Verified
Warner Bros. Discovery
Experimenting- Media
- Part of Skydance since Oct 6, 2026
- ~35,500 employees (2025)
- AWS and Google Cloud
- No AI return reported
Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), part of Skydance since Oct 6, 2026, built AI mainly into HBO Max, advertising and its networks: recommendation models, AI-picked clips, captioning on Google Cloud and an agentic ad platform on AWS. WBD reported no return it credited to AI and no count of employees using AI tools before the closing, and Skydance has reported none since. Skydance Chief Product Officer Dane Glasgow now leads the combined company's AI-powered capabilities.
skydance.comTheir approach to AI
- The platform
- Warner Bros. Discovery had no single internal AI platform on record. Its streaming technology team built AI verticals for personalization, localization and sports, and its ad sales teams run an agentic AI stack on AWS (Jun 2026).
- The models
- Foundation models on Amazon Bedrock in a closed Warner Bros. Discovery instance (Jun 2026), Google's Gemini and Vertex AI for captioning, and in-house models fine-tuned on Warner Bros. Discovery's own media.
- The reach
- Warner Bros. Discovery's recommendation and discovery models serve its streaming services, which had 131.6 million subscribers at Dec 31, 2025. AI made almost 40% of HBO Max's drop-in preview moments (Sep 2025).
- The catch
- Warner Bros. Discovery reported no business return it credited to AI before it was acquired, and since Oct 6, 2026 it no longer reports on its own. Skydance, its owner, plans to fold HBO Max and Paramount+ into one service.
Snapshot
- Employees
- ~35,500
- Dec 31, 2025, before the Oct 6, 2026 acquisition by Skydance
- Technology budget
- Not disclosed
- Warner Bros. Discovery did not break out technology or AI spending
- AI/ML headcount
- Not disclosed
- Machine learning and AI teams sit in global streaming technology and CNN
- Who owns AI
- Dane Glasgow, Skydance Chief Product Officer
- Since Oct 2026; before the closing, CTO Avi Saxena ran consumer technology under JB Perrette
- Platform
- No single AI platform on record
- AI verticals in streaming; an agentic ad stack on AWS (Jun 2026)
- Models
- Bedrock models, Gemini, in-house
- Foundation models on Amazon Bedrock; Gemini for captioning; fine-tuned in-house models
- Reach
- 131.6M streaming subscribers
- Dec 31, 2025; HBO Max is set to merge with Paramount+ over time
- Use cases
- Discovery, captions, sports, ads, news
- Conversational search and Shorts in test on HBO Max (Jul 2026)
Key findings
Paramount Skydance completed its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery on Oct 6, 2026 for $31.01666668 a share in cash, and the combined company is named Skydance. Warner Bros. Discovery had ended its Dec 2025 agreement to sell its studios and streaming business to Netflix on Feb 27, 2026, and its planned split into Warner Bros. and Discovery Global did not happen.
Warner Bros. Discovery said in Jun 2026 that it was rebuilding its U.S. advertising workflows on AWS with AI agents for planning, forecasting, optimization and measurement. The agents run on foundation models hosted on Amazon Bedrock in a closed Warner Bros. Discovery instance.
Warner Bros. Discovery CTO Avi Saxena said in Sep 2025 that AI was creating almost 40% of the drop-in preview moments on HBO Max. HBO Max began testing AI-curated Shorts and an Ask HBO Max conversational search in the U.S. on Jul 28, 2026.
Warner Bros. Discovery reported no business return it credited to AI between May 2025 and the Oct 6, 2026 closing. CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels said on May 6, 2026 that AI was becoming a more meaningful contributor to efficiency, without giving a figure.
Skydance named Dane Glasgow its Chief Product Officer on Oct 5, 2026, responsible for technical strategy and AI-powered capabilities. In Feb 2026, David Ellison had said that Paramount would expand the headcount it invests in AI by 10 times.
Where WBD sits
- Stage
- Experimenting
Warner Bros. Discovery reported no business return it credited to AI between May 2025 and its acquisition on Oct 6, 2026. CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels said in Feb and May 2026 that AI projects would drive efficiency, without giving a figure. The captioning cost cut of up to 50% announced with Google Cloud in Sep 2024 was a launch estimate, now more than 2 years old. Warner Bros. Discovery did not report how many employees used AI tools. CTO Avi Saxena said in Sep 2025 that thousands of employees joined an AI hackathon with Google and OpenAI, which is not a usage count. Warner Bros. Discovery sits at Experimenting on the strength of AI in HBO Max discovery, captioning, sports highlights and an agentic advertising platform on AWS. Skydance, which has owned Warner Bros. Discovery since Oct 6, 2026, has not reported an AI return or usage count for its businesses either.
