Powell Jobs Stakes $250 Million in Skydance, Joins Board Oct. 5

By Daniel Okafor

She now sits beside the Ellisons in the freshly merged Paramount-WBD giant — with Anonymous Content and The Atlantic already in tow.

Powell Jobs bought 20.83 million Skydance shares at $12 each, an SEC filing shows. Her total outlay: $250 million. She joined the company's board on Oct. 5. The appointment was announced the next day. Bobby Kotick, the former Activision chief, was named alongside her.

Her shares sit inside a trust, held indirectly. Skydance also granted her 33,118 restricted stock units — equity awards that only unlock on a future date. Those vest at the company's 2027 annual meeting. Round figures rarely come this tidy.

What does Skydance actually own?

The combined company — Paramount Skydance plus Warner Bros. Discovery, under David Ellison — now controls:

• Streamers HBO Max and Paramount+
• Broadcast networks including CBS and CNN
• Cable brands spanning Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, TBS and TNT

That is a great deal of screen real estate for one philanthropist's portfolio.

Why does this belong on an arts page?

Powell Jobs already funds much of what reaches screens and readers. She launched Emerson Collective in 2011, mixing philanthropy with venture capital. Her cultural bets include:

• Anonymous Content, the independent production house she leads
• Concordia Studio, the "talent-first" film and TV shop founded by director Davis Guggenheim
• The Atlantic, where she serves as majority investor and board chair under a 2017 deal
• Equity stakes in OpenAI and Anthropic, the artificial-intelligence labs courting Hollywood

Forbes values her net worth at $15.8 billion. She was married to the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.

How does she fit with Skydance's other backers?

Skydance, in announcing her appointment, said it "believes that Ms. Powell Jobs is qualified to serve as a member of the board because of her extensive experience and focus investing in innovative and entrepreneurial enterprises and on high-quality journalism."

She joins a roster already stocked with Larry Ellison, the multibillionaire Oracle (database-software giant) co-founder and David's father. The Ellisons hold the largest equity stake. RedBird Capital Partners — led by managing partner Gerry Cardinale — committed $4 billion. Sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi completed the equity pool.

Class A common stock — the voting shares — sits 100% with the Ellisons and RedBird. That arrangement concentrates formal governance in two pairs of hands, regardless of how broadly the rest of Skydance's economic pie is sliced.

What comes next?

Beyond the board seat, Powell Jobs co-founded the Waverley Street Foundation, College Track and the XQ Institute. She also serves Chicago CRED and the Ford Foundation. She belongs to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the honorary body that elects members for distinguished achievement.

If her prior bets hold, expect Skydance's content slate to lean toward the prestige, journalism-friendly material Emerson already banks. The next round of projects will tell us whether Powell Jobs has arrived as banker, consultant, or, more interestingly, the de facto curator of a freshly recharged Hollywood studio system.