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• Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison has called thousands of employees back to the office.
• Ellison asked staffers to work in person five days a week.
• Read Ellison’s full memo to employees after their first week of fully in-person work.

Paramount Skydance’s return-to-office push is underway, and CEO David Ellison is taking a moment to thank staffers for showing up.

Starting Monday, Paramount employees assigned to the company’s New York and Los Angeles offices were expected to return to the office five days a week, as announced by Ellison in September. (Some workers, including those who aren’t assigned to an office, are in “Phase 2” of the RTO rollout, with more details coming later this year.)

Staffers who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, make the change were offered a severance package, which the company said about 600 workers took.

“I know that returning to the office full-time has been an adjustment for many, and I truly appreciate the flexibility and commitment you’ve shown,” Ellison said in a companywide email on Friday afternoon, which was viewed by Business Insider.

Ellison added that “the positive energy and increased productivity that come from being together in-person are already evident.”

The Paramount CEO had said in a September memo announcing the five-day RTO push that “in-person collaboration is absolutely vital to building and strengthening our culture and driving the success of our business.”

In his latest missive, Ellison also thanked the “RTO Task Force” that got its offices ready for a surge of workers returning.

Paramount isn’t alone in calling its employees back to the office. Several major media companies, including Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery, have asked their staff to return to in-person work.

NBCUniversal instructed thousands of employees to return to its offices starting on January 5, although it’s only requiring four days a week of in-person work. As with Paramount, staffers who didn’t want to return to the office were offered severance packages.

Read Ellison’s full memo to employees here:

Team Paramount,

As we wrap up our first week back together in our LA and NY offices, I want to thank each of you for your dedication, professionalism, and teamwork. I know that returning to the office full-time has been an adjustment for many, and I truly appreciate the flexibility and commitment you’ve shown. The positive energy and increased productivity that come from being together in-person are already evident, and it’s great to see.

A special thank you to our RTO Task Force and all the teams involved for their hard work behind the scenes to prepare for our return and to ensure the transition was smooth and welcoming for everyone.

It’s hard to believe we launched the new Paramount just five months ago, and in that short time we haven’t just set a strategy — we’ve acted on it. In the process, we’ve made real and meaningful progress against our North Star priorities. From day one, our goal has been clear: to transform Paramount for the future by championing great storytellers, investing in world-class technology, and making bold, thoughtful moves that position us to help define the next era of entertainment. That’s exactly what we’ve been doing — and it’s what we’ll continue to do together.

While the coming year will bring its share of challenges, it will also be exciting. We’ve set ambitious goals, and we’re confident we have the strategy, the momentum, and — most importantly — the team to achieve them. Your expertise, resilience, and commitment give me tremendous confidence in what we can accomplish. I am grateful for your efforts and incredibly proud to work alongside you.

Thanks again for a great first week back together. Let’s go!

Best,

David

• Donald Trump hates the media.
• Donald Trump also loves being covered by the media.
• And as much as Trump has made use of new media, like Twitter and podcasts, he is very much an old media guy.

Last fall, Donald Trump filed a $15 billion defamation suit against The New York Times. That suit is still ongoing.

On Wednesday, Trump sat down with Times reporters at the White House for a 2-hour interview, where he expounded on his worldview, conducted an off-the-record conversation with the president of Colombia, and showed off new plans to renovate the West Wing.

If that surprises you, it shouldn’t. Trump, and the rest of his administration, love to complain about the Times and other big, mainstream media outfits. They also love talking to them.

Earlier this week, for instance, key Trump advisor Stephen Miller appeared on CNN for a much-discussed interview with Jake Tapper, where he laid out a bellicose view of America’s role in the world.

A few days before that, Trump talked to The Wall Street Journal — another publication he’s currently suing — for a story about his health and fitness.

And last month Vanity Fair published a lengthy profile of Susie Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff, which involved multiple interviews with Wiles and portraits of her and other Trump officials, including Miller, Vice President JD Vance, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Trump has made mainstream media a target since he started running for president in 2015, calling reports he doesn’t like “fake news,” and labeling journalists “enemies of the people.” He’s called for a change in US libel law, so he can more easily punish journalists, and he often insists that TV networks that irk him should have their broadcast licenses revoked.