How the stages are defined - Ownership
- Skydance Chief Product Officer Dane Glasgow since Oct 2026; before that, WBD CTO Avi Saxena under JB Perrette
- Platform
- Hybrid: In-house machine learning and fine-tuned models on bought cloud AI services
- Models
- Amazon Bedrock foundation models, Google Gemini, in-house models
- Hosting
- AWS, its preferred cloud, with Bedrock in a closed WBD instance; Google Cloud Vertex AI for captioning; own data centers not disclosed
- Reach
- Streaming services with 131.6M subscribers (Dec 2025)
How they deploy
AI around content, not in place of it
David Zaslav said in May 2024 that Warner Bros. Discovery used AI for ad targeting and content discovery but not to create programming, under principles that hold storytelling to be work for people. Avi Saxena said in Dec 2025 that Warner Bros. Discovery did not think AI was ready to create new content and used it for consumer experiences, content processing and engineering instead.
Surgical verticals
Avi Saxena said in Sep 2025 that Warner Bros. Discovery did not use AI as a general tool but ran targeted programs in product, personalization and recommendation, with dedicated teams such as one for AI localization. Saxena called generative AI slow and expensive for real-time consumer experiences, which is why Warner Bros. Discovery applied it selectively.
Buy the cloud, tune the models
Warner Bros. Discovery built its AI on cloud services it bought: an agentic advertising stack on AWS with Amazon Bedrock and SageMaker (Jun 2026), and a captioning pipeline on Google Cloud's Vertex AI. Deepna Devkar said in a 2026 Google Cloud sponsored feature that off-the-shelf speech models fell short on broadcast audio, so Warner Bros. Discovery fine-tuned its own models and network-specific adapters on proprietary data. Devkar described Google Cloud Consulting as a way to accelerate the work rather than outsource it.
Protect the intellectual property
Warner Bros. Discovery sued Midjourney on Sep 4, 2025, alleging that the image and video generator copied characters such as Superman, Batman and Scooby-Doo. Warner Bros. Discovery's 2025 Form 10-K lists generative AI, large language models and AI video generation among the technologies that raise the risk of infringement of its intellectual property.
Skydance's technology agenda
Skydance says it is building a media company powered by creativity and technology. Ynon Kreiz said on Oct 5, 2026 that a modern technology platform would improve how Skydance works and deliver operating efficiencies. Skydance plans to unify HBO Max and Paramount+ into a single service over time (Oct 2026). David Ellison said in Feb 2026 that Paramount would expand the headcount it invests in AI by 10 times.
- Deployment model
- Before the acquisition, Warner Bros. Discovery ran AI through its global streaming technology organization under CTO Avi Saxena, who reported to JB Perrette. Saxena oversaw the Bolt backend behind HBO Max, discovery+ and Eurosport, with machine learning engineering under Deepna Devkar and product management under Liesel Kipp. Advertising technology for linear and digital sales sat with Nage Sethu's converged advertising and linear systems team, and CNN ran its own data, analytics and machine learning group under Kendell Timmers. Since Oct 6, 2026 these teams have sat inside Skydance. Perrette runs the combined television and streaming businesses, and Chief Product Officer Dane Glasgow leads product vision, technical strategy and AI-powered capabilities for the whole company. Skydance has not said where Saxena's organization now reports.
- Model providers
- Warner Bros. Discovery's agentic advertising platform runs foundation models on Amazon Bedrock in a closed Warner Bros. Discovery instance (Jun 2026). The platform adds Amazon SageMaker for custom machine learning models for Warner Bros. Discovery's exclusive use and Amazon Quick as an AI assistant for ad sales teams. Warner Bros. Discovery did not name the Bedrock models it used. For captioning and localization, Warner Bros. Discovery built Caption AI on Google's Vertex AI in 2024. Deepna Devkar said in a 2026 Google Cloud sponsored feature that Google's Gemini consistently outperformed other large language models in Warner Bros. Discovery's benchmarks, running alongside in-house and open-source models. Recommendation and personalization on HBO Max use Warner Bros. Discovery's own machine learning models (May 2024). Avi Saxena said in Sep 2025 that he talked with Google and OpenAI and that both had joined an internal AI hackathon. Warner Bros. Discovery did not say it used OpenAI's models in production.
