Day: October 29, 2025

• Paramount Skydance laid off about 1,000 staffers on Wednesday, and roughly 1,000 more cuts are coming.
• New CEO David Ellison has promised investors that he’ll generate $2 billion in cost savings.
• Read the full memo that Ellison sent to employees.

Paramount Skydance is shedding about 1,000 employees — and it’s only halfway done with its cuts.

The David Ellison-run company is implementing long-expected layoffs on Wednesday.

A source familiar with Paramount’s plans said the company is eliminating 2,000 positions total, which means Paramount staffers should brace for roughly 1,000 more cuts. The timeline of the next round of job cuts is unclear.

Ellison, the new Paramount Skydance CEO, officially informed employees that the cuts were coming in a memo sent on Wednesday at 6:27 ET, although he didn’t specify the number of cuts.

“Building a strong, future-focused company would require significant change — including restructuring the organization,” Ellison said in the memo, which was viewed by Business Insider.

These layoffs are part of the $2 billion in cost savings that Ellison promised to deliver to investors after completing the Paramount-Skydance merger in August.

Paramount employees told Business Insider that they were on edge after years of job cuts. A marketing strategy employee said earlier this week that layoffs were “awful and stressful,” but added that they’re “used to it.”

The company also told staffers in September that they’d have to return to the office five days a week in 2026, or else take a severance package.

Ellison isn’t all about cuts. Backed by his billionaire father, Larry Ellison, the new media mogul has invested billions in content, from US UFC rights to a new “Call of Duty” movie. Paramount’s new CEO also spent $150 million to put Bari Weiss atop CBS News by buying her news site, The Free Press.

Ellison also has Hollywood’s attention because he seems to have his sights on Warner Bros. Discovery, the media company behind HBO, which said last week that it’s now listening to offers to sell itself.

Read Ellison’s full memo to Paramount employees below:

Dear All,

When we launched the new Paramount in August, we made clear that building a strong, future-focused company would require significant change — including restructuring the organization. As part of that process, we must also reduce the size of our workforce, and we recognize these actions affect our most important asset: our people.

We want to be as open and direct as possible about the reasons behind these changes. In some areas, we are addressing redundancies that have emerged across the organization. In others, we are phasing out roles that are no longer aligned with our evolving priorities and the new structure designed to strengthen our focus on growth. Ultimately, these steps are necessary to position Paramount for long-term success.

That said, today we begin the difficult process of informing impacted team members across the company. These decisions are never made lightly, especially given their effect on our colleagues who have made meaningful contributions to the company. To this end, we are committed to supporting all employees through this transition. Members of our HR team will be working closely with business unit leaders to share detailed information on benefits and transition services. Additional questions can be directed to AskHR@paramount.com.

We are deeply grateful for your hard work, professionalism, and resilience during this period of transition. We remain confident that Paramount’s best days are ahead, and we’re committed to building a strong foundation for the future.

Thank you,

David

• Bill Gates says we’re in the midst of an AI bubble.
• He says it’s probably not like the “tulip mania” that took place in the Netherlands in the 1630s.
• It could be like the dot-com bubble, where some companies ended up overvalued.

Are we in the midst of an AI bubble? Bill Gates thinks so.

But the Microsoft cofounder said during a Tuesday appearance on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that it’s not a product of pure speculation.

He pointed to the example of “tulip mania” during the 1630s in the Netherlands, when the price of tulips soared for several years only to suddenly crash.

“That’s not where we are,” Gates said.

But the billionaire philanthropist does think the current bubble is akin to the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s and early aughts, when several Internet-based companies turned out to be overvalued, resulting in a significant crash.

“In the end, something very profound happened. The world was very different,” Gates said. “Some companies succeeded, but a lot of the companies were kind of me-too, fell behind, burning capital companies.”

“Absolutely, there are a ton of these investments that will be dead ends,” Gates added.

Gates also said that AI has been “the biggest technical thing ever in my lifetime.”

“The value is extremely high, just like creating the internet ended up being, in net, very valuable,” Gates said. “But you have a frenzy. And some of these companies will be glad they spent all this money. Some of them, you know, they’ll commit to data centers whose electricity is too expensive.”

There’s been growing concern about an AI bubble in recent months, with even figures like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warning of overexcitement from investors.

Others have said those fears are overblown, and that investor excitement is adequately capturing the transformative potential of the technology.