And his rhetoric and actions have ramped up in his second term, where he has banned the Associated Press from events in the Oval Office, stocked the White House briefing room with Trump-friendly outlets, and pushed out all mainstream reporters from the Pentagon.

All of that should worry anyone who cares about press freedom — or in less lofty terms, the ability of the press to accurately tell you what’s happening in the federal government.

The flip of that is quite simple: Trump is a man who grew up in a world dominated by traditional media — newspapers and television — and he still cares very much about what traditional media says about him, no matter what he says. That’s why he delights in constant press appearances in the White House, aboard Air Force One, and anywhere else reporters have cameras, microphones, and notepads.

I often think of an AP photo from last spring, shortly after he’d announced his initial, chaotic tariff plan, that shows him perusing the New York Post’s coverage of that plan in the back of his limousine. We focus a lot of attention on Trump’s ability to use Twitter, YouTube, podcasts, and other digital media to shape public perception. But he’s very much an old media guy — print, broadcast, cable.

And as long as those things still exist, Trump will want to be in them and flattered by their coverage. Which explains why he can sue them and invite them into his office at the same time.

• Nvidia’s launch of the desktop AI system DGX Spark drew online criticism.
• Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang stepped in as staff mobilized internally to support customers.
• Nvidia has grown increasingly reactive amid stock-price sensitivities, said analyst Anshel Sag.

An internal Nvidia email chain revealed how senior executives at the chip giant — including founder and CEO Jensen Huang — mobilized in response to customer criticism of a key product launch late last year.

The thread offers a glimpse into how the company responds to public backlash as it expands products designed for individual developers and researchers.

The thread, which Business Insider has seen, centered on the launch of DGX Spark, a desktop AI system designed for developers and researchers to build AI products and work on apps for data science, medicine, and other fields.

While much of Nvidia’s business targets data center customers, Huang underscored Spark’s significance in the thread, calling it the “ultimate developer’s platform — out of the box easy to run all NVIDIA.”

Spark drew criticism soon after its launch, with some citing software stability and performance issues, which garnered coverage in other tech outlets.

An Nvidia spokesperson declined to comment.

Anshel Sag, a Moor Insights & Strategy analyst who has tracked Nvidia launches for 15 years and was an early DGX Spark tester, said the company’s long experience releasing graphics cards in the gaming industry — where products are routinely scrutinized — has made it adept at handling public feedback, with Huang typically keeping a close eye on new releases.

In recent years, the company has become even more reactive, Sag said, due to increased internal resources and “sensitivity about the stock price and how negative sentiment can draw that down.”

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang steps into the fray

In the fall of last year, AstraZeneca executive director Justin Johnson wrote in a LinkedIn post that while the DGX Spark met performance and speed claims, the software experience was buggy and unstable.

After an Nvidia executive shared Johnson’s post in an internal email thread, Huang entered the fray.

“Jump on x and say you will fix,” he wrote.

Subsequently, an Nvidia engineer replied that the company had reached out to Johnson to resolve most of the issues, which were related to a version mismatch of CUDA, Nvidia’s software that allows developers to build AI apps powered by its GPUs.

Johnson responded that he appreciated the outreach and was exploring setting up DGX Spark at the pharmaceutical company, the chain said.

Nvidia staffers ramp up responses

Following Johnson’s criticism, Nvidia staffers saw other unfavorable responses online and set up a social listening campaign to flag complaints from other influential figures, as well as discussions on Nvidia forums and Reddit, the emails said.

Staffers tracked complaints and engaged directly with key critics who raised concerns about DGX Spark’s performance, heating issues, and pricing.

Another incident involved the researcher Christopher Kouzios, who wrote on LinkedIn that he’d purchased DGX Spark to conduct medical research after his daughter died from a rare brain tumor, with the goal of studying cancer risk in his sons.

Kouzios said software incompatibility had rendered the system unusable and that he’d only received an automated acknowledgment 38 hours after filing a support ticket.

After an Nvidia executive flagged the post, team members said they were fixing the bug, according to the emails. The executive later circulated an updated post in which Kouzios lauded Nvidia’s customer support.

“While the situation initially frustrated me, Nvidia’s response time was exceptional,” Kouzios told Business Insider. “In more than 33 years working with large technology companies, I have never seen an organization respond that quickly to public technical feedback.”

