Disney is open to potentially selling an equity stake in ESPN and is looking for a strategic partner in the business as it prepares to transition the sports network to streaming, CEO Bob Iger said Thursday.
The linear TV business has degraded over the past year more than Iger expected, the Disney CEO told CNBC’s David Faber Thursday in an interview at Sun Valley, Idaho. Disney announced yesterday Iger has extended his contract to 2026 as CEO. He returned to run Disney last year after stepping down as CEO in 2020.
Disney has held early conversations with potential partners that could improve an ESPN streaming service by extending its distribution and adding content, Iger said. He declined to name specific partners. Disney currently owns 80% of ESPN. Hearst Communications owns the other 20%.
Disney has held off from putting its prime ESPN content on its ESPN+ streaming service as it continues to make billions of dollars in revenue each year through traditional cable TV. Still, millions of Americans cancel their cable subscriptions each year, and that number has accelerated in recent years.
“The challenges are greater than I had anticipated,” Iger said. “The disruption of the traditional TV business is most notable. If anything, the disruption of that business has happened to a greater extent than even I was aware.”
A broader streaming offering
Iger said he had become more certain in his thinking about when ESPN will launch its complete direct-to-consumer offering. He declined to say when that will happen.
Iger’s comments about finding a strategic partner suggest he believes ESPN may function better in a streaming environment if paired with other companies’ sports content. CNBC reported earlier this year that ESPN wants to be a hub for all live sports programming if it can agree to partnerships with other media companies.
ESPN became the crown jewel of Disney’s asset portfolio in the early 2000s by charging increasingly exorbitant amounts to pay-TV providers for the right to carry the network.The popularity of its sports programming, including “Monday Night Football,” allowed it to this.
But in the traditional cable TV business model, ESPN made money per cable subscriber — whether a person watched or not.In a streaming world, only intentional sports fans would buy a service.That increases the importance of putting as much quality programming on the platform as possible — especially if it’s priced more higher than entertainment streaming services.
In addition to finding a strategic partner for ESPN, Iger said he was open to selling or spinning off Disney’s legacy cable networks, including FX and NatGeo, and its broadcast group, ABC Networks. Iger said Disney would be “expansive” in its thinking about the legacy cable and broadcast assets, outside of ESPN.
Iger also said Disney plans to acquire Comcast’s minority stake in Hulu as planned. The two companies struck a deal in 2019 that would give Disney the option to buy Comcast’s minority stake at a fair market value.
CNBC reported earlier this year that Comcast CEO Brian Roberts had floated the idea of Disney selling it ESPN as part of Hulu negotiations when prior Disney CEO Bob Chapek was still running the company. Disney declined those overtures at the time.
Other potential partners for Disney could theoretically include Apple, Google or Amazon, three companies with large balance sheets that have global streaming aspirations and already own sports content. Amazon owns the exclusive rights to the National Football League’s “Thursday Night Football.” Google’s YouTube TV will be the new home for the NFL’s “Sunday Ticket” beginning this season. Apple currently owns the streaming rights to “Friday Night Baseball” and all Major League Soccer games.
Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal, which includes CNBC.
Business representatives staff a table at a career fair in Harlem hosted by Assemblymember Jordan Wright on Dec. 10, 2025, in New York City.
Spencer Platt | Getty Images
The U.S. November jobs report has something for everybody.
Those convinced of weakness will highlight the higher-than-expected unemployment rate as well as the number of jobs shrinking in October.
On the other hand, proponents of a strong economy will focus on jobs growth in November beating estimates, and point out that the increase in the unemployment rate was mostly because the labor force grew, as CNBC’s Jeff Cox noted.
Without any definitive judgment that can be made on the state of the labor market, traders left their bets on interest rate cuts in January mostly unchanged. It’s currently at 25.5%, around one percentage point higher than before the release of the November jobs report, according to the CME FedWatch tool.
“Today’s data paints a picture of an economy catching its breath,” said Gina Bolvin, president at Bolvin Wealth Management Group. “Job growth is holding on, but cracks are forming. Consumers are still standing, but not sprinting.”
Sam Altman, chief executive officer of OpenAI Inc., during a media tour of the Stargate AI data center in Abilene, Texas, US, on Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2025.
Kyle Grillot | Bloomberg | Getty Images
OpenAI is in discussions with Amazon about a potential investment and an agreement to use its artificial intelligence chips, CNBC confirmed on Tuesday.
The details are fluid and still subject to change but the investment could exceed $10 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the talks are confidential. The Information first reported on the potential deal.
The discussions come after OpenAI completed a restructuring in October and formally outlined the details of its partnership with Microsoft, giving it more freedom to raise capital and partner with companies across the broader AI ecosystem.
Microsoft has invested more than $13 billion in OpenAI and backed the company since 2019, but it no longer has a right of first refusal to be OpenAI’s compute provider, according to an October release. OpenAI can now also develop some products with third parties.
Amazon has invested at least $8 billion into OpenAI rival Anthropic, but the e-commerce giant could be looking to expand its exposure to the booming generative AI market. Microsoft has taken a similar step and announced last month that it will invest up to $5 billion into Anthropic, while Nvidia will invest up to $10 billion in the startup.
Amazon Web Services has been designing its own AI chips since around 2015, and the hardware has become crucial for AI companies that are trying to train models and meet growing demand for compute. AWS announced its Inferentia chips in 2018, and the latest generation of its Trainium chips earlier this month.
OpenAI has made more than $1.4 trillion of infrastructure commitments in recent months, including agreements with chipmakers Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices and Broadcom. Last month, OpenAI signed a deal to buy $38 billion worth of capacity from AWS, its first contract with the leader in cloud infrastructure leader.
In October, OpenAI finalized a secondary share sale totaling $6.6 billion, allowing current and former employees to sell stock at a $500 billion valuation.
Shares of Chinese chipmaker MetaX Integrated Circuits soared about 700% in their market debut in Shanghai on Wednesday, after the company raised nearly $600 million in its initial public offering.
Shares, which were priced at 104.66 yuan in the IPO, surged to over 835 yuan on debut, marking a 697% jump.
Similar to Moore Threads, which saw a robust debut at the start of the month, MetaX develops graphics processing units for artificial intelligence applications, tapping into a fast-growing sector driven by rising adoption of AI services.
MetaX is part of a growing cohort of local chipmakers building AI processors, reflecting Beijing’s push to reduce dependence on U.S. chips following Washington’s tech curbs on export of high-end technology to China.
Washington has imposed export curbs on U.S. chip behemoth Nvidia, barring sales of its most advanced AI chips to China.
Newer Chinese players such as Enflame Technology and Biren Technology have also entered the AI space, aiming to capture a share of the billions in graphics processing unit, or GPU, demand no longer served by Nvidia. Chinese regulators have also been clearing more semiconductor IPOs in their drive for greater AI independence.
Earlier this month, shares of Moore Threads, a Beijing-based GPU manufacturer often referred to as “China’s Nvidia,” soared by more than 400% on its debut in Shanghai following its $1.1 billion listing.
Macquarie’s equity analyst Eugene Hsiao said investor enthusiasm around Chinese AI-chip IPOs such as MetaX is partly shaped by longer-term expectations that China will build a self-sufficient semiconductor ecosystem as tensions with the U.S. persist.
“For that to work, you need these players. You need names like Moore Threads, Meta X, etc,” he said.
“So I think when investors are looking at these IPOs, they implicitly are thinking about the nationalistic element,” Hsiao noted, adding that the main driver of the frenzy, however, was the firms’ growth potential.