Every July, dozens of tech moguls, finance barons and Hollywood A-listers fly in from around the world to a mountain resort in Sun Valley, Idaho for the annual allen & company conference, dubbed the “summer camp for billionaires.” The highly private annual gathering is known not only as a retreat for industry power players to mix work with pleasure but also as a seedbed for mega business deals, such as Jeff Bezos’s purchase of the Washington Post and the merger between Disney and ABC.
This year’s event will run from July 11 to July 14. The dates were confirmed over the weekend by officials at Sun Valley’s nearby Friedman Memorial Airport, who refer to the conference as the “annual fly-in event,” according to the local newspaper Idaho Mountain Express.
Specifically, the conference will kick off with private jets landing and guest registration on July 11. Closed-door meetings and lectures will run from July 12 through July 14. And attendees will fly out on July 15.
Earlier this month, Variety published a list of 50 people invited to Sun Valley this year, although there is no guarantee all of them will attend and new guests could be added in the coming weeks. The list we have so far includes familiar names like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and Mark Zuckerberg. Equally noticeable is the absence of several regulars from previous years’ events, including Bezos, Elon Musk and Jeff Shell, the CEO of NBCUniversal.
Who’s invited to this year’s Allen & Co. conference (so far)
Tech
- Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Meta (META)
- Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet
- Tim Cook, CEO of Apple (AAPL)
- Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft (MSFT)
- Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft
- Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI
- Reid Hoffman, cofounder of LinkedIn (LNKD)
Media and Entertainment
- Rupert Murdoch, executive chairman of News Corp (NWSA)
- David Zaslav, CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD)
- Shari Redstone, chairwoman of Paramount (PARA) Global
- Bob Iger, CEO of Walt Disney Company
- Dana Walden, co-chairman of Disney Entertainment
- Reed Hastings, chairman of Netflix (NFLX)
- Ted Sarandos, co-CEO of Netflix
- Greg Peters, co-CEO of Netflix
- Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard
- Casey Wasserman, CEO of Wasserman Media Group
- Bryan Lourd, co-chairman of Creative Artists Agency
- Brian Grazer, film and television producer
- Josh Berger, founder and chairman of Battersea Entertainment
- Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks Animation
Finance
- Warren Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway
- Kenneth Chenault, former CEO of American Express
- Bob Mylod, founder of Annox Capital Management
- Peter Thiel, cofounder of PayPal, Palantir and Founders Fund
Sports and food
- Rob Manfred, MLB commissioner
- Jay Monahan, PGA Tour commissioner
- Roger Goodell, NFL commissioner
- Adam Silver, NBA commissioner
- Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots
- Terry Pegula, owner of the Buffalo Bills and Buffalo Sabres
- Hamdi Ulukaya, founder of yogurt maker Chobani
- Danny Meyer, founder and chairman of Shake Shack
Politics
- Lawrence Summers, former treasury secretary (1999 to 2001)
- Hank Paulson, former treasury secretary (2006 to 2009)
- Mario Draghi, former Italian Prime Minister
- David Petraeus, former CIA chief
- Amos Yadlin, former Israel Defense Forces military attaché to Washington, D.C. and head of the IDF Military Intelligence Directorate
- Yousef Al Otaiba, the United Arab Emirates ambassador to the United State
- Karim Sadjadpour, an Iranian-American policy analyst at the Carnegie Endowment
- Martin Indyk, former U.S. ambassador to Israel
Media
- Oprah Winfrey, host of the Oprah Winfrey Show
- Andrew Ross Sorkin, columnist for the New York Times
- Gayle King, co-host of CBS Mornings
- David Begnaud, lead national correspondent for CBS Mornings.
- Van Jones, CNN contributor
- Erin Burnett, anchor of Erin Burnett OutFront on CNN
- David Ignatius, columnist for The Washington Post
- Bari Weiss, founder of The Free Press
- Becky Quick, co-anchorwoman of CNBC’s “Squawk Box”
What will they talk about?
There is little information on what’s on the conference’s agenda, since all sessions will be strictly private. But judging from the robust lineups of tech and media executives on the guest list, it won’t be surprising if the fire-side chats and mingling breaks are centered around buzzy topics like artificial intelligence and sports streaming deals.
OpenAI’s Altman and Google’s Pichai will likely get lots of questions about their large language model chatbots. And sport team owners will have plenty to chat about with their friends at Netflix and Disney.