Even billionaires go summer camping
In a private jet, but they do go
July 12th, 2024
On July 9th, what is known to Americans as the "Summer camp for billionaires" began, a summer retreat reserved for a circle of ultra-rich and ultra-famous individuals in the countryside of Idaho. The event's real name is Allen & Co.’s Sun Valley Conference, a project organized by the New York investment firm Allen & Co., initiated in the 1980s to transform a nature trip into an unmissable opportunity for networking and discussing potential collaborations among fellow CEOs. According to Business Insider, it was here that Jeff Bezos decided to purchase the Washington Post. Needless to say, since its first edition, the Allen & Co.’s Sun Valley Conference has been a boon for the city's airport hosting the event, as dozens of private jets and helicopters park there, waiting to take their owners back home. There are also journalists, reports CNN, but they cannot disclose the top-secret information whispered among America's wealthiest.
karlie and josh yesterday after the morning session at the allen & co conference pic.twitter.com/5sf5ProIxy
— karlie kloss archive (@archiveofkloss) July 11, 2024
We cannot know which topics will be the focus of this year's conference, but nothing stops us from imagining talks and lectures entirely dedicated to the potential and limits of artificial intelligence, as well as advancements in medical science. Despite his employees recently successfully implanting a Neuralink microchip into a human brain - the patient can control the mouse with their brain - the magnate Elon Musk will not be present. Instead, we have the CEO of OpenAI Sam Altman, Hollywood producer Jason Blum, Mark Zuckerberg (in hindsight, perhaps it's a good thing Musk decided not to attend), Bill Gates, Disney CEO Bob Iger, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, Tim Cook, Netflix CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters, and Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav. Among the few women are Sheryl Sandberg, former COO of Meta, supermodel and wife of Josh Kushner Karli Kloss, and Shari Redstone, president of National Amusements. Rumor has it that she has completed the sale of her family company, Paramount, to Skydance, while the American press present at her arrival at the conference reports that Redstone shouted to journalists «We will save the world together!». Judging by the names present at this year's billionaire camp, rather than deciding the planet's future, it is possible the only real topic of discussion will be which movie to watch before going to sleep (Netflix or Prime? Warner or Disney?).