Paramount Weighs Elon Musk Equity Stake to Ease $40 Billion Ellison Guarantee, Dogecoin (DOGE) in Focus

Paramount Skydance is weighing an equity investment from Elon Musk, the latest step in CEO David Ellison's hunt for deep-pocketed backers to buy newly issued shares after the company's agreement to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery. The media group agreed to pay $30 a share in cash for WBD, the parent of CNN, HBO and the Warner Bros. studio, in an offer that valued the target at $108 billion including debt, according to the company's February announcement. The Ellison family and RedBird Capital Partners have committed $43.6 billion in equity toward the purchase price, with a further $54 billion arranged in debt financing. Larry Ellison, the Oracle founder and David's father, personally stood behind more than $40 billion of the equity commitment, and bringing in new investors would spread that burden across additional balance sheets. A Wednesday report by Semafor said discussions about a Musk investment are under way, with the world's first trillionaire — a title Musk reached in June — among several wealthy individuals under consideration. The size of any stake has not been disclosed, and the talks remain at an exploratory stage with no term sheet surfaced. The two men share a long history: Larry Ellison put $1 billion into Musk's 2022 Twitter takeover, invested in Tesla back in 2018 and went on to sit on the carmaker's board for years. For Paramount, a Musk check would function as a high-profile vote of confidence from a billionaire with a devoted retail following, even though it would likely come with no formal say in how CNN or CBS are run. Leadership has framed the fundraising as a way to shore up the balance sheet after committing roughly $97.6 billion in combined equity and debt financing to the takeover, and the company has not commented on the timing of any announcement.

PSKY Near Multi-Year Lows

The fundraising drive gained a clearer runway this week, after a legal roadblock that had shadowed the deal since its announcement disappeared. Paramount resolved the antitrust suit filed by state attorneys general from a dozen states, led by California's Rob Bonta, clearing what had been described as the final obstacle to closing the Warner Bros. Discovery acquisition — a development confirmed in Deadline's post on X. Shares jumped 9% on that settlement headline, but the brief rally has since faded. PSKY Class B stock changed hands at $10.19 in Wednesday afternoon dealing, up 0.8%, according to Yahoo Finance data. That level still leaves the equity down 74.6% over five years and worth less than half its 52-week high of $20.86, with the 52-week low sitting at $7.62. Weekly TradingView chart data shows PSKY trapped in a roughly $10–$15 corridor for most of the past three years — a striking comedown for a company that rode the 2021 bull market to peaks above $95 a share under its old ViacomCBS name. Absent a fresh catalyst, the shares look set to keep grinding inside that range. The cash call matters because the takeover ledger is front-loaded: with the Ellisons and RedBird already on the hook for $43.6 billion of equity and $54 billion of loans, each new check dilutes the family's concentration risk rather than changing the deal's price. Trading activity spiked around the settlement print, yet follow-through has been shallow, a pattern consistent with investors who want deal certainty more than headlines. Political risk, meanwhile, hovers over the Musk idea: Democrats raised concerns about Musk's wealth and his control of X during the 2024 election, and even a partial stake in CNN's parent would likely alarm Washington, though Musk would probably hold no formal role in editorial or corporate decision-making. No commitment from him has been reported as of publication. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on Bybit.

Deadline's post on Xhttps://x.com/DEADLINE/status/2102066136397308045?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Dogecoin Lens on Musk Capital

Our read at COINOTAG: the anchor document is Paramount's own February disclosure of the $30-a-share cash offer for WBD, alongside the $43.6 billion equity commitment from the Ellisons and RedBird and Larry Ellison's personal guarantee above $40 billion. The proposed new-investor round carries no disclosed size, price or valuation, and we will not guess. The cross-asset relevance is Musk's footprint: Dogecoin (DOGE) traders recall how his posts steered flows during past cycles, and desks running AI trading bot strategies keyed to his feed will parse every Paramount headline. Whether appetite for a distressed media turnaround — not a growth compounder such as eBay, and hardly a hard asset like silver — extends to a trillionaire's checkbook is the open question.