• Netflix is buying Warner Bros., adding HBO and major franchises like "Harry Potter" to its content slate.
• Netflix said the deal has a total enterprise value of $82.7 billion, its biggest ever acquisition.
• The deal boosts Netflix's studio power, expanding its production capacity and theatrical output.

Netflix is making the biggest acquisition in its history — and one of the largest ever in entertainment — announcing Friday that it has struck a deal to acquire Warner Bros. from Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) for an enterprise value of $82.7 billion.

The cash-and-stock deal will bring together Netflix's world-dominant streaming platform with Warner Bros.' century-old studio, HBO, HBO Max, and some of the most iconic franchises in film and television—from "Harry Potter" and "Game of Thrones" to "Casablanca," "The Big Bang Theory," and the entire DC Universe.

The acquisition is expected to close after WBD spins off its Global Networks division into a separate publicly traded company, Discovery Global, a process expected to happen in the third quarter of 2026.

This is a breaking story. Please check back for updates.

• My dad died 15 months ago, and it still makes no sense to me.
• Nothing has really eased the grief.
• However, picking up one of his hobbies — painting — has helped me feel closer to him.

It's been 15 months since my dad, out with friends for a normal Sunday cycle, never came home. This can't be an essay detailing how I've overcome my grief — I haven't. This also won't be an essay that helps make sense of the senselessness of losing someone decades before they should have gone. It still makes no sense to me. Instead, I'll write about art. My dad's art. And mine, new though it is.

My dad was (the past tense still prompts a little spasm in my fingers, the temptation to hit 'backspace' and replace it with 'is') a doctor. He had thousands of patients who adored him, but his work was just a single facet of everything he did. He was an astronomer. A kite-surfer. A chess genius. And an artist. One day, my dad picked up a paintbrush and started teaching himself art, using a bit of YouTube and a lot of trial and error.

His work ended up on show in art galleries. He sold prints of his art. Anything was on the table for him: landscapes, historic monuments, people, animals…he dabbled in it all. When I'd come by for a visit, I'd spy his latest work in progress on the dining room table. It never occurred to me to ask him to teach me. I was useless at art and hadn't held a brush since my junior high teacher told me I had lots of passion but little ability.

Something shifted, and I wanted to create art, too

The desire to learn about art started with hoarding my dad's paintings. He had a stack of hundreds of them. My mom and I sat together, choosing our favorites to frame in our homes. I chose his painting of Eilean Donan in Scotland and the Colosseum in Rome, two places I loved visiting. I also chose a beachscape with two silhouette figures that reminded me of my dad and me.

I sat and stared at them for months. Each painting was a slice of time from my dad's life. His hands held each page. His brushstrokes made each mark. His eyes chose each color. I've always kept a mental list of the things that need to be snatched from my home if there's a fire. Dad's paintings are now top of that list.

Two months ago, I saw an ad for a watercolor painting workshop near me. 'Beginners Welcome.' I went alone and spent three hours painting a dahlia. I found another workshop across town a few weeks later and painted a Tuscan house among poppies. I then found a two-day oil painting workshop and went to that, too, enjoying the challenge of a different medium.

My new hobby has helped me feel more connected to my dad

Usually, when I pick up a hobby, I demand immediate excellence or abandon it. Painting is different. I'm learning slowly. I'm using the expertise of others, in person where possible and online when not. I'm making mistakes, but I'm making them holding my dad's brushes (the salvageable ones — he wasn't particularly diligent when it came to washing them).

I read that losing a parent is a sense of homesickness that never goes away. It's the best description of grief that I've found. Picking up my dad's hobby creates a tiny tether to him. It doesn't remove the homesickness. It doesn't ease the grief — if anything, it agitates it, swirling it around like cleaning a paintbrush in water.

But sometimes that's exactly what I want. I want to sit in the grief. I hold his brushes, I listen to his playlist, and I do the thing he loved doing, aware that I'll never have the privilege of doing it beside him. In doing so, his hand guides mine. Together, we make art.