It’s often standard for hardware to ship without fully finished software, Sag said, adding that Nvidia tends to be more “high-touch” than other tech companies in fielding complaints — an approach that flows down from an exceptionally “hands-on” CEO.

Nvidia has previously faced some launch hiccups and early criticism for new products, such as its Blackwell rollout, which encountered manufacturing challenges.

While a CEO’s involvement is notable and Nvidia’s backchannel efforts appeared to placate critics, such an approach isn’t without risks, another analyst said.

“C-suite engagement during product controversies has become more common in tech, particularly for founder-led companies,” said Kate Holterhoff, a senior industry analyst at RedMonk. “It can signal authenticity and accountability, but it also carries reputational risk if the response is perceived as defensive or dismissive.”

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at gweiss@businessinsider.com or Signal at @geoffweiss.25. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here’s our guide to sharing information securely.

• Local officials approved an Amazon plan to build a 225,000 square-foot mega store near Chicago.
• Plans said the facility would be used for both in-person shopping and e-commerce fulfillment.
• The move would put Amazon in more direct competition with big-box stores like Walmart and Target.

Amazon is beefing up its physical retail game with a new big-box store concept that goes well beyond groceries.

Village officials in Orland Park, Illinois, voted on Tuesday to approve Amazon’s plan to build a 228,000-square-foot mega store near Chicago. That’s roughly the size of a newer, larger Walmart Supercenter.

Planning documents said the facility would offer both groceries and general merchandise, as well as other services and prepared food options. Customers would also be able to place and receive online orders on-site.

Katie Jahnke Dale, an attorney for Amazon, told the planning commission that the plan is “a more purpose-built and thoughtful” approach to traditional big-box stores, according to the Orland Park Patch.

“This is a retail concept, a retail store, albeit with perhaps a larger storeroom in the back, which will allow us to enhance the customer experience,” she said.

Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

If that sounds familiar, it’s probably because hypermarkets like this one have been a staple of American retail since 1988, when Walmart opened its first Supercenter outside St. Louis. Walmart now has about 4,600 US stores.

Of course, Amazon is no stranger to physical retail — at least in comparatively smaller formats.

The company operates 58 Amazon Fresh grocery stores, 14 Go convenience locations, and more than 500 Whole Foods Markets.

Where those stores primarily focus on food, the new plan calls for a much broader range of merchandise, such as housewares or apparel, that can complement grocery shoppers’ carts.

As traditional retailers like Walmart and Target ramp up their e-commerce efforts, Amazon is taking a few pages from the brick-and-mortar playbook as well.

This expansion comes a month after Business Insider reported that Amazon has been developing a “rush” pickup service, which would allow shoppers to collect their orders at Amazon-owned stores within an hour.

The company is also testing a fulfillment-only store concept that it expects to bring 30-minute delivery to customers in Seattle and Philadelphia.

• Stuart Brown is stepping down as head of trading at $55 billion hedge fund Viking Global.
• Brown has worked at the hedge fund for 18 years, according to his profile on the firm’s website.
• The hedge fund was up only 8.6%, trailing the market and many Tiger Cub peers.

Billionaire Andreas Halvorsen will soon lose another longtime lieutenant.

Stuart Brown, the longtime head of trading for Viking Global, is stepping down from the $55 billion asset manager to take a career break, two people familiar with the move told Business Insider. The firm declined to comment, and Brown could not be reached for comment.

Brown was at the long-running Tiger Cub, a nickname for hedge funds that spun out of late billionaire Julian Robertson’s Tiger Management, for 18 years, according to his bio on the firm’s website. He joined the firm after working on the corporate credit sales desk at Credit Suisse.

One of the people close to the firm said Brown’s official departure date is not yet known. Brown will help the firm during a transition period, this person said.

Viking has lost several senior members of its team in recent years, which now numbers 275 employees, according to the firm’s site.

From the investing side, Ning Jin, the former chief investment officer of Viking, left the firm in August 2024 to start his own fund, Avantyr Capital.

On the operations side of the business, the firm’s former general counsel, Andrew Genser, joined former Viking portfolio manager Divya Nettimi’s fund, Avala Global, last summer. Viking’s director of recruiting, Kevin Curtis, moved to Bobby Jain’s eponymous fund in September 2025, and the firm’s former investor relations head, Savina Boyadjieva, just started as a partner at Joshua Kushner’s Thrive Capital.

