Disney CEO Bob Iger speaking with CNBC’s David Faber at the Allen&Co. Annual Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho.
David A. Grogan | CNBC
Disney CEO Bob Iger has taken the unusual step of paying former executives Kevin Mayer and Tom Staggs a consulting fee to help him solve a complex problem: what to do with ESPN.
Mayer and Staggs are the co-CEOs of Candle Media. Both men are close with Iger and have served as informal advisors to him in the past. They’re working with ESPN President Jimmy Pitaro on the strategic options for ESPN and, to a lesser degree, Disney’s other linear cable networks.
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Iger is looking for new ways to jumpstart ESPN because the rate of U.S. cable cancellations has accelerated. In years past, ESPN could still generate revenue growth by increasing programming fees for pay TV distributors, such as Comcast, Charter and DirecTV.
That dynamic no longer exists. As ESPN revenue declines, it will become a larger anchor on Disney’s earnings. That has prompted Iger to explore different strategic alternatives.
Iger told CNBC’s David Faber last month he has had become more confident about when ESPN will launch a direct-to-consumer product. ESPN’s best programming is still exclusive to the linear cable TV bundle. Disney offers many of its lower-rated live games on its ESPN+ streaming service, which costs $9.99 per month.
When ESPN does decide to offer an unbundled subscription service, it will likely cause even more people to cancel pay TV. That’s why ESPN has waited so long to go direct to consumer.
Iger declined last month to say when he planned to offer a direct-to-consumer ESPN. It likely won’t be in 2023 or 2024, according to people familiar with the matter.
An ESPN spokesman declined to comment.
Discussions with the leagues
Iger wants to find minority partners to take equity stakes in ESPN. The sports network has held early talks with the National Football League, Major League Baseball, and the National Basketball Association on the concept, CNBC reportedlast month.
The National Hockey League has also been involved in these conversations, according to people familiar with the matter. An NHL spokesperson declined to comment.
Selling a part of ESPN to four professional sports leagues would be unprecedented. The leagues are focused on transitioning their products to a streaming-dominated landscape. Taking a stake in ESPN and having the network’s expertise in building an all-sports subscription service could help the leagues create a unified product and navigate the new economics outside of the traditional TV bundle.
But a deal might also irritate their existing media partners and create potential conflicts of interest. Leagues would have a vested interest in ESPN’s success if they owned equity stakes. That may not help the leagues maximize sports rights valuations, which have traditionally risen due to bidding wars among media and technology companies such as Comcast‘s NBCUniversal, Fox, Paramount Global, Warner Bros. Discovery, Apple,Alphabet and Amazon.
If ESPN can’t find a suitable deal for minority partners, it has not ruled out a full spin of the network, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Iger has resisted spinning off ESPN in the past and told CNBC he wanted to stay in the sports business. Mayer, who was executive vice president of corporate strategy at Disney before running the streaming business, has been more open minded about spinning off ESPN when he previously worked at Disney, according to people familiar with the matter.
Mayer left the company in 2020 to take the CEO job at TikTok. He declined to comment.
Iger told Faber last month that he wasn’t “necessarily” interested in spinning off ESPN as a separately traded company. The focus for Mayer, Staggs and Pitaro is finding a way where Disney can keep a majority stake in ESPN, according to people familiar with the matter. Disney currently owns 80% of ESPN and Hearst holds 20%.
Iger is looking for partners who bring advantages to ESPN in either content or distribution. Still it’s unclear if another strategic company would have any interest in owning a minority stake in ESPN. If Disney is the majority owner, it would control the fate of the network.
Marek Antoni Iwanczuk | Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images
Google on Friday made the latest a splash in the AI talent wars, announcing an agreement to bring in Varun Mohan, co-founder and CEO of artificial intelligence coding startup Windsurf.
As part of the deal, Google will also hire other senior Windsurf research and development employees. Google is not investing in Windsurf, but the search giant will take a nonexclusive license to certain Windsurf technology, according to a person familiar with the matter. Windsurf remains free to license its technology to others.
“We’re excited to welcome some top AI coding talent from Windsurf’s team to Google DeepMind to advance our work in agentic coding,” a Google spokesperson wrote in an email. “We’re excited to continue bringing the benefits of Gemini to software developers everywhere.”
The deal between Google and Windsurf comes after the AI coding startup had been in talks with OpenAI for a $3 billion acquisition deal, CNBC reported in April. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The move ratchets up the talent war in AI particularly among prominent companies. Meta has made lucrative job offers to several employees at OpenAI in recent weeks. Most notably, the Facebook parent added Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang to lead its AI strategy as part of a $14.3 billion investment into his startup.