- Data and infrastructure
- Warner Bros. Discovery called AWS its preferred cloud provider. Warner Bros. Discovery's advertising data lake sits on Amazon S3 in Apache Iceberg format, with applications on Amazon ECS and models on Amazon Bedrock and SageMaker, kept within Warner Bros. Discovery's data protection, segmentation and security controls (Jun 2026). Amazon listed new AWS agreements with Warner Bros. Discovery in its Q2 2026 results. Captioning runs on Google Cloud, where Gemini and in-house models operate in a closed-loop environment that keeps Warner Bros. Discovery's content and data for its own use, according to a 2026 Google Cloud sponsored feature. Warner Bros. Discovery did not disclose whether any models run in its own data centers. Skydance has not said which clouds will host the combined company's AI. Paramount's former CTO Phil Wiser said in May 2026 that more than 95% of Paramount's compute and data had moved to a cloud-native model.
Platforms and internal tools
Agentic advertising platform on AWSRollout from 2026
Warner Bros. Discovery said in Jun 2026 that it was rebuilding how it plans, activates, optimizes and sells U.S. linear and digital ad inventory on one AWS platform. AI agents handle planning, forecasting, optimization and closed-loop measurement. Agentic automation for direct response and commercial workflows, audience forecasting and attribution came first in 2026. Unified media planning was due in Q3 2026, and order management, pricing and stewardship in Q4.
- Models
- Foundation models on Amazon Bedrock; custom models on Amazon SageMaker
Caption AI and localization pipelineSep 2024
Caption AI, built with Google Cloud on Vertex AI, transcribes unscripted programming on HBO Max into captions, with human reviewers checking the output (Sep 2024). Warner Bros. Discovery later extended the pipeline toward translation, with editorial teams reviewing AI-generated Spanish and Chinese captions in near real time, according to a 2026 Google Cloud sponsored feature. The feature says Warner Bros. Discovery tracked cost per minute of content processed as the pipeline's main measure.
- Models
- Google Gemini and Vertex AI, fine-tuned in-house models and adapters
Bolt
Bolt is the single backend platform behind HBO Max, discovery+ and Eurosport and gives every device and content genre the same streaming experience (Dec 2025). Avi Saxena oversaw Bolt at Warner Bros. Discovery. Skydance plans to unify HBO Max and Paramount+ into a single service over time (Oct 2026).
Vendors and partners
Amazon Web ServicesExpanded Jun 2026
Preferred cloud and the agentic AI platform for Warner Bros. Discovery's advertising · Warner Bros. Discovery's ad technology runs on Amazon Bedrock, SageMaker, S3, ECS and Amazon Quick (Jun 2026). Amazon listed new AWS agreements with Warner Bros. Discovery in its Q2 2026 results.
Google Cloud2024
Vertex AI and Gemini for captioning and localization; Google Cloud Consulting on the translation pipeline · Warner Bros. Discovery and Google announced Caption AI on Sep 24, 2024, and a 2026 Google Cloud sponsored feature says Google Cloud Consulting helped prototype the translation pipeline.
OpenAI
Participant, with Google, in Warner Bros. Discovery's internal AI hackathon · Avi Saxena described the hackathon in Sep 2025; Warner Bros. Discovery did not name OpenAI as a production model provider.
SkydanceOct 2026
Owner since Oct 6, 2026 · Skydance, formerly Paramount Skydance, is targeting at least $6 billion in run-rate cost savings within 3 years, mainly from technology, integration, procurement, marketing and real estate (Oct 2026).
Leadership
AI, data and platform leaders
Executives
AI org map
Owned by Skydance since Oct 2026; AI built in streaming technology, advertising technology and CNN's data group
Warner Bros. Discovery became part of Skydance when Paramount Skydance's acquisition closed on Oct 6, 2026. Skydance's chairman and CEO David Ellison and co-CEO Ynon Kreiz lead its CEO leadership team. On that team, Chief Product Officer Dane Glasgow owns technical strategy and AI-powered capabilities, JB Perrette runs the combined television and streaming businesses, and Mark Thompson runs CNN. Before the closing, Warner Bros. Discovery's AI work sat in global streaming technology under CTO Avi Saxena, who reported to Perrette. Other AI work sat in advertising technology under Nage Sethu and in CNN's data group under Kendell Timmers. Skydance has not published where those teams now report.