• The European Union has hit Elon Musk's X with a $140 million fine.
• The bloc said the social media platform's blue checkmark system exposes users to scams.
• Musk received support from US Vice President JD Vance, who warned the EU to stop "attacking American companies."

Elon Musk is set for another battle with the European Union after the bloc fined his social media site X.

The EU said on Friday it had issued a fine of €120 million ($140 million) to X over a number of violations, including the "deceptive design" of the site's blue checkmarks.

X did not respond to a request for comment.

Earlier on Friday, Musk reposted an X post from US Vice President JD Vance, who warned the EU against fining Musk's company and said the bloc should avoid "attacking American companies over garbage."

This is a developing story. Check back for further updates.

• With a family of 6 and aunts, uncles, and cousins to buy for, the holiday season can get expensive.
• Over the years, I've developed a few rules to help keep Christmas meaningful and affordable.
• We follow a four-gift rule, focus on budgeted exchanges, and highlight thoughtful traditions.

Each year, our Christmas season gets increasingly expensive. There are six of us in our family, and then, of course, there are aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, teachers, and bus drivers that we also like to show our appreciation to. The list goes on and on.

As financially savvy as we try to be, we've found that sticking to a few simple gift-giving rules is our best bet to avoid excess spending during the happiest season.

Cousins exchange gifts with a budget in mind

I absolutely love watching my nephews and niece open their holiday gifts, many of which were picked out by my four kids. However, with so many kids to buy for, this cousin gift exchange quickly added up in the past.

To keep things manageable, my siblings and I usually plan for our kids to exchange a set item — one year, the kids all gave books to each other — or stick to a budget of $10 per kid. Each cousin gets one gift from the other family, so we're able to keep costs down.

My kids love the challenge of finding the perfect gift for their younger cousins, all while keeping a budget in mind. It becomes like a game to them in the store.

We follow a four-gift rule for our own kids

For Christmas, we give each of our four kids four gifts to open, following our family tradition of the four-gift rule. They get something they want, something they need, something they can wear, and something they will read.

For example, one kiddo will get the latest graphic novel, sports socks, an earring set, and a small box of their favorite snacks. This not only makes holiday shopping easier, but also ensures that the kids receive items they actually want and use.

The four-gift rule also instills some equality between the kids, as well as they know what to expect.

Our kids exchange gifts among each other

During Thanksgiving break, we put our kids' four names in a bowl, and they each draw one name. They look at their sibling's wish list and choose one item to buy using their own allowance.

Once the items arrive, the sibling wraps the gift and places it under the tree. This is less expensive, and usually results in one nicer gift per child compared to buying three cheaper gifts to spread out among siblings. We love this tradition as it requires thoughtfulness and generosity.

Sometimes the kids make handmade gifts, usually cards, for me and their dad.

We enjoy holiday traditions that don't involve gifting

Some of our kids' favorite traditions are free or nearly free and we lean into these heavily during the holiday season.

We all love decorating our Christmas trees. Yes, we have more than one. They also enjoy choosing which cookies to bake and share: peanut-butter reindeer and wedding cookies are our usual favorites.

One kid likes helping their dad hang up Christmas lights above the garage that we always leave up well past Christmas. We also love a good popcorn and movie night, often enjoying Christmas movies from my own childhood.

We give to others

My kids each save 10% of their allowance throughout the year, and we collectively decide what to do with those earnings in December.

In the past, we have shopped for a family in need or children in foster care. One year, we purchased new bedding for an organization that builds beds for children.

This year, we plan to stock free food boxes around our town where anyone can take the food items they need.

This tradition is a beautiful reminder that giving is just as beautiful, if not more so, than receiving.

• A Transatlantic Delta flight nearly reached Edinburgh before turning around.
• It diverted to the Irish capital, Dublin, after circling Edinburgh for around 20 minutes.
• Edinburgh Airport halted all flights due to an IT issue with its air traffic control provider.

