Dive Brief:
- Paramount CTO Phil Wiser is stepping down after more than seven years with the media company, according to a Friday LinkedIn post. The move comes less than a month after the company won a lengthy bidding war against Netflix for Warner Bros. Discovery, a transaction set to close in the third quarter of 2026. Paramount did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
- During his time at Paramount, Wiser led a cloud-based digital transformation resulting in more than 95% of compute and data transitioning to a cloud-native model, and deployed Oracle Fusion cloud-based enterprise applications at scale, he described in the LinkedIn post.
- Wiser, who plans to start an advisory company, said Paramount is well prepared for AI adoption. “We embraced AI capabilities across the workforce well ahead of industry norms and are now well positioned for this exciting wave of disruption,” he wrote.
Dive Insight:
Like most enterprises, Paramount is deploying AI at scale to transform business processes, customer experience and employee workflows. The effort is playing out right as it brings a major acquisition into the fold.
The Warner Bros. Discovery purchase will drive the company’s overall strategy, including its technology goals, Paramount CEO David Ellison told investors during the company’s Q1 2026 earnings call earlier this month. Ellison is the son of Oracle CTO Larry Ellison.
“It expands reach and enhances our ability to create the world’s most compelling stories and experiences,” he said during the call. “And it positions us really well to build a next-generation media and technology company.”
Ellison said Paramount is investing heavily in technology, including the engineering and AI talent needed to drive growth, as it moves forward with multiple technology-related initiatives. The media company, which completed a merger with Skydance Media last year, is now looking to consolidate its three streaming services — Paramount+, Pluto TV and BET+ — into a unified platform by mid-2026. Paramount hopes to add Warner Bros. Discovery to the platform after the acquisition closes, executives said during the call.
As Paramount pursues a unified tech stack, Ellison said the company is using AI across its businesses to improve products, citing the company’s agentic data warehouse for internal systems and Precision+, Paramount’s optimized AI platform for advertisers.
Paramount is also using AI to modernize consumer-facing technology, including using AI artwork in curated, personalized feeds.
The company’s internal operations, including in its technology and product organizations, are also undergoing an AI-focused transformation. Roughly 80% of Paramount’s engineering team uses coding assistants, which Ellison said is driving productivity gains. The company is also assessing AI-based workflows in the back office for finance, HR and operational functions, CFO Dennis Cinelli said during the earnings call.
“We are transforming how we operate, unifying platforms, data and workflows and embedding advanced technology to drive efficiency, better serve our partners and elevate the overall consumer experience,” Ellison told investors.
Paramount’s overall AI adoption goals hinge on employee buy-in, an approach outlined by EVP and CIO Lakshman Nathan at the AI Summit in New York in December 2025. The company created a framework for internal AI tool development and deployment to help employees feel supported in understanding how tools should be used, he said during the summit.