Warner Bros. Discovery did not disclose how many people work on AI. Warner Bros. Discovery's AI work sat mainly in global streaming technology under Avi Saxena, whose organization spans Seattle, New York, San Francisco, Ottawa, London, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Budapest and India, with machine learning engineering under Deepna Devkar. Warner Bros. Discovery's AI work also sat in advertising technology under Nage Sethu and in CNN's data group under Kendell Timmers, a group CNN says doubled in size over 2 years (Sep 2026). Warner Bros. Discovery had about 35,500 employees at Dec 31, 2025. Skydance has announced executive departures from both companies since the closing without tying them to AI.
Reporting lines
Skydance CEOs
David Ellison and Ynon Kreiz
Skydance Product
Dane Glasgow, Chief Product Officer
Product vision, technical strategy, advertising and AI-powered capabilities (Oct 2026)
Skydance DTC and Skydance TV business
JB Perrette, Co-Chair and Chief Business Officer
Distribution, advertising sales, content sales and streaming strategy
Streaming technology
Avi Saxena, CTO
Reported to Perrette at Warner Bros. Discovery (Jul 2025); post-closing line not published
Machine learning engineering
Recommendations, Shorts, captioning and localization; placement inferred
CNN Worldwide
Mark Thompson
CNN data analytics, science and insights
Kendell Timmers
Machine learning engineers, data scientists, data engineers and analysts in one group; placement inferred
Converged advertising and linear systems technology
Nage Sethu
Agentic ad platform on AWS; reporting line not published
Warner Bros. Discovery's Jul 28, 2025 announcement placed CTO Avi Saxena under JB Perrette in the planned Warner Bros. company. That separation did not take place. Skydance's CEO leadership team, announced Oct 5, 2026, reports directly to David Ellison and Ynon Kreiz, and Skydance said a full executive leadership team would follow the closing. Warner Bros. Discovery's website now redirects to Skydance's. No AI headcount was published, so the split of the AI workforce is unknown.
Named people
Use cases
Warner Bros. Discovery put AI into production in HBO Max recommendations and personalization, AI-selected preview clips, and captioning and localization. Warner Bros. Discovery also put AI into production in sports key-moment detection and highlights, contextual and targeted advertising, an agentic ad platform on AWS, CNN personalization and newsroom tools, and engineering work. HBO Max Shorts and Ask HBO Max conversational search have been in test since Jul 2026. Warner Bros. Discovery reported no business-level return credited to AI for any of these use cases, or for AI as a whole, between May 2025 and the closing. The captioning cost cut of up to 50% announced with Google Cloud dates from Sep 2024 and was stated as an estimate.
| Use case | Area | Status | ROI |
|---|---|---|---|
| HBO Max recommendations and personalization Warner Bros. Discovery used AI and machine learning to personalize content discovery on HBO Max and improve the variety of content members see (May 2024). In Sep 2025 Warner Bros. Discovery was adding scene-level and sentiment metadata to personalize recommendations further. | Streaming | In production | |
| AI-selected drop-in moments Warner Bros. Discovery used AI to propose 6 to 8 candidate preview clips per title, and a person checked each against the show's narrative. Avi Saxena said in Sep 2025 that AI created almost 40% of HBO Max's drop-in moments. | Streaming | In production | |
| HBO Max Shorts HBO Max Shorts is a vertical feed of trailers, clips and bonus content personalized by watch history. An in-house AI tool combs scene-level metadata from thousands of hours of titles to suggest scenes for human editors. HBO Max began testing Shorts with select U.S. iOS users on Jul 28, 2026. | Streaming | Pilot | |
| Ask HBO Max conversational search Ask HBO Max uses natural language understanding to answer requests, such as one for a dysfunctional family drama, with recommendations. HBO Max began testing Ask HBO Max with select U.S. Android users on Jul 28, 2026, after Avi Saxena described semantic search as a priority in Sep 2025. | Streaming | Pilot | |
| Caption AI and AI localization Caption AI, built with Google Cloud on Vertex AI, writes captions for unscripted programming, with human review. Warner Bros. Discovery extended the pipeline to translation, with Spanish and Chinese captions reviewed in near real time. Avi Saxena said in Sep 2025 that the approach let Warner Bros. Discovery caption in more languages without the cost rising in step. | Content operations | In production | |
