Paramount has $24 billion in Middle East sovereign wealth funds for WBD purchase

The money isn't expected to trigger much of a governmental review in the United States.

By Drew Gillis | April 6, 2026 | 4:27pm

AaronP/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images; Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

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Paramount has $24 billion in Middle East sovereign wealth funds for WBD purchase

We’ve been hearing for months that Paramount was trying to finance its purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery with money it didn’t actually have, and that sovereign wealth funds from Middle Eastern countries would help make up the difference. Now, we have some confirmed information. That difference is just shy of $24 billion, The Wall Street Journal reports. Yes, that’s “billion” with a “B.” About $10 billion of that is coming from Saudi Arabia, with Qatar and the Emirate of Abu Dhabi providing the rest. All said, Paramount, under the direction of David Ellison, is set to spend $81 million on WBD.

Per WSJ, the $24 billion investment isn’t expected to trigger any kind of investigation with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. or to trigger a review by the FCC, which has its hands far too full with documenting what Joy Behar says on daytime television. Officially, this element of the deal will avoid these investigations because each entity will own less than 25% of the entire entity, not because of Paramount’s willingness to help the Trump administration. Still, $24 billion sounds like a hell of a lot of money no matter how you slice it, even if the countries providing those funds won’t officially have voting rights in the potential mega-corporation that would own both CBS News and CNN.

Given the size of the deal, it won’t just need approval in the United States, however. The regulatory review for the deal is still pending in Europe, and it’s unclear whether the regulatory bodies on that side of the Atlantic will be quite so chill about this whole thing.

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