Raphael Stevens

Peyton Manning’s Omaha Productions has sold an approximately 10% stake to a new platform run by former Endeavor executive Patrick Whitesell.
The stake sale will value Omaha at more than $750 million, according to people familiar with the matter.
Omaha Productions has produced more than 30 TV series and live events, including the “ManningCast” on ESPN.

Peyton Manning on Sunday, February 16, 2025.
Theo Wargo | NBCUniversal | Getty Images

Peyton Manning has a new business partner.
A new platform run by Patrick Whitesell, the former executive chairman of Endeavor, has acquired a minority stake in Manning’s Omaha Productions.

The stake, which is approximately 10% of the company, values Omaha Productions at more than $750 million, according to people familiar with the matter.
Private equity firm Silver Lake announced Whitesell’s new platform, which will invest in sports, media and entertainment companies, earlier this week. Silver Lake is contributing an initial $250 million to the fund. The Omaha Productions deal is the first investment.
A spokesperson for Whitesell and spokespeople for Omaha and Silver Lake declined to comment on financial terms.
“Omaha’s strong track record of creating engaging content puts them in a strong position to capitalize on new opportunities across entertainment and sports,” said Whitesell in a statement.

Patrick Whitesell Executive chairman of Endeavor.
Courtesy: Endeavor

Omaha Productions has produced more than 30 TV series and live events for a variety of media partners, including Disney, Netflix and Comcast’s NBCUniversal. The company is the executive producer of Netflix’s “Quarterback” and “Receiver” documentary series and developed “Monday Night Football with Peyton and Eli,” colloquially known as the ManningCast, where the Manning brothers comment on the game and interview celebrities.

Silver Lake is a longtime investor in Endeavor. This week, it closed its transaction to take the company private. When accounting for Endeavor’s existing stake in TKO Sports, Silver Lake marked the deal at an enterprise value of $25 billion.
Manning and media executive Jamie Horowitz founded Omaha in 2020. As it takes on Silver Lake as an investor, the company aims to grow into new business ventures that can utilize Manning in other ways beyond media, the company said in a statement. Omaha recently announced an investment in Good Good Golf, a golf and lifestyle company.
Omaha has been profitable since its founding, the company said, suggesting the investment is more about increasing Omaha’s value and expanding its opportunities than needing cash.
Both Silver Lake and Whitesell were instrumental in moving Endeavor beyond a talent agency into an expansive sports and entertainment empire. The company, run by Ari Emanuel, eventually acquired both UFC and WWE, merging them into a new publicly traded entity called TKO Group.
Disclosure: Comcast’s NBCUniversal is the parent company of CNBC. More

Critical Role has expanded from a single live-stream of Dungeons & Dragons into a multiplatform media company.
It operates a production studio, a publishing arm, a gaming division, a streaming service, a record label and a charity initiative.
While Dungeons & Dragons will remain a cornerstone of Critical Role’s identity, the company is now building its own legacy.

The cast of “Critical Role” playing Dungeons & Dragons.
Critical Role

A decade ago, a group of professional voice actors gathered around a table to live-stream a game of Dungeons & Dragons. Now, they run a media empire.
Critical Role, both the name of the original show and the company, has expanded exponentially since its first episode aired in March 2015. Today it operates a production studio, a publishing arm, a gaming division, a streaming service, a record label and a charity initiative.

The company’s growth comes at a time of disruption in the traditional media landscape. More consumers are turning to niche streamers and alternative content than ever before, with services like Critical Role’s streaming platform Beacon becoming more and more prevalent.
Critical Role is a private company and does not disclose its financials, however, a leaked Twitch report noted that the company generated $9.6 million in direct payouts from the streaming service between September 2019 and September 2021. It’s an impressive total for a company built on a 50-year-old fantasy game.
Critical Role’s business strategy centers on its intellectual property. The company and its founders — Matthew Mercer, Ashley Johnson, Laura Bailey, Liam O’Brien, Taliesin Jaffe, Marisha Ray, Sam Riegel and Travis Willingham — have crafted a complex fantasy world, named Exandria. Through partnerships and expanding in-house production, they’ve captured fans across a wide swath of mediums.
The company has created more than 2,500 hours of original content, more than 30 original shows and published nearly 70 books, comics and novels in the last 10 years, many of which are based on the IP of its games.
As the company continues to mature, it has broadened its focus beyond the confines of the Hasbro-owned table top roleplaying game.