| Key-moment detection and highlights Warner Bros. Discovery used AI that reads match events, crowd noise and commentator tone to mark goals, cards and other moments in live streams on TNT Sports and Eurosport, so viewers can jump back. Warner Bros. Discovery also used the AI to build condensed highlight feeds (Sep and Dec 2025). | Sports | In production | |
| Contextual ads and ad break placement Warner Bros. Discovery used AI to improve ad targeting and to find ad break points for its ad-lite tier in HBO content, which has no natural breaks (May 2024). Warner Bros. Discovery also used scene-level metadata and object recognition to match ads to what is on screen (Sep 2025). | Advertising | In production | |
| Agentic ad platform on AWS Warner Bros. Discovery's AI agents plan, forecast, optimize and measure campaigns across U.S. linear and digital inventory on one AWS platform. Amazon Quick gives ad sales teams a natural language assistant over their data. The first capabilities rolled out in 2026, with media planning due in Q3 and order management and pricing in Q4. | Advertising | In production | |
| CNN personalization, storylines and weather summaries CNN uses AI to personalize article selection and paywalls, group text and video into storylines at several levels, and turn forecast data into short summaries in its CNN Weather app. CNN journalists vet AI-assisted newsgathering before publication (Sep 2026). | News | In production | |
| AI in code development and testing Avi Saxena said in Dec 2025 that Warner Bros. Discovery used AI in engineering practices, code development and system testing. Warner Bros. Discovery did not name the tools. | Engineering | In production |
Adoption
Warner Bros. Discovery spread AI through its consumer products before its staff. Machine learning ran HBO Max recommendations and ad placement by May 2024, and Caption AI launched with Google Cloud in Sep 2024. AI was creating almost 40% of HBO Max's drop-in moments by Sep 2025, and HBO Max began testing AI-curated Shorts and conversational search in Jul 2026. Warner Bros. Discovery published no figures on employee use of AI tools. Avi Saxena said in Sep 2025 that thousands of employees across all departments joined an AI hackathon with Google and OpenAI, and in Dec 2025 that engineers used AI in code development and testing. Since Oct 6, 2026, Warner Bros. Discovery's teams have sat inside Skydance, which has not reported AI adoption for the combined company.
By the numbers
Rollout, first pilot to today
May 2024
David Zaslav said Warner Bros. Discovery used AI for ad targeting, to find ad breaks in HBO content and to personalize discovery on Max, but not to create programming.
Sep 2024
Warner Bros. Discovery and Google Cloud announced Caption AI, built on Vertex AI, for unscripted programming, with human reviewers checking its captions.
Jul 2025
Warner Bros. Discovery named its post-separation leaders, placing CTO Avi Saxena under JB Perrette in the planned Warner Bros. company.
Sep 2025
Warner Bros. Discovery sued Midjourney for copyright infringement over AI images of its characters.
Sep 2025
Avi Saxena said around IBC 2025 that AI created almost 40% of HBO Max's drop-in moments and that thousands of employees had joined an AI hackathon with Google and OpenAI.
Dec 2025
Avi Saxena said Warner Bros. Discovery used AI in consumer experiences, content processing, code development and system testing, but not to create new content.
2026
A Google Cloud sponsored feature said Warner Bros. Discovery had fine-tuned its own transcription models, benchmarked Gemini ahead of other models, and moved editors to near real-time review of AI Spanish and Chinese captions.
Jun 2026
Warner Bros. Discovery said it was rebuilding its advertising workflows on AWS with AI agents for planning, forecasting, optimization and measurement.
Jul 2026
HBO Max began testing AI-curated Shorts and Ask HBO Max conversational search with select U.S. users.
Oct 2026
Paramount Skydance completed its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, forming Skydance, and named Dane Glasgow Chief Product Officer over technical strategy and AI-powered capabilities.
Economics & controls
Spend and ROI
Technology budget
Warner Bros. Discovery did not report a technology budget or break out spending on technology, cloud or AI in its 2025 Form 10-K or its 2026 quarterly results. Skydance reported nearly $70 billion in combined revenue and more than $30 billion of content spend for the last 12 months at the Oct 6, 2026 closing. Skydance has not disclosed a technology budget for the combined company.
