Categories: Innovation

Rupert Murdoch Holds Private CES Meeting With Apple And Snapchat

Whilst tens of thousands of conference goers and exhibitors strutted their stuff in Las Vegas this week for the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES), one such gathering of great technological minds was held behind closed doors.

New Corp and 21st Century Fox executive chairman Rupert Murdoch played host to meetings in his private hotel suite from January 6-7, a meeting in which some of News Corp’s and 21st Century Fox’s leaders attended to hear the words of technology giants such as Google’s Sundar Pichai, Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel, and Apple’s cloud services boss Eddy Cue, according to Quartz.

Annual

This is also not the first time such a meeting has been held. Last year, Murdoch himself puclicly tweeted about the event at CES 2015. “Next CES in Vegas. Almost full Fox and News exec teams here to receive 20 smart presentations from very big to small software companies,” he wrote.

Others tech leaders who spoke to Murdoch’s top business folks behind closed doors were reportedly the founders of a news startup called TheSkimm, Slack boss Stewart Butterfield, actress Jessica Alba, and venture capitalists Benedict Evans and Mary Meeker.

Quartz reported that the event, outlined as being for an internal audience of Murdoch’s News Corp and 21st Century Fox’s deputies, was organised by News Corp CTO Paul Cheesbrough.

The topics discussed at the meeting are not known, but it’s clear as the media industry undergoes a disruptive time, Murdoch and his crew are keen to keep up the pace with rivals. Whilst Apple is notoriously ever-absent from publicly attending CES, it’s interesting to note Cue’s presence here with Murdoch. Apple pushes out reams of News Corp and Fox content on its App Store and iTunes, and it’s not too farfetched to imagine Murdoch wanting to continue a cosy relationship between his news and iOS.

It was also this week when the Wall Street Journal, owned by News Corp, launched a new service on Snapchat’s Discover mobile-video platform.

Take our CES 2016 quiz here!

Ben Sullivan

Ben covers web and technology giants such as Google, Amazon, and Microsoft and their impact on the cloud computing industry, whilst also writing about data centre players and their increasing importance in Europe. He also covers future technologies such as drones, aerospace, science, and the effect of technology on the environment.

Recent Posts

Ericsson To Cut 1,200 Jobs in Sweden Amid ‘Challenging’ Market

Swedish telecoms giant Ericsson blamed “challenging mobile networks market” and “further volume contraction” for job…

13 hours ago

FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried Sentenced To 25 Years In Prison For $8bn Fraud

Dramatic downfall. Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison for masterminding $8bn fraud that…

14 hours ago

Elon Musk Orders FSD Demo For Every Tesla US Sale

Fallout avoidance? Tesla buyers in the US must be shown how to use the FSD…

15 hours ago

Amazon Pumps Another $2.75 Billion Into Anthropic

Amazon completes its $4bn investment into AI firm Anthropic, after providing an additional $2.75bn in…

16 hours ago

The Sustainability of AI

While AI promises unparalleled efficiency, productivity, and innovation, questions regarding its environmental impact loom large.…

19 hours ago

Trump’s Truth Social Makes Successful Market Debut

Shares in Donald Trump’s social media company rose about 16 percent after first day of…

19 hours ago