“We’ve been doing this for quite a while,” said Mercer, the company’s long-time game master and chief creative officer. “Our core main campaign it’s very much been kind of the tentpole of our community and the growth of this whole endeavor … People throughout the company have kept eyes out in the space to look for really talented, up-and-coming people that might be an opportunity for us to collaborate with and let them grow — kind of more or less give them part of our garden and let them flourish.”

‘How do you want to do this?’

The basis for Critical Role’s content is what’s known in the D&D realm as a “campaign,” a longform game that can take place over the course of several weeks, months and even years. 
Critical Role’s third campaign, the adventures of a group known as Bell’s Hells, wrapped in early February with an 8-hour finale. The campaign, which took place over the course of 121 four- to six-hour episodes, started in October 2021.
Its final session marked the culmination of a decade of storytelling and the beginning of something new. While Critical Role will continue to deliver fan-favorite content, it’s now looking to delve into new domains.
“In the animation world alone, animation takes a long time, and it’s very expensive and feature animation is its own unique challenge, but it’s something we are exploring,” Willingham said. “We love experiential things. We’re always looking for anything that someone might be able to come and engage with in a real world aspect.”

Titmouse developed “The Legend of Vox Machina” for Amazon Prime Video based on a Dungeons & Dragons campaign from Critical Role.
Amazon Prime Video

Already, Critical Role has a successful animated series on Amazon Prime Video, “The Legend of Vox Machina.” The project was first fundraised by Critical Role’s ardent fanbase, who shelled out more than $11.3 million on Kickstarter to bring a 10-episode season to life. Amazon quickly funded a second season of the show, which is now headed for its fourth.
Still to come is a second show centered on the characters in the adventuring party known as the Mighty Nein, who featured in Critical Role’s second campaign. Both projects are being completed by independent animation house Titmouse.
The company will continue to explore the world of Exandria in new video content, called actual plays, with the “Wildemount Wildings” announced as its next adventure.
Riegel is set to take on the role of game master for the new limited series, which launches April 3. The three-episode event follows a rag-tag group of teens at a summer camp learning how to be heroes. Their guides are two famed characters from Critical Role’s Mighty Nein, Beau and Yasha, played by founders Ray and Johnson. The cast also includes Eden Riegel, Aleks Le, Brennan Lee Mulligan and Libe Barer.

Critical Role’s “Wildemount Wildlings” features Sam Riegal as the game master alongside veteran cast members Marisha Ray and Ashley Johnson. They are joined by Eden Riegel, Aleks Le, Brennan Lee Mulligan and Libe Barer.
Critical Role

Additionally, Darrington Press, the company’s publishing arm, is set to release a romance novel called “Tusk Love,” based on an in-game novel of the same name; O’Brien has penned a book of fairy tales from the Zemni Fields, a fictional area within Exandria; and Riegal wrote a self-help book from the perspective of his character, named Fresh Cut Grass.
The company’s main cast is also gearing up for a multi-city live show tour in the U.S. and Australia, with hopes to visit other countries in Europe and South America in the coming years.
Critical Role sold out Wembley Stadium in London last fall.
“That was the largest venue we had ever explored, and watching it sell out that quickly, and then just the energy from that room was massive,” Willingham said.
“It’s all a gradual acceleration, but it’s also exciting for us, because anybody that’s been to a Critical Role live show knows there’s nothing like it,” he added.

