The Walt Disney Company and OpenAI Partner on Sora

Disney shareholders, feel free to make images of Iger, Mickey, and Br'er Rabbit lighting piles on money on fire.

I'm not a shareholder but buying equity in OpenAI seems to be a much better deal (for Disney) than making OpenAI just pay royalties, no? Seems like everyone wins, unless you think OpenAI will never amount to anything and it's all a bubble.

Not a shareholder, but on first try, it won't do it because it recognizes Iger's name. And clearly the deal is fresh because it balked at Mickey Mouse too. But it has no trouble with just, "mouse": https://sora.chatgpt.com/p/s_693ae0d25bbc819188f6758fce3f90c...

Cash from royalties doesn't disappear like equity value would, in the event of a bubble pop.

Bird in the hand is worth two in the bush and all that.

where does the royalty cash come from when the bubble pops?

It stops, but you still have what you got before that point. You're "cashing out" on an ongoing basis.

Ask it to do Steamboat Willy? Now in the public domain

If you destroy your brand value in the process? This is an entertainment company... The entire value of this company is the characters and the right to make new stories with them.

Royalty payments from a company that can't pay them aren't useful either.

The original depiction of Mickey Mouse is legally public domain anyway

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_based_on_a_copyright-fre...

What does a bubble pop look like to people?

Does anyone envision a scenario where OpenAI or Anthropic (or google) disappears?

I can understand the investment bubble in new infra. But even that, I’m not so sure. Right now, demand is so far outstripping supply, which is why we’re having so many conversations about energy or chips.

But yes that’s the bubble people keep talking about.