the ethics and responsibility around it.