A Delta Air Lines flight to Scotland had to divert after an IT issue halted operations at its destination.

Delta Flight 208 took off from New York on Thursday evening and was supposed to land at Edinburgh Airport around 9 a.m. local time.

However, after a six-hour flight across the Atlantic Ocean, the Boeing 767 then spent about 20 minutes circling just south of the Scottish capital.

It then changed course for Ireland, landing in Dublin just after 10 a.m.

"Due to an IT issue with our air traffic control provider, no flights are currently operating from Edinburgh Airport," the airport said in a statement on X.

Data from Flightradar24 shows 11 flights bound for Edinburgh have been diverted, mostly to nearby Glasgow.

At around 10:45 a.m. local time, less than an hour after the Delta flight landed in Dublin, flights resumed from Edinburgh Airport.

Delta could not immediately be reached for comment outside US working hours.

Have your travel plans been affected by the Edinburgh airport IT outage? Get in touch with this reporter via email at psyme@businessinsider.com or Signal at syme.99.

• NFL Hall of Famer Fran Tarkenton has a very simple rule for his employees.
• It's why, at 85, he still insists on interviewing everyone who works for his companies.
• Tarkenton said on the field or off, teamwork is still a critical asset for any company.

NFL legend Fran Tarkenton said the same issues that can kill team chemistry in the locker room can also hobble a company, which is why he insists on interviewing each of his employees.

"If you don't have the right people, you can't make it in your business, my business, and you can't make it in the NFL," the NFL quarterback-turned-founder of tech company Tarkenton told Business Insider.

Relaying a conversation with then-Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll, Tarkenton said over a decade ago, he advised Carroll to cut a superstar player who was causing drama in the locker room.

"I said, if you have 40-man roster — back then we had 40-man rosters — and you have 39 All-Pro players and you have one asshole, the asshole will take over," Tarkenton said during a Tuesday interview in New York.

Tarkenton, who is CEO of his Atlanta-based company, said he considers himself a lifelong entrepreneur, dating back to a newspaper route he had at the age of 7. He played in the NFL in the 1960s and 1970s, setting records as a star quarterback.

Tarkenton's career occurred before the sport's explosion in popularity and the lucrative contracts that followed. He worked side jobs during off-seasons to make more money. After he retired, he served as a commentator on "Monday Night Football" and co-hosted ABC's "That's Incredible!," where he did a TV spot on a then 5-year-old Tiger Woods.

All of this work, Tarkenton said, was so he could reinvest the money in private ventures, which spanned from a partnership with IBM to the recent launch of pipIQ, an AI startup focused on small businesses, with a particular emphasis on maintaining LLMs in a secure environment.

Tarkenton, who was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1986, said that he makes sure to spend at least 15 minutes with everyone from top-level executives to those just starting out. He said over the course of a year, he'll speak with 500 or more people.

"This practice stems from one of my seven business maxims: people have to talk to people," he wrote in a follow-up email. "No one succeeds alone. Communication and collaboration help us learn new ideas, strengthen our thinking, and discover better ways to do things."

No matter the line of work, Tarkenton said, it simply won't do if someone can't get along with those around them. That's why, even at 85, he insists on meeting applicants who want to work for his Atlanta-based companies.

"I want to see who they are," he said. "If they're a genius and they're not the right kind of people, it doesn't work."

• Citadel CTO Umesh Subramanian said he personally calls top candidates, including recent college grads.
• The calls have won many candidates over, but occasionally show they're not the right fit, he said.
• While the hedge fund talent war isn't new, AI has made recruiting even more competitive.

Hedge funds are locked in a fierce talent war, shelling out pay packages worth tens of millions to secure top talent — and that means executives are going all-in to woo prospective hires, even at the entry-level.