‘You can certainly try’

Critical Role’s aspirations are even further reaching.
“We’ve built such a robust world, and we have so many other stories to tell and things that we want to add to those stories, but something that we love as gamers is providing the audience a way to get their hand on the stick and have some agency in that story, manipulate it, change it, see what their own personal experience would be,” said Willingham, teasing that a video game announcement is expected within the year.
Metapigeon, Critical Role’s production studio, has also been exploring live-action and feature film development alongside its continued animation aspirations.
“The thing about Beacon was that it’s intended as a starting point,” said Willingham. “It is something we can add to … we just have to measure and explore at our own pace, but that’s fully our intention.”
The Beacon streaming service costs $5.99 a month for ad-free and exclusive content, as well as early access to live event ticket sales and a percentage off Critical Role merchandise.
The company declined to say how many subscribers its Beacon service currently has.

The cast of “Critical Role” includes Marisha Ray, Matthew Mercer, Sam Riegel, Taliesin Jaffe, Ashley Johnson, Travis Willingham, Liam O’Brien and Laura Bailey.
Critical Role

Perhaps the biggest investment Critical Role has made is in its new table top roleplaying game system called Daggerheart. This ruleset, which is due out in May, is set to be the basis of much of the company’s video content in the future.
“The intent of this was to look at all the different systems we had played and comparing that with the style of how we play,” said Mercer. “There’s a history of prominent game systems that facilitate epic, cinematic storytelling, but often are kind of in conflict with the rules as they’re written and presented.”
Mercer and the team at Critical Role wanted to build a system that allowed for more creative gameplay where rules didn’t delay or prevent players from creating unique story moments.
Critical Role will still use other game systems, like Dungeons & Dragons, but having its own proprietary module allows it to not only grow in scope of content, but also in revenue. Those funds can then be reinvested into other projects.
“The perpetual joke is, if you say it out loud, there’s a chance that it will happen,” said Willingham. More

Ferrari said Thursday it will raise prices on certain models after April 1 in response to new U.S. auto tariffs.
The sports car maker’s more popular models, including the Purosangue SUV, the 12Cilindri and the F80, will get price increases of up to 10%.
Ferrari produces all of its cars at its Maranello factory.
Last year, the company produced 13,752 cars.

The Ferrari logo is seen outside the Ferrari headquarters in Maranello, Italy.
Ciancaphoto Studio | Getty Images Sport | Getty Images

Ferrari said Thursday it will raise prices by 10% on certain models after April 1 in response to new U.S. auto tariffs, adding up to $50,000 to the price of a typical Ferrari.
The Maranello, Italy-based sports car maker said prices will remain unchanged for all cars imported before April 2. After that, the “commercial terms” for three of its model families — the Ferrari 296, SF90 and Roma — will “remain unchanged,” the company said in a release.

Yet, its more popular models, including the Purosangue SUV, the 12Cilindri and the F80, will get price increases of up to 10%.
For the Purosangue, which starts at about $430,000, that price hike amounts to about $43,000. For the limited edition F80, which starts at more than $3.5 million, the increase will add more than $350,000 to the price tag.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced tariffs of 25% on all cars not made in the U.S. Ferrari produces all of its cars at its Maranello factory.
Last year, Ferrari produced 13,752 cars. The company plans to launch its first all-electric Ferrari in October.
It is unclear what effect the tariffs will have on Ferrari sales, since there is already a waiting list of more than a year for most of its vehicles. Ferrari buyers are generally wealthy enough to easily absorb the price hikes.

Ferrari also said Thursday it “confirms its financial targets for 2025” but added that there is a “potential risk of 50 basis points on profitability percentage margins.”
In an interview with CNBC this month, Ferrari CEO Benedetto Vigna said even though Ferrari buyers are wealthy, the company has to be sensitive to passing on too much of the added cost of tariffs.
“When we look at the client, we consider that these people to buy a Ferrari, they have to work,” he said. “We have to respect them. Because for us, the most important thing is the client. So we need to make sure that we treat them in the right way.”
Shares of Ferrari were slightly higher Thursday morning, while shares of the U.S. “Big Three” automakers were largely lower.