While Viking’s peers include long-short equity funds such as Tiger Global, Coatue, Lone Pine, D1, Maverick, and others, the firm is not as tech-heavy as some of the other Tiger Cubs. In some years, such as 2022, this can help the manager, but when mega-stocks like Nvidia, Amazon, and Microsoft drive a bulk of the market’s returns, it can lead to Viking missing out on some gains.

Last year was an example of this: Viking returned less than 9% on the year in its flagship fund, a person close to the manager said, less than the S&P 500 index.

• Paramount Skydance’s streaming product and tech chief, Vibol Hou, is leaving at the end of January.
• Hou spoke about the move in a Slack message to colleagues.
• Paramount is in a period of transition under its ambitious new CEO, David Ellison.

The head of Paramount Skydance’s streaming product and tech is leaving the company, Business Insider has learned.

Vibol Hou told colleagues in the company’s streaming tech Slack channel that he’s leaving Paramount at the end of January.

“After nearly 12 years of exhilarating work pushing our businesses to new heights, it feels like the right time to hand the torch to the next wave of leaders while I take a much-needed pause to rest, focus on my health (including some serious marathon training), and spend more time with my family before I jump into whatever comes next,” Hou wrote in the Slack message, which was viewed by Business Insider.

Hou’s exit has been anticipated within Paramount for months.

In Hou’s Slack message, he referenced a previous memo from Dane Glasgow, Paramount’s chief product officer, that hinted at the move.

“Vibol has expressed interest in exploring other opportunities, and while he will remain in his role with an anticipated transition early next year, we will continue to explore new projects together,” Glasgow wrote in a mid-October email viewed by Business Insider.

Hou was at Paramount or its subsidiaries for over a decade, including six years at its free streamer, Pluto TV. In that span, Paramount went through several corporate changes, from a ViacomCBS merger to the Paramount Skydance merger that closed in the summer of 2025.

“What we’ve built together across Pluto TV, CBS All Access/Paramount+, and Network Streaming was never easy,” Hou wrote in the Slack message. “But we built these products from the ground up, in tough environments that didn’t necessarily believe in our vision, with limited resources and non-existent technology where we often had to build our own, and under constant pressure to deliver.”

Hou’s Slack message was received warmly, with 118 “care” emojis, 67 classic “red heart” emojis, and 43 “thank you” emojis, among other signals of support as of early Thursday afternoon.

Since Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison took over in early August, he’s made several noteworthy moves, like landing UFC rights in the US and hiring Bari Weiss to lead CBS News.

Ellison is now focused on buying Warner Bros. Discovery, which has rejected its takeover offer eight times.

Paramount did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Read Hou’s Slack message to colleagues announcing the move:

@channel Team,

As Dane shared in his note, I’ll be transitioning out of my role and leaving the company at the end of January. After nearly 12 years of exhilarating work pushing our businesses to new heights, it feels like the right time to hand the torch to the next wave of leaders while I take a much-needed pause to rest, focus on my health (including some serious marathon training), and spend more time with my family before I jump into whatever comes next.

What we’ve built together across Pluto TV, CBS All Access/Paramount+, and Network Streaming was never easy — but we built these products from the ground up, in tough environments that didn’t necessarily believe in our vision, with limited resources and non-existent technology where we often had to build our own, and under constant pressure to deliver. Yet again and again, this team showed grit, creativity, and passion. Whether you came from Pluto or another part of Streaming, the story is the same: we took on impossible problems and innovated our way through.

The culture we live — being curious about everything, feeling that hunger to solve problems, caring deeply for others, iterating constantly, and innovating in everything we do — belongs to all of you now. You should be proud of what you’ve achieved, and you should be confident that this is a team that can handle anything thrown its way.

As to the future, I have a lot of confidence in Dane and the vision and strategic pillars he’s laid out for the year ahead. They set a strong foundation for where this organization can go over the next several years, and I’m excited to see what you all do together under his leadership.

I plan to hold my last open office hours next Friday so anyone who wants to drop in, ask questions, or just say hello/goodbye has a space to do that together. In the meantime, if you’d like to stay in touch beyond my time here, please feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn.

Serving alongside you has been one of the great privileges of my life, and I’ll be proudly cheering you on as you write the next chapter together.

Boldly go, always. ❤️

Vibol