Umesh Subramanian, Citadel's chief technology officer, leads the tech teams that power the firm's investment, research, and risk-management platforms. He told Business Insider that he personally calls some of the most in-demand candidates during the decision-making process to see where their head is at. That includes not just senior-level recruits, but also recent grads, he said.

"I get on the call with them to understand how they're going to make the decision — what is driving their decisions," Subramanian said. "And oftentimes we win those candidates."

In general, the CTO said he looks for four qualities in top candidates: intellectual curiosity; a passion for winning as a team; an interest in commercial applications and not just theory; and a strong engineering background and education.

While Subramanian directly contacts some of the most sought-after candidates, those conversations haven't always resulted in them getting hired. The CTO said that sometimes the phone calls have led him to suggest they look elsewhere because another company may be more aligned with the role they describe being interested in.

"I've had a couple of conversations where I've said, 'Look, I think you should take the other job,'" He said he thinks Citadel is a great and "highly selective" company at which to start your career, but that "it is not for everyone."

Ongoing talent wars

Subramanian isn't the only executive to personally reach out to top talent in the interview process. OpenAI's Sam Altman has been similarly been said to call candidates to convince them to join the tech company, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has previously shown up in email chains to recruit talent, as well as reportedly hosted top candidates at his home for meals.

While the talent war at hedge funds isn't new, the scramble for AI talent has added another layer of competition to the hiring process and raised the stakes for recruiting the right people — many whom are highly sought after by traditional tech giants.

Banks like Goldman Sachs and Bank of America have allocated billions to their tech budgets, with a portion of that investment going into hiring.

Subramanian said he has always been personally engaged in recruiting, and it's part of the company's culture for executives to be highly involved in seeking out top talent.

Citadel, specifically, is among the most competitive hedge funds. In 2025, the hedge fund and its sister firm, Citadel Securities, accepted just 0.4% of applicants for its summer training program, a record-low acceptance rate. Together, the two firms received 108,000 applications — a 20% increase from the previous year.

"Exceptional talent, world-class talent, is worth fighting for with everything that you got," Subramanian said.

• A Ukrainian company working on autonomous systems said autonomy in defense is "greatly overhyped."
• Much of what is called autonomous isn't really, he said.
• Autonomy can describe a host of abilities, including some where humans still play a big role.

The CEO of Ukrainian arms maker Ark Robotics told Business Insider that "autonomy in defense is greatly overhyped."

Much of what is labeled autonomous isn't, he said. "If we're talking about real frontline usage, we are talking less than 1% where autonomy is present."

"There's a gap between the hype around autonomy and what actually works on the frontline today," said Achi, who spoke to Business Insider using a pseudonym as a security precaution.

Defense forces, he said, "want a hundred percent reliability, and the AI is just not there." Artificial intelligence alone won't get the job done right now. Human oversight is still heavily required, but a shift is expected.

While autonomy may be deeply overhyped today, it may be completely unavoidable tomorrow.

Ark is working on more autonomous tech, and expects rapid improvements in the area. "I think we already are past the point of no return," the CEO said, adding that the current battlefield shows "autonomy is necessary."

Ark Robotics makes a suite of autonomous robots used by more than 20 Ukrainian brigades, and is developing a system that allows thousands of aerial drones and ground robots, including ones made by different companies, to work together with minimal human involvement. The system, Frontier, isn't fully autonomous, nor does it claim to be. "That's not where the industry is yet," Achi said.

He said autonomy is present in Frontier but described it as an early step toward network-level autonomy at scale.

"Time is essential," Achi explained. "Democratic countries aren't the only ones racing to build such products. We're doing our best, supported by our team's strong autonomy expertise and continuous feedback from the front line."

The autonomy question

Autonomous systems have become increasingly common in Ukraine as domestic companies and Western allies bolster its fight against Russia's invasion, now close to entering its fourth year. These systems help offset Russia's larger force size, reduce demands on operators, and keep drone pilots farther from danger.

