Inside The Mysterious Billionaire Summer Camp Where Oprah and Corporate America’s Elite Gather to Forge Multibillion-Dollar Deals

Last week in Sun Valley, Idaho, it was time for the “annual fly-in event” when Friedman Memorial Airport is filled with private luxury jets. Aircraft-tracking website FlightAware noted to Business Insider that over 165 private planes were scheduled to fly in for the event, known as “summer camp for billionaires.”

And these corporate titians surely stand out in the small town of 1,783.

So What is the Billionaires’ Summer Camp

Every year since 1983, some of the richest and most powerful leaders in business, media, and politics touch down in Sun Valley for a private confab hosted by New York investment bank Allen & Company.

So why are they gathered and what do they do? Most non-billionaires don’t actually know.

The summit’s agenda and lecture topics are kept secret, and reporters who attend generally have to stay off the record so that the one-percenters can mingle and speak freely as they wander the mountain resort, gossiping about industry and, occasionally, forging historic multibillion-dollar deals.

Sun Valley is also widely believed to be the place where Jeff Bezos decided to buy The Washington Post. It is also where talks of the ABC-Disney merger started, according to Business Insider.

This year’s parade of private jets included dozens of power brokers, from AI kingpin Sam Altman and Disney CEO Bob Iger to Apple’s Tim Cook, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai, according to Idaho Mountain Express. But also media moguls Rupert Murdoch and Oprah Winfrey were in the mix for the event, which began on July 9 and lasted through July 13.

Absent this year was Warren Buffet and Elon Musk.

Some speculated that questions about President Joe Biden’s ability to campaign would come up during the get-together as any of the wealthy attendees are Democratic donors.

Such a discussion would most likely be important for three governors on the guest list this year: Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, and Wes Moore of Maryland, all of whom have been floated as potential Biden replacements.

Still, it is a mystery what takes place during the weekend.

What the media does seem to know is that the rich confab-goers can indulge in fly-fishing and horseback riding, and many of them stay at a famed Ernest Hemingway haunt, the now $1,200-plus-per-night Sun Valley Lodge, Fortune reported.

Hamilton Nolan wrote in the Guardian in 2021 that Sun Valley is a place where “the billionaires are feted by the mere millionaires; the millionaires drum up enough deals to allow them to buy their third and fourth homes … This is the wondrous model of American capitalism in action — a tiny handful of wealthy people eat cake, and an entire nation gathers downstream, hoping to snatch up a few falling crumbs.”