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President Donald Trump said he would place 25% tariffs on “all cars that are not made in the United States.”
The tariffs apply to imported passenger vehicles and light trucks, as well as key automobile parts including engines and transmissions, the White House said in a fact sheet.
Vehicles are made up of tens of thousands of parts, many of which cross back and forth over the U.S. border before a final product is completed.

The border wall is shown in a background as a semi-truck carrying Toyota trucks crosses a bridge after clearing U.S. Customs while entering the United States from Mexico along the border in San Diego, California, on March 4, 2025.
Mike Blake | Reuters

Auto stocks are digesting President Donald Trump’s announcement that he would place 25% tariffs on “all cars that are not made in the United States,” as well as certain automobile parts.
Trump’s administration had been telegraphing plans to put tariffs on the auto industry, but the effect of those moves and mechanism for enforcement are starting to take shape. Trump said the tariffs would go into effect April 2.

General Motors stock was down about 7% in early trading Thursday, while Stellantis lost more than 2%. Tesla, however, was marginally higher, while Ford Motor shares hovered around the flat line.
“In our coverage, for [original equipment manufacturers], Tesla and Ford appear to be the most shielded given location of vehicle assembly facilities although Ford does face incremental exposure on imported engines,” Deutsche Bank analysts wrote in a note Thursday. “GM has the most exposure to Mexico.”
Trump said Wednesday he would not put a tariff on vehicles that are built in the U.S.
The tariffs apply to imported passenger vehicles and light trucks, as well as key automobile parts including engines and transmissions, the White House said in a fact sheet.

The United Auto Workers union cheered Trump’s announcement.

“These tariffs are a major step in the right direction for autoworkers and blue-collar communities across the country, and it is now on the automakers, from the Big Three to Volkswagen and beyond, to bring back good union jobs to the U.S.,” UAW president Shawn Fain said in a statement Wednesday.
Vehicles are made up of tens of thousands of parts, many of which cross back and forth over the U.S. border before a final product is completed.
Data and forecasting firm S&P Global Mobility reports there are on average 20,000 parts in a vehicle when it is torn down to its nuts and bolts. Parts may originate anywhere from 50 to 120 countries.
The firm also reports that 25 automakers on average produce 63,900 light-duty passenger vehicles in North America per day. A majority of those, roughly 65%, are assembled in the U.S., followed by 27% in Mexico and 8% in Canada.

Goldman Sachs analysts wrote Thursday that Trump’s 25% tariff could raise the price of imported cars by $5,000 to $15,000. If roughly 50% of parts in a U.S.-made car came from foreign sources, the tariff could raise the price of those cars by $3,000 to $8,000, they added.
President Trump had previously granted automakers a one-month tariff exemption for vehicles that comply with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement’s trade rules of origin.
— CNBC’s Michael Wayland and Michael Bloom contributed to this report.

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Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. plans 10,000 job cuts at his department.
The reductions could affect teams that respond to disease outbreaks, approve drugs and help people with their insurance coverage.
Kennedy has repeatedly criticized the department he now leads.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., US secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), during a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Monday, March 24, 2025. 
Samuel Corum | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. plans to slash 10,000 full-time employees across different departments, as he works to reshape the nation’s federal health agencies, the department said Thursday.
Those job cuts are in addition to about 10,000 employees who opted to leave HHS since President Donald Trump took office, through voluntary separation offers. Combined, they will lead to the federal health department shedding about a quarter of its workforce, shrinking it to 62,000 employees.

HHS is a $1.7 trillion agency that oversees vaccines and other medicines, scientific research, public health infrastructure, pandemic preparedness and food and tobacco products. The department also manages government-funded health care for millions of Americans – including seniors, disabled people and lower-income patients who rely on Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act’s markets.
The department will cut jobs at divisions responsible for offering insurance to the poorest Americans, approving new drugs, and responding to disease outbreaks, according to The Wall Street Journal, which earlier reported the cuts.
The major restructuring comes as the U.S. grapples with one of the worst measles outbreaks in more than two decades, and as bird flu spreads in wild birds worldwide and is causing outbreaks in poultry and U.S. dairy cows, with several recent human cases.
HHS will also drop five of its 10 regional offices, but it said essential health services won’t be affected.
“We aren’t just reducing bureaucratic sprawl. We are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic,” Kennedy said. “This Department will do more – a lot more – at a lower cost to the taxpayer.”

