SUN VALLEY, Idaho – OpenAI kingpin Sam Altman and WarnerBros. Discovery boss David Zaslav joined dozens of the nation’s power players who jetted into this resort town Tuesday ahead of Allen & Co.’s annual “summer camp for billionaires.”
Altman, dressed casually in a T-shirt and blue slacks on a hot and sunny Idaho summer day, stopped briefly to talk with a gaggle of journalists before entering the off-limits ski lodge that can host this week’s grandiose festivities, which kick off Wednesday.
Zaslav, the 63-year-old executive tasked with salvaging the ratings-challenged CNN, chatted briefly with Hollywood producer Brian Grazer outside the lodge while sporting a head-to-toe jeans ensemble.
The initial sightings of among the world’s strongest tech, media and business leaders are a prelude to days of seminars, meetings and closed-door hobnobbing which have helped set Sun Valley’s status as a hotbed for deal-making.
Other noteworthy arrivals throughout the major “fly-in day” included Apple CEO Tim Cook, Paramount Global chairwoman Shari Redstone, marketing juggernaut Casey Wasserman, shorts-wearing Disney boss Bob Iger and SalesForce CEO Marc Benioff, who got into the Western setting by sporting a cowboy hat.
Greater than 140 flights, each private and business, touched down at Friedman Memorial Airport by the early evening, in keeping with one worker, who said a more normal day of air traffic could feature as few as 10 arriving planes.
The annual billionaires’ shindig is the busiest week of the 12 months for the world.
“In comparison with Christmas, Christmas is No. 2,” the worker told The Post. “It’s all for the conference.”
At a close-by automotive rental desk, most vehicles had already been snapped up by out-of-towners for the week.
It stays to be seen whether this 12 months’s conference lives as much as Sun Valley’s status for wheeling and dealing given the difficult economic landscape that has hammered many tech and media firms this 12 months.