Autonomous systems make decisions faster than humans and handle certain routine battlefield tasks, freeing troops to focus on higher-level work.

Much of what is described as autonomous still requires heavy human involvement. Part of the issue is definitional — autonomy can describe everything from basic navigation to a system that identifies, classifies, and acts on a target without direction.

More advanced systems might launch a weapon autonomously or coordinate a drone swarm. Others can learn and make decisions themselves, but many still keep humans in the loop for both ethical and policy reasons.

Warfare experts say the term "autonomous" is often used inconsistently.

A report from the UK's Royal United Services Institute last year noted that there is no agreed-upon definition for how autonomous an "autonomous" system actually is.

Kateryna Bondar, an AI and defense expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote earlier this year that "fully autonomous warfare remains an aspiration," but "significant progress" has been made in partial autonomy, especially with drone tech. In Ukraine, she said, "autonomous" is often used interchangeably with "unmanned," even if only limited autonomy is involved.

Chasing autonomy

Achi said his company is pursuing autonomy on two levels. The first is edge autonomy, where systems make decisions on their own without instructions from an operator or control center. He gave the example of an aerial drone scouting an area, waiting for a target, able to act on its own.

The second level, which Ark is more interested in, is the orchestration layer, where multiple drones or robots coordinate and give tasks. Achi said this level is where you can give the system "an abstract task," like protecting a perimeter, and it can then "orchestrate whatever is needed to do that," such as directing systems such as strike drones. Humans can step in if needed.

He said the second is "the hardest to solve" as it needs a good edge foundation to build on.

Frontier, Ark's AI-powered system, is designed to coordinate thousands of uncrewed systems, sharply reducing operator demands and keeping humans much farther from combat. In a demonstration in Denmark, a user remotely operated a ground robot 1,200 miles away in Kyiv.

Ark, founded in Ukraine and now headquartered in NATO member Estonia, aims to keep humans involved as little as needed so decisions can be made much faster.

An autonomous future

Western militaries and companies, as well as rivals Russia and China, are pushing for more autonomous systems. NATO is prioritizing autonomous technology, particularly in drone technology, for threat detection.

Among many lines of effort are programs like the US Department of Defense's push for all-domain attritable autonomous systems through the Replicator initiative and the UK's substantial investment this year of more than $5 billion in uncrewed autonomous systems.

How far autonomy can go technologically remains to be seen, and its use may be limited by ethical debates. As is, Western militaries often restrict higher levels of autonomy in lethal systems.

But Achi said there won't be any turning back, and expects all militaries to be using it in some form. He said autonomy has become "kind of prerequisite to be successful in the total drone warfare that is coming to all of us."

"You can have all these fancy drones," he said, "but what is the use of them if you can't really deploy them at scale?"

• The phrase "AI bubble" has recently been in the zeitgeist.
• Mentions in earnings calls and investor conference transcripts increased 740% from last quarter.
• Only demonstrable profits will quiet the talk, analyst Gil Luria told BI.

There's a bubble in talk of an "AI bubble."

The phrase "AI bubble" appeared in 42 earnings calls and investor conference transcripts between October and December — a 740% increase from the previous quarter, according to an AlphaSense analysis.

In the third quarter of 2025, five transcripts mentioned the term. The quarter before that, four. For all of 2024, executives and analysts used the phrase in 24 transcripts total. In 2023, it was nine. (The analysis counted transcripts where "AI" and "bubble" appeared within five words of each other.)

Now dozens of companies across semiconductors, cloud infrastructure, financial services, and industrials are fielding some version of the same question: Is the AI boom a bubble?

At UBS's Global Technology and AI Conference on December 2, AMD CEO Lisa Su told investors, "from the standpoint of, you know, do we see a bubble? We don't see a bubble."

Nvidia CFO Colette Kress similarly swatted the premise aside, describing it onstage as a "supposed AI bubble."