What AI itself costs
Warner Bros. Discovery did not disclose what it spent on AI models, cloud AI services or AI tools. Deepna Devkar said in a 2026 Google Cloud sponsored feature that Warner Bros. Discovery's core measure for captioning was cost per minute of content processed, counting model inference, compute and the human review in the loop. Avi Saxena called generative AI slow and expensive for real-time uses in Sep 2025.
Reported ROI
Warner Bros. Discovery reported no business-level return credited to AI before the closing. Warner Bros. Discovery and Google Cloud said in Sep 2024 that Caption AI cuts captioning costs by up to 50% and caption creation time by up to 80%, figures stated at launch and not updated since. CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels said on Feb 26, 2026 that ongoing AI projects would help generate more output with the same cost structure. On May 6, 2026 Wiedenfels said that AI was becoming a more meaningful contributor to efficiency, without giving a figure. Neither the Q2 2026 call on Aug 6, 2026 nor the Q2 2026 results release mentioned AI.
Cost savings under Skydance
Skydance is targeting at least $6 billion in run-rate cost savings within 3 years of the Oct 6, 2026 closing, primarily from technology, integration and procurement, marketing and real estate. Skydance has not said how much of that it expects from AI. Skydance's CFO Dennis Cinelli was CFO of Scale AI before joining Paramount.
Headcount
Warner Bros. Discovery had about 35,500 full-time and part-time employees at Dec 31, 2025, 48% of them in the U.S. Skydance has announced the departure of several former Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount executives in its television, streaming, ad sales and distribution reorganizations of Oct and Nov 2026 without tying them to AI.
Governance and risk
Principles for creative work
David Zaslav said in May 2024 that Warner Bros. Discovery's use of AI followed a defined set of principles, holding that the creativity and empathy of storytelling are found in people rather than systems. Avi Saxena said in Sep 2025 that Warner Bros. Discovery moved cautiously on generative AI for final content to respect actors and intellectual property rights.
Humans review AI output
Warner Bros. Discovery's AI features keep people in the loop. Human reviewers check Caption AI transcripts (Sep 2024), editors choose which AI-suggested scenes appear in HBO Max Shorts (Jul 2026), and a person checks AI-proposed drop-in clips against each show's narrative (Sep 2025). CNN requires journalists to vet AI-assisted newsgathering before publication and vets new employee-facing AI tools and major AI use cases before production, with extra scrutiny for customer-facing AI (Sep 2026).
Data stays in closed environments
Warner Bros. Discovery ran foundation models on Amazon Bedrock in a closed instance and trained custom models on Amazon SageMaker for its exclusive use within its data protection, segmentation and security controls (Jun 2026). Gemini and Warner Bros. Discovery's own models for captioning run in a closed-loop environment on Google Cloud, so that the content and data serve only Warner Bros. Discovery, according to a 2026 Google Cloud sponsored feature.
Intellectual property
Warner Bros. Discovery's 2025 Form 10-K warns that generative AI, large language models and AI video generation increase the threat of infringement, and that the legal treatment of generative AI and intellectual property is unsettled. The 10-K also warns that competitors could gain an advantage by using AI more effectively, including in advertising. Warner Bros. Discovery sued Midjourney in Sep 2025, 3 months after Disney and Universal brought a similar suit.
Board oversight
Warner Bros. Discovery's board delegated oversight of cybersecurity and information technology risks to its Audit Committee, which received reports at least quarterly from the Chief Information Security Officer (2025 Form 10-K). The filing names no separate AI governance body. Since Oct 6, 2026 Warner Bros. Discovery falls under Skydance's board, which has not published an AI governance policy for the combined company.
Recent signals
Oct 30, 2026
Skydance set out the structure of its combined television and streaming businesses under JB Perrette, with several former Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount executives leaving.
Oct 6, 2026
Paramount Skydance completed its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, whose shares stopped trading on Nasdaq. The combined company, Skydance, plans to unify HBO Max and Paramount+ over time and targets at least $6 billion in run-rate cost savings.
Oct 5, 2026
Skydance named its CEO leadership team, with Dane Glasgow as Chief Product Officer over technical strategy and AI-powered capabilities and JB Perrette over television and streaming business operations.
Oct 5, 2026
David Zaslav said goodbye to Warner Bros. Discovery staff in a video message and was expected to leave once the deal closed.
