Don’t have room on David Geffen’s megayacht Rising Sun this summer? Oligarchs and powerful people need not worry. There’s always July in Sun Valley. Allen & Company’s annual leadership retreat in Idaho for media and tech leaders.
“Billionaire Summer Camp” has long been the setting for trustfall and starry-eyed panels, while the real gamesmanship of corporate takeovers and diplomacy unfolds in quaint mountain cabins where private jets sit idle on the tarmac. Variety obtained a copy of the 2026 guest list. It promises another blockbuster year for the CEO and some outlandish invitations. While being on the list doesn’t necessarily guarantee attendance, here are the ones who are likely to walk through the venue in a down vest and jeans:
David Ellison, Chairman and CEO of Paramount Skydance. Josh D’Amaro is the new CEO of Disney. Comcast Chairman Brian Roberts and Co-CEO Mike Cavanagh. WBD’s David Zaslav (from the company Ellison is acquiring). Apple’s next CEO John Tarnas and his predecessor Tim Cook. Netflix Brass, Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters. Ravi Ahuja, Chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment. Fox’s Rupert Murdoch and Lachlan Murdoch (also Rupert’s ex-wife Wendy Murdoch). Neil Mohan from YouTube. Amazon’s executive chairman, Jeff Bezos, will represent major media players.
Big names are expected, including Barry Diller and former Disney CEO Bob Iger (along with partner and University of Southern California Annenberg Dean Willow Bay). So are Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai, Palantir’s Alex Karp and Jeffrey Katzenberg, the NFL’s Roger Goodell, MLB’s Rob Manfred, CAA CEO Brian Lard, and CAA owner and Kering chairman Francois-Henri Pinault.
Other top management includes Barry Weiss, the troublemaker at Ellison’s CBS News, D’Amaro’s content leaders Dana Walden and Alan Bergman, Jimmy Pitaro at ESPN, Brian Grazer at Imagine Entertainment, Eddie Cue at Apple, Michael Rapinoe at Live Nation, Inon Kreitz at Mattel, and Jared Kushner and Josh Kushner.
On deck are the anchors and reporters relied on to host the retreat, including CBS’ Gayle King, CNN’s Anderson Cooper and Van Jones, Fox News’ Bret Baier, CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin, The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos, The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman, and The Washington Post’s David Ignatius. There are also public intellectuals who might be called upon to weigh in on issues of the day, such as Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist and author of “The Spoilers of the American Mind,” and Roland Fryer, a Harvard economics professor whose work on race and inequality has been controversial.
Bill Gates and Casey Wasserman, two people who have recently had trouble with Jeffrey Epstein, were named to the list. The former represents his eponymous foundation, and Wasserman is listed as LA28’s Olympic chairman (his own agency has rebranded itself as The Team and is seeking new ownership in the wake of Hollywood heir Epstein’s fall from grace).
As expected, many AI leaders will be heading to Sun Valley. Specifically, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Greg Brockman. Mackenzie Price, co-founder of Alpha School, which uses a “two-hour learning model” that relies on AI-powered technology, is also on the guest list.
Some of the participants are unfamiliar names, including investors John Malone and Warren Buffett, and former Paramount owner Shari Redstone, despite having visited Sun Valley in the past.
Much is on the table for discussion, from geopolitics to mergers and transactions to new technologies that will transform the way entertainment is produced, distributed, and monetized. Sun Valley has established itself as the place where media-related deals have been made, from the disastrous Time Warner and AOL merger to the sale of NBCUniversal to Comcast, so the press will be watching to see which moguls will remain at the picnic table, who will be up for sale, and who will take a hike with them in search of clues about who might be willing to buy.
