Warner Bros. Discovery Rejects Paramount Bid, Sets New Offer Deadline

Warner Bros. Discovery rejected Paramount Skydance's latest USD 30 per share hostile bid, which aimed to top an existing agreement to sell its businesses, including HBO Max and the "Harry Potter" franchise, to Netflix. The media giant has now given Paramount seven days, until Feb. 23, to submit a "best and final" proposal.

Credit: UNSPLASH

This new proposal must aim to surpass an existing agreement Warner Bros. Discovery holds with Netflix. Under their merger terms, Netflix is permitted to match any superior offer.

Paramount had informally suggested an even higher per-share price of USD 31, which reportedly interested the Warner Bros. Discovery board. However, the company's response indicates a preference for its deal with Netflix.

Warner Bros. Discovery Chairman Samuel DiPiazza Jr. and CEO David Zaslav stated their board had not determined Paramount's proposal was "reasonably likely to result in a transaction that is superior to the Netflix merger." They added commitment to the Netflix transaction.

Paramount acknowledged the seven-day offer, describing Warner Bros. Discovery's board actions as "unusual." Paramount affirmed it would continue its tender offer, oppose the Netflix merger, and nominate directors for the upcoming annual meeting.

The high-stakes contest is for control of Warner Bros. Discovery's extensive film and television library, including "Casablanca," "Citizen Kane," "Friends," and "Batman," along with its flagship studios.

Warner Bros. Discovery expects a bid exceeding USD 31 per share. This is based on a Paramount financial adviser's oral statement indicating a willingness to agree to this price if deal talks were reopened.

PP Foresight analyst Paolo Pescatore commented, "Time is running out for Paramount with this saga wrangling on, for way too long, which is in no one's interest." He noted the ball is "in Paramount's court."

Paramount's current offer for the entire company amounts to USD 108.4 billion. Netflix is offering USD 27.75 per share, or USD 82.7 billion, specifically for Warner Bros. Discovery's studio and streaming businesses.

Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders are scheduled to vote on the Netflix deal on March 20. If approved, the merger would follow a spin-off of Discovery Global cable operations into a separate, publicly traded company.

Discovery Global, which includes prominent cable networks, is estimated to be valued between USD 1.33 and USD 6.86 per share. This engagement with Paramount marks a shift, as Warner Bros. Discovery had previously rejected numerous offers.

Activist investor Ancora Holdings, with a stake worth nearly USD 200 million, plans to oppose the Netflix transaction. Ancora had criticised the board for insufficient engagement with Paramount Skydance over a whole-company offer.

Paramount is also pressing to add directors to Warner Bros. Discovery's board, with Pentwater Capital Management CEO Matt Halbower a potential nominee. Pentwater, a significant shareholder, supports Paramount's bid.

Halbower stated that "Every substantive complaint that the Warner Bros board had with Paramount's previous offer has been addressed." Alex Fitch, a Harris Oakmark partner, added that Paramount now has the opportunity to make a "truly superior proposal."

Warner Bros. Discovery's board secured a special Netflix waiver to engage in these discussions. Netflix expressed confidence in its own transaction, acknowledging the "ongoing distraction" for shareholders.

Paramount enhanced its previous bid without increasing the USD 30 per share offer. It proposed covering the USD 2.8 billion breakup fee Warner Bros. Discovery would owe Netflix and offered WBD's shareholders extra cash for each quarter the deal fails to close after this year.

However, Warner Bros. Discovery still deems the amended Paramount offer inferior. Key issues remain unresolved, including a potential USD 1.5 billion junior lien financing fee, what happens if debt financing falls through, and the certainty of equity funding from lead sponsor Larry Ellison.

The Warner Bros. Discovery board highlighted that despite Paramount arguing financing concerns were "not serious," draft agreements require additional equity funding if debt financing becomes unavailable.

The proposed deal is expected to face stringent regulatory scrutiny over potential price increases for consumers and harm to creatives. Both Paramount and Netflix are engaging with competition authorities globally.

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• Warner Bros. Discovery rejected Paramount Skydance's USD 30 per share acquisition offer.

• Paramount has until Feb. 23 to submit a "best and final" offer, which Netflix can match.

• Warner Bros. Discovery's board stated a preference for its existing agreement with Netflix.

Source: REUTERS

India Demands Global Tech Giants Adhere to Constitutional Standards Amid Stricter Content Regulations

India's information minister has asserted that major technology platforms such as Google's YouTube, Meta, X, and Netflix must operate within the framework of the country's constitution. This statement follows New Delhi's recent tightening of content-takedown regulations. The minister, Ashwini Vaishnaw, made these remarks during a briefing at the AI Impact Summit 2026 in Delhi, where prominent executives from leading AI companies gathered alongside global leaders.

Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, at the AI Impact Summit 2026

Vaishnaw emphasised the importance of multinationals understanding the cultural context of the nations in which they operate. He highlighted that the recent changes in regulations require social media companies to remove unlawful content within three hours of being notified, a significant reduction from the previous 36-hour timeframe. This shift presents a compliance challenge for platforms like Meta, YouTube, and X, which are now under increased scrutiny to act swiftly against harmful content.