Sep 30, 2026
CNN's Kendell Timmers said CNN had doubled its data team in 2 years and was using AI in personalization, paywalls, storyline tagging and weather summaries.
Aug 6, 2026
Warner Bros. Discovery reported Q2 2026 revenue of $8.7 billion, with streaming revenue above $3 billion for the first time, and did not mention AI in its release or call.
Jul 28, 2026
HBO Max began testing Shorts, a vertical clip feed built with an in-house AI tool, and Ask HBO Max conversational search with select U.S. users.
Jun 2026
Warner Bros. Discovery announced an agentic AI advertising platform built on AWS, with Amazon Bedrock foundation models in a closed instance.
May 6, 2026
Gunnar Wiedenfels said on the Q1 2026 call that AI was becoming a more meaningful contributor to efficiency and to creating more volume in some workflows.
Feb 27, 2026
Warner Bros. Discovery ended its agreement to sell its studios and streaming business to Netflix and signed a merger agreement with Paramount Skydance, which paid Netflix's $2.8 billion termination fee.
Feb 26, 2026
Gunnar Wiedenfels said Warner Bros. Discovery was looking to use AI wherever it could to improve efficiency and effectiveness, with projects giving better visibility into its content.
Feb 25, 2026
David Ellison said Paramount would expand the headcount it invests in AI by 10 times and that Paramount treats AI as a tool for artists.
Dec 2025
Avi Saxena said Warner Bros. Discovery used AI in sports markers, localization, personalization, code development and system testing, and that AI was not ready to create new content.
Quick answers
- How does Warner Bros. Discovery deploy AI?
- Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), part of Skydance since Oct 6, 2026, built AI mainly into HBO Max, advertising and its networks: recommendation models, AI-picked clips, captioning on Google Cloud and an agentic ad platform on AWS. WBD reported no return it credited to AI and no count of employees using AI tools before the closing, and Skydance has reported none since. Skydance Chief Product Officer Dane Glasgow now leads the combined company's AI-powered capabilities.
- What does Warner Bros. Discovery use AI for?
- Warner Bros. Discovery put AI into production in HBO Max recommendations and personalization, AI-selected preview clips, and captioning and localization. Warner Bros. Discovery also put AI into production in sports key-moment detection and highlights, contextual and targeted advertising, an agentic ad platform on AWS, CNN personalization and newsroom tools, and engineering work. HBO Max Shorts and Ask HBO Max conversational search have been in test since Jul 2026. Warner Bros. Discovery reported no business-level return credited to AI for any of these use cases, or for AI as a whole, between May 2025 and the closing. The captioning cost cut of up to 50% announced with Google Cloud dates from Sep 2024 and was stated as an estimate.
- Who leads AI at Warner Bros. Discovery?
- AI at Warner Bros. Discovery is led by Dane Glasgow (Chief Product Officer, Skydance); Avi Saxena (Chief Technology Officer, Warner Bros. Discovery); Deepna Devkar (Senior Vice President, Machine Learning Engineering, HBO Max). Ownership of AI on the org chart: Skydance Chief Product Officer Dane Glasgow since Oct 2026; before that, WBD CTO Avi Saxena under JB Perrette.
- What AI platform does Warner Bros. Discovery use?
- Warner Bros. Discovery had no single internal AI platform on record. Its streaming technology team built AI verticals for personalization, localization and sports, and its ad sales teams run an agentic AI stack on AWS (Jun 2026).
- Which AI models does Warner Bros. Discovery use?
- Foundation models on Amazon Bedrock in a closed Warner Bros. Discovery instance (Jun 2026), Google's Gemini and Vertex AI for captioning, and in-house models fine-tuned on Warner Bros. Discovery's own media.
- How many WBD employees use AI?
- Warner Bros. Discovery's recommendation and discovery models serve its streaming services, which had 131.6 million subscribers at Dec 31, 2025. AI made almost 40% of HBO Max's drop-in preview moments (Sep 2025).
- What return has Warner Bros. Discovery reported from AI?
- Warner Bros. Discovery reported no business return it credited to AI between May 2025 and its acquisition on Oct 6, 2026. CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels said in Feb and May 2026 that AI projects would drive efficiency, without giving a figure. The captioning cost cut of up to 50% announced with Google Cloud in Sep 2024 was a launch estimate, now more than 2 years old. Warner Bros. Discovery did not report how many employees used AI tools. CTO Avi Saxena said in Sep 2025 that thousands of employees joined an AI hackathon with Google and OpenAI, which is not a usage count. Warner Bros. Discovery sits at Experimenting on the strength of AI in HBO Max discovery, captioning, sports highlights and an agentic advertising platform on AWS. Skydance, which has owned Warner Bros. Discovery since Oct 6, 2026, has not reported an AI return or usage count for its businesses either.