The department said the cuts will save the government about $1.8 billion per year. The federal government spent roughly $6.8 trillion in fiscal 2024.
Here are the employees the Trump administration plans to cut, according to the Journal:

3,500 full-time employees from the Food and Drug Administration, or about 19% of its workforce
2,400 workers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or roughly 18% of its staff
1,200 employees from the National Institutes of Health, or about 6% of its workforce
300 workers from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or roughly 4% of its employees

Before he was confirmed, Kennedy pledged to end what he calls “corporate corruption” at federal health agencies and purge staff when he stepped into his role in the Trump administration.
He had said he would clear out “entire departments” at the FDA, saying that workers who stand in the way of approval of several controversial or dubious treatments should prepare to “pack their bags.”
Kennedy, a prominent vaccine skeptic, has made early moves that could impact immunization policy and further dampen uptake in the U.S. at a time when childhood vaccination rates are falling.
He has said he will review the childhood vaccination schedule and is reportedly preparing to remove and replace members of external committees that advise the government on vaccine approvals and other key public health decisions, among other efforts.
His so-called Make America Healthy Again platform also pledges to end the chronic disease epidemic in children and adults. Kennedy has been vocal about making nutritious food, rather than drugs, central to that goal.
This story is developing. Please check back for updates. More

Sandy Weill on Thursday announced a new $50 million donation to create a cancer research and treatment hub focused on immunotherapy.
The hub is in partnership with four leading research institutions.
The Weill Family Foundation said the hub will also examine how GLP-1 agonists and other emerging therapeutics might affect cancer treatment.

Former Citigroup CEO Sandy Weill announced Thursday morning a $50 million gift through the Weill Family Foundation to establish the Weill Cancer Hub East, a partnership aimed at using research on nutrition and metabolism to develop cancer treatments.
The partnership brings together four leading research institutions — with experts from Princeton University, The Rockefeller University, Weill Cornell Medicine and the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research — to develop an immunotherapy strategy to fight cancer.

“Good things happen when people believe in cooperation,” Weill said in an exclusive interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Thursday morning.
Weill’s latest donation marks the foundation gifting a total of more than $1 billion to nonprofits.
“With the best minds in the field armed with the most advanced research techniques, the Weill Cancer Hub East will seek to elevate immunotherapy and improve patient care for people battling cancer,” Weill said in a statement.
The new partnership will focus on investigating how nutrition and the microbes that metabolize food can influence immunotherapy and other cancer treatments. The Weill Family Foundation said the hub will also examine how GLP-1 agonists and other emerging therapeutics might affect cancer treatment.
Immunotherapy, unlike other therapies that target removing or attacking cancer cells directly, uses the patient’s immune system to fight the illness from the inside. The hub’s projects will focus on “reprogramming” the tumor microenvironment, the foundation said in a release, and will also offer clinical trials.

“How we can increase the effectiveness of immunotherapy across all cancer types and patients is one of the scientific questions that most needs answering,” said Dr. Robert Harrington, the dean of Weill Cornell Medicine.
The research from the new hub is meant to complement research and development out of the National Institutes of Health, Weill said, and cannot replace the work the NIH does. However, Weill added that he thinks NIH’s work may be somewhat limited.
“I think they’re not the big risk-takers that they used to be,” he said on “Squawk Box.” “I think that it’s the job of the private sector to be more of the risk-taker.”
The Weill Family Foundation previously founded another hub in 2019, called the Weill Neurohub, that pulled together researchers from University of California, San Francisco; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Washington; and the Allen Institute to work on developing treatments for neurological and psychiatric diseases.

