Sources: Paramount is in advanced settlement talks with California Attorney General Rob Bonta over the company's deal to acquire WBD (Jessica Toonkel/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/business/media/…
Sources: SpaceX approached AI coding startup Cognition about a potential acquisition; deal talks are inactive, but the companies are discussing working together (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-19/spacex-at…
Let’s talk about the billionaires
— the folks cutting the line while the rest of us pay the bill.
They don’t need another champion in Congress.
I’m not going to the Senate to fight for guys like Elon Musk,
and I don’t believe in tax cuts for the wealthiest people on the planet.
That might not be a popular opinion in Washington, but here in Maine, the vast majority of folks would agree.
Except Susan Collins.
Susan Collins has hardly met a billionaire…
Paramount, California AG Rob Bonta, and the WGA schedule a two-day meeting for settlement discussions about the WBD deal, starting October 14 (Winston Cho/The Hollywood Reporter)
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business
Sources: Silver Lake is in talks to acquire HR and financial management software maker Workday, which has a market value of ~$43B; WDAY jumps 18% (Milana Vinn/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/world/silver-lake-talks-buy-workday-sources-say-2026-08-13/
Sources: Salesforce has been in talks to buy Listen Labs, an AI-powered customer research platform for $2B; Listen Labs was valued at $500M earlier this year (Business Insider)
https://www.businessinsider.com/salesforce-acquire-ai-startup-listen-labs-2026-9…
Source: Nvidia has been in talks to acquire Hugging Face for more than $13B; Microsoft also met with Hugging Face, but talks are not ongoing (Business Insider)
https://www.businessinsider.com/nvidia-in-talks-to-buy-hugging-face-13-billion-dollars…
Sources: Nvidia is in talks to acquire or invest more into US open-weights AI startup Reflection AI; the deal may be an acquihire to avoid antitrust scrutiny (Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/052610c5-22b4-4dd4-932e-b7f9f0628b6a
Sources: Thoma Bravo-backed Proofpoint is in talks to acquire cybersecurity company Varonis; Varonis rose 10.4% on Wednesday, giving it a market value of ~$5.4B (Ryan Gould/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026…
Sources: Anthropic has walked away from talks to acquire Decart for ~$6B after performing due diligence on the startup (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-08/anthropic-said-to-walk-away-from-6-billion-de…