Open questions
- Where do Avi Saxena's streaming technology organization, Deepna Devkar's machine learning team and Nage Sethu's ad technology team report inside Skydance? Does Saxena remain CTO?
- Will HBO Max's recommendation, Shorts and conversational search features move onto Paramount's technology stack when Skydance unifies HBO Max and Paramount+, or the other way round?
- What return has Caption AI delivered since its Sep 2024 launch estimate of up to 50% lower captioning costs? How many languages and hours does the localization pipeline now cover?
- How much of Skydance's targeted $6 billion or more in run-rate cost savings is expected to come from AI rather than integration and procurement?
- Which foundation models run on Amazon Bedrock for Warner Bros. Discovery's agentic ad platform, and what returns has the platform produced since its 2026 rollout?
- How many employees in the Warner Bros. Discovery businesses use generative AI tools at work, and which tools are approved? Who owns that rollout under Skydance?
- Will Skydance keep AWS as the preferred cloud for the Warner Bros. Discovery businesses, given the talks with Oracle about a cloud deal worth about $100 million a year (Bloomberg, Jul 2025)?
- Has Ask HBO Max moved beyond its Jul 2026 test, and which model powers it?
- What is the status of Warner Bros. Discovery's copyright case against Midjourney now that the plaintiff is part of Skydance?
Sources
Warner Bros. Discovery
Filings, letters and earnings calls
- Warner Bros. Discovery 2025 Form 10-K
- Warner Bros. Discovery Q2 2026 results release (Aug 6, 2026)
- Warner Bros. Discovery Q4 2025 earnings call transcript, Motley Fool (Feb 26, 2026)
- Warner Bros. Discovery Q1 2026 earnings call transcript, Rev (May 6, 2026)
- Warner Bros. Discovery Q2 2026 earnings call transcript, Webull (Aug 6, 2026)
- Netflix Form 10-Q for Q3 2026, on the terminated Warner Bros. Discovery agreement
- Paramount Skydance Q4 2025 earnings call transcript, Motley Fool (Feb 25, 2026)
Skydance
Partners
News and interviews
- TV Tech: Warner Bros. Discovery taps AWS for new AI-powered ad tech (Jun 22, 2026)
- The Hollywood Reporter: HBO Max launches Shorts and AI-driven features (Jul 28, 2026)
- TechCrunch: HBO Max embraces vertical video with a new Shorts feed (Jul 28, 2026)
- Technology Record: IBC2025, AI drives value across the content pipeline (Sep 13, 2025)
- Adrian Pennington: CTO panel, WBD's Avi Saxena (Sep 10, 2025)
- TVBEurope: Innovative entertainment, with Avi Saxena (Dec 2025)
- Next TV: CEO David Zaslav on how Warner Bros. Discovery is using AI (May 9, 2024)
- CNBC via NBC New York: Warner Bros. Discovery partners with Google for AI-generated captions (Sep 24, 2024)
- Reuters via Claims Journal: Warner Bros Discovery sues Midjourney (Sep 4, 2025)
- The Media Copilot: CNN's data and AI strategy (Sep 30, 2026)
- PA via LBC: Paramount and Warner Bros wrap up mega deal to create Skydance (Oct 6, 2026)
- TheWrap: David Zaslav bids farewell ahead of the merger closing (Oct 2026)
- TheWrap: Warner Bros. Discovery Q2 2026 earnings (Aug 6, 2026)
- Señal News: Skydance unveils global TV and streaming leadership team (Oct 30, 2026)
- CIO Dive: Paramount CTO Phil Wiser steps down (May 2026)
- TheWrap, citing Bloomberg: Oracle in talks with Paramount-Skydance for $100 million cloud deal (Jul 2025)
Data confidence
- Confirmed
- Stated in a primary or reputable public source.
- Estimated
- Derived or approximated from public reporting.
- Unconfirmed
- Reported, but not yet corroborated.
Warner Bros. Discovery profile · Enterprise AI diffusion report by Imagine · facts checked against their sources on Nov 9, 2026