Her boss, CEO Jensen Huang, said as much in Nvidia's November earnings call. "There's been a lot of talk about an AI bubble," he said. "From our vantage point, we see something very different."

Aixtron, a German semiconductor-equipment maker, was asked in its November earnings call whether customers might slow capacity plans if AI enthusiasm wanes. Coface, a Paris-based credit insurer, described re-running the math on big AI-related capital requests to ensure they hold up even if "bubble-type enthusiasm" fades.

So why the sudden spike?

Analysts pointed to the sheer scale of the numbers being tossed around.

"We've been seeing these huge partnerships and people throwing out money amounts for infrastructure — like trillions of dollars — which I can't remember ever hearing before," Sarah Hoffman, director of AI thought leadership at AlphaSense, told Business Insider. That gap between the trillions being invested and the billions in revenue from many AI efforts, she said, "is what's getting people a little bit freaked out."

Gil Luria, managing director and head of technology research at DA Davidson, said analysts and CEOs are voicing anxieties they're already hearing from investors.

Luria pointed to what he called "circular transactions" as one source of anxiety. "Nvidia investing a dollar in CoreWeave, CoreWeave borrows nine, and uses eight of them to buy Nvidia chips," he said. "That's the echoes of bubbles past."

The past eight weeks have given bubble proponents plenty of ammunition.

Tech luminaries, including Sam Altman and Bill Gates, have said there's some froth in AI spending. In earnings calls this quarter, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon all said they planned to increase their spending on data centers that are the backbone of AI. Michael Burry, whose bet against the housing market was made famous in "The Big Short," made headlines after he said he had shorted Nvidia, the world's most valuable company.

While executives have pushed back on skeptics, Luria said that only cash will quiet the conversation.

"There's nothing they can say that will change people's perception of whether or not there's a bubble," he said. "The only thing they can do is show results, and those have to be financial results."

• Christmas is three weeks away, but shoppers have more time than ever to procrastinate on gifts.
• Amazon, Target, and Walmart are each offering ultrafast ordering options as late as Christmas Eve.
• The changes are part of a broader push to make shopping even more convenient — and immediate.

Santa has more helpers than ever this year.

Christmas is still three weeks away, but shoppers now have more time to procrastinate on gifts and supplies for the holiday.

Amazon, Target, and Walmart are each racing to offer ultrafast fulfillment options as late as Christmas Eve, as each company looks to earn shoppers' trust that they can deliver in a pinch.

Target said in November that it is extending store hours from 7 a.m. to midnight in the weeks leading up to December 23, and from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Christmas Eve before closing for Christmas Day.

During those operating hours — including Christmas Eve — Target says customers can get orders within two hours via curbside or in-store pickup, or opt for same-day delivery for a $9.99 fee (or free for Circle360 members).

And starting December 9, Amazon will display an "Arrives before Christmas" message on item listings, many of which will be available for fulfillment as late as Christmas Eve via delivery or one of the company's 25,000 pickup locations.

The company says it will even gift-wrap certain items.

Walmart has also been leaning hard into establishing itself as one of the fastest ways to get anything from barbecue sauce to Barbie dolls — and it's only getting faster.

The retail giant hasn't made a Christmas-specific delivery announcement yet, but last year it promised to fulfill express delivery orders placed as late as 4 p.m. local time on Christmas Eve.

More recently, Walmart said it fulfilled its fastest Black Friday order in 10 minutes, with big increases in both the volume and speed of deliveries fulfilled from its stores.

The changes are part of a broader push among retailers to make shopping more convenient — and immediate.

Target is rolling out a shopping experience within ChatGPT — including delivery options on orders with multiple items — ahead of the holidays. And, this week, Amazon announced a 30-minute delivery test in Seattle and Philadelphia, while Walmart expanded its drone delivery services in Atlanta.

In other words, the race is on to see who can deliver the cheer like Saint Nick.