Douglas Chen, another Windsurf co-founder, will be among those joining Google in the deal, Jeff Wang, the startup’s new interim CEO and its head of business for the past two years, wrote in a post on X.
“Most of Windsurf’s world-class team will continue to build the Windsurf product with the goal of maximizing its impact in the enterprise,” Wang wrote.
Windsurf has become more popular this year as an option for so-called vibe coding, which is the process of using new age AI tools to write code. Developers and non-developers have embraced the concept, leading to more revenue for Windsurf and competitors, such as Cursor, which OpenAI also looked at buying. All the interest has led investors to assign higher valuations to the startups.
This isn’t the first time Google has hired select people out of a startup. It did the same with Character.AI last summer. Amazon and Microsoft have also absorbed AI talent in this fashion, with the Adept and Inflection deals, respectively.
Microsoft is pushing an agent mode in its Visual Studio Code editor for vibe coding. In April, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said AI is composing as much of 30% of his company’s code.
The Verge reported the Google-Windsurf deal earlier on Friday.
Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, holds a motherboard as he speaks during the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France, on June 11, 2025.
The sale, which totals 225,000 shares, comes as part of Huang’s previously adopted plan in March to unload up to 6 million shares of Nvidia through the end of the year. He sold his first batch of stock from the agreement in June, equaling about $15 million.
Last year, the tech executive sold about $700 million worth of shares as part of a prearranged plan. Nvidia stock climbed about 1% Friday.
Huang’s net worth has skyrocketed as investors bet on Nvidia’s AI dominance and graphics processing units powering large language models.
The 62-year-old’s wealth has grown by more than a quarter, or about $29 billion, since the start of 2025 alone, based on Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. His net worth last stood at $143 billion in the index, putting him neck-and-neck with Berkshire Hathaway‘s Warren Buffett at $144 billion.
Shortly after the market opened Friday, Fortune‘s analysis of net worth had Huang ahead of Buffett, with the Nvidia CEO at $143.7 billion and the Oracle of Omaha at $142.1 billion.
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The company has also achieved its own notable milestones this year, as it prospers off the AI boom.
On Wednesday, the Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker became the first company to top a $4 trillion market capitalization, beating out both Microsoft and Apple. The chipmaker closed above that milestone Thursday as CNBC reported that the technology titan met with President Donald Trump.
Brooke Seawell, venture partner at New Enterprise Associates, sold about $24 million worth of Nvidia shares, according to an SEC filing. Seawell has been on the company’s board since 1997, according to the company.
Huang still holds more than 858 million shares of Nvidia, both directly and indirectly, in different partnerships and trusts.
Elon Musk meets with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Blair House in Washington DC, USA on February 13, 2025.
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Tesla will open a showroom in Mumbai, India next week, marking the U.S. electric carmakers first official foray into the country.
The one and a half hour launch event for the Tesla “Experience Center” will take place on July 15 at the Maker Maxity Mall in Bandra Kurla Complex in Mumbai, according to an event invitation seen by CNBC.
Along with the showroom display, which will feature the company’s cars, Tesla is also likely to officially launch direct sales to Indian customers.
The automaker has had its eye on India for a while and now appears to have stepped up efforts to launch locally.
In April, Tesla boss Elon Musk spoke with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss collaboration in areas including technology and innovation. That same month, the EV-maker’s finance chief said the company has been “very careful” in trying to figure out when to enter the market.
Tesla has no manufacturing operations in India, even though the country’s government is likely keen for the company to establish a factory. Instead the cars sold in India will need to be imported from Tesla’s other manufacturing locations in places like Shanghai, China, and Berlin, Germany.
As Tesla begins sales in India, it will come up against challenges from long-time Chinese rival BYD, as well as local player Tata Motors.
One potential challenge for Tesla comes by way of India’s import duties on electric vehicles, which stand at around 70%. India has tried to entice investment in the country by offering companies a reduced duty of 15% if they commit to invest $500 million and set up manufacturing locally.
HD Kumaraswamy, India’s minister for heavy industries, told reporters in June that Tesla is “not interested” in manufacturing in the country, according to a Reuters report.
Tesla is looking to recruit roles in Mumbai, job listings posted on LinkedIn . These include advisors working in showrooms, security, vehicle operators to collect data for its Autopilot feature and service technicians.
There are also roles being advertised in the Indian capital of New Delhi, including for store managers. It’s unclear if Tesla is planning to launch a showroom in the city.