The minister also pointed out the necessity for stronger regulations concerning deepfakes, indicating that discussions with industry representatives have already commenced on this pressing issue. The global landscape is witnessing mounting pressure on social media companies to enhance their content moderation practices. Governments worldwide, from Brussels to Brasilia, are demanding quicker takedowns and greater accountability from these platforms.

In a related development, Spain has initiated an investigation into social media platforms X, Meta, and TikTok for allegedly disseminating AI-generated child sexual abuse material. This move reflects the intensifying scrutiny that European regulators are placing on big tech companies regarding harmful and illegal content. The call for accountability is becoming increasingly urgent as governments seek to protect their citizens from the potential dangers posed by unregulated online content.

The implications of these regulations could reshape the operational landscape for global tech giants, compelling them to adapt their policies and practices to align with local expectations and legal requirements.

• India's information minister insists tech platforms must comply with constitutional laws

• New regulations require social media to remove unlawful content within three hours

• Stricter rules on deepfakes are being discussed with industry leaders

• Global pressure mounts for faster content moderation and accountability

Alibaba Unveils Qwen-3.5, Escalating Global AI Model Competition

Alibaba Cloud has unveiled Qwen-3.5, its next-generation open artificial intelligence model, which features multimodal capabilities and open weights. This release signals Alibaba’s ambition to anchor the next phase of global AI deployment, sharpening the global AI race between China and the US.

Credit: QWEN.AI

The new 3.5-series models became available on Alibaba’s cloud platform Model Studio. One model, Qwen-3.5-Open-Source, contains 397 billion parameters and showed significant improvement over the company’s previous flagship model, Qwen-3-Max-Thinking, despite the latter’s larger size of over 1 trillion parameters.

According to self-reported benchmark scores, Qwen-3.5-Open-Source performed on par with leading models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind. However, this comparison was not made with the three US heavyweights’ latest models.

A closed-source version, Qwen-3.5-Plus, achieved performance "on par with state-of-the-art leading models." It has a listed context window, the amount of data it can process at any given time, of 1 million tokens, one of the largest in the industry.

Parameters are mathematical variables that shape how an AI system learns and reasons. Alibaba Cloud, the AI and cloud computing arm of Alibaba Group Holding, built Qwen-3.5 with native multimodal capabilities for the first time, allowing it to understand text, images, audio, and video within a single system.

The model family also adopts the company’s latest architecture, first previewed through an experimental system called Qwen3-Next. This design aims to improve computational efficiency and reduce operating costs, helping the model achieve "a new benchmark for capability per unit of inference cost."

Model weights, which are parameters encoding the systems’ capabilities or "intelligence," were released on developer platforms Hugging Face and Alibaba’s own ModelScope. This enables users with sufficient hardware to download and run the models locally.

China has positioned itself as a leading force in open-source AI, differentiating its approach from the more closed-model strategies favoured by many Silicon Valley giants that do not publicly release model weights. Download data from Hugging Face showed Chinese open models overtook US counterparts in global adoption, with DeepSeek and Qwen accounting for the bulk of that growth.

Qwen has gained traction for its breadth of use cases, as Alibaba typically releases multiple versions of the same base models at different sizes to drive uptake across developers and enterprises. Its multilingual support has also contributed to its adoption.

The new Qwen-3.5 models added 82 new languages and dialects from the previous Qwen generation, supporting 201 languages and dialects, including niche languages such as Hawaiian and Fijian, according to the latest announcement.

Open-model expert Nathan Lambert noted that Qwen downloads on Hugging Face exceeded those of all other major open models combined. Such features have helped establish Qwen as a de facto “open model standard.”

China’s growing prominence in the open-model ecosystem prompted the Trump administration to prioritise the global diffusion of US-developed open models. However, AI and semiconductor analyst Lennart Heim suggested that real-world deployment is a more telling metric than downloads alone.

Heim added that the national-security implications of open Chinese models remain uncertain, even as some US start-ups and academic institutions deployed them locally. Notably, Alibaba does not open-source all of its systems.

Its largest models by parameter count, known as the Max series, remain closed and closely integrated with the company’s flagship consumer app, Qwen. Alibaba has also pursued an aggressive commercialisation strategy, positioning open models at the centre of its cloud business.

This strategy involves bundling data hosting and model-inference services for developers and enterprises worldwide. Lin Junyang, technical lead of Alibaba Cloud’s Qwen team, suggested on X that they would release more open-weight models.

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• Alibaba Cloud launched Qwen-3.5, an open AI model with multimodal capabilities and open weights.

• Two versions, Qwen-3.5-Open-Source and Qwen-3.5-Plus, demonstrate strong performance against leading AI models.

• Model weights are openly released on platforms like Hugging Face and ModelScope, aligning with China's open-source AI strategy.

Source: SCMP