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California-based KB Home is unveiling what it calls its first “wildfire-resilient” community, meeting standards that protect the homes against the three major sources of ignition during a wildfire.
As climate change causes more severe drought in more areas of the country, focus is shifting to fire-resistant homes and communities.
The homes range from $1 million to the low millions, which tends to be a move-up price in the area of Escondido, just outside San Diego.

KB Home’s new wildfire-resilient neighborhood in Escondido, California.

Just months after raging wildfires destroyed thousands of homes in the Los Angeles area, California-based KB Home is unveiling what it calls its first “wildfire-resilient” community.
The development, in Escondido, just outside San Diego, will have 64 single-family homes when completed that all meet the wildfire resilience standards developed by the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS), a nonprofit, scientific research and communications organization supported by property insurers. These standards are designed to protect the homes against the three major sources of ignition during a wildfire: Flying embers, flames and radiant heat.

A handful of homes in the development are now complete, with roughly 20 homes already sold. Three homeowners have moved in, according to KB Home.
The homes are built with covered gutters, enclosed eaves, noncombustible siding — like stucco and fiber cement — tempered-glass windows, and non-combustible patios, doors and roofing. They have six-inch vertical clearance using the concrete foundation, stucco and stone. They also incorporate defensible space with low-combustible vegetation at least 5 feet from the homes. Metal fencing is used throughout the neighborhood.
Steve Ruffner, regional general manager of KB Home’s coastal division, said he and his colleagues saw a fire-resistant home demonstration by IBHS at the Pacific Coast Builders Conference last summer and were impressed by the opportunity this type of community presented. Since KB Home had already broken ground on the development, they had to change gears quickly to incorporate the fire-resilient components.
“We had to change the architecture on the fly to a more stucco-oriented architecture with fire-resistant shutters, or fire-free shutters and doors and tempered windows. We were able to do that really quickly with the city, because they wanted to work with us. They really understood that this was important for their city,” Ruffner said.
He called it more of a research and development project to see what the costs might be and how to work with trade partners to lower that cost, although he wouldn’t say how much those costs increased.

KB Home’s new Wildfire-Resilient Neighborhood in Escondido, CA.

The homes range from $1 million to the low millions, which tends to be a move-up price in that area for single-family, detached homes.
“We’re trying to get the cost to a reasonable place, because we really specialize in first-time buyers and first-time move-up buyers. So we want to make sure we can get this in a good place where it’s affordable to do it and it’s also got a good payback to the customer in a form of safety,” he added.
As climate change causes more severe drought in more areas of the country, focus is shifting to fire-resistant homes and communities.
During the the Palisades Fire in January, some homes that had been specifically built to fire-resistant standards remained unscathed while everything around them was destroyed. These types of homes, however, are largely one-offs by custom builders.
There has been progress in California on a home-by-home basis, according to IBHS, but KB Home is the first big production builder in the country that has designed and is fully building out 64 homes all to meet the wildfire-prepared neighborhood standard.
Among the specifications, homes are spaced 10 feet apart to help slow the progression of a fire.

KB Home’s new wildfire-resilient neighborhood in Escondido, California.

“This subdivision built by KB Home, it’s really the test bed to show this and demonstrate it,” said Roy Wright, CEO of IBHS. “I know that KB Home already has two other projects here in Escondido, looking at duplexes and other kinds of town homes, and I do imagine that other builders are going to quickly follow suit. They’re going to be building the homes that Californians want to buy.”
Wright emphasized that part of the draw is not just to build a home that is survivable, but also one that is insurable. Insurance companies have been pulling out of California in droves, leaving homeowners with soaring costs and some without insurance entirely.
Though the homes are billed as fire-resilient, that doesn’t mean they are entirely risk-free. Homeowners and cities are going to have to make changes when it comes to non-combustible landscaping, elevations and even design. The real test will come in the future, should the community be in the line of a wildfire.
“Nothing is ever fireproof. We’re always just seeking to try to narrow those paths of destruction,” said Wright. More