# Skydance Merger, Rivian Growth, And AI Commerce

**Podcast:** TechCrunch Daily Crunch
**Published:** 2026-10-03

## Transcript

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Where did the name Skydance come from?
Well, it's the name of Ellison's original film production company.
The roughly $110 billion deal is expected to close October 6th.
It'll combine two major Hollywood studios, Paramount Plus and HBO Max, and networks including CBS, CNN, MTV, TBS, Comedy Central, and Food Network.
Skydance will also control franchises such as The Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, The DC Universe, and...
Yellowstone.
The merger followed a drawn-out corporate battle.
Netflix had agreed to acquire Warner Bros.
streaming and studio businesses before the broader Paramount deal moved forward.
Twelve states challenged the deal, arguing it could reduce competition and harm consumers and workers, but a judge approved a settlement with the state attorney's general this week.
Ellison said the Paramount and Warner Bros.
brands will remain central.
We never wanted a new corporate identity to diminish, alter, or overshadow either one, he wrote on X.
The new name, he said, gives the company an identity of its own while letting both studios remain in the spotlight.
Listen up, anti-Tesla fans.
Rivian sold more electric vehicles than ever in the third quarter, thanks in large part to the launch of its new, more affordable R2 SUV.
Now, the company said Friday morning that it built 19,751 vehicles and delivered 19,248.
That's roughly 45% more than it delivered in the same period last year.
Now, while Rivian didn't break out how many of those were R2 SUVs, this was the first full quarter of sales of the new vehicle after it launched in June.
On Friday, the company said that it'll release its full third-quarter financial results on October 29th.
Now, Rivian has big plans for the R2, which currently starts at just under $60,000.
The company is betting that it will sell between 20,000 to 25,000 R2 vehicles by the end of the year, which would make it one of the fastest-selling EVs in the good ol' U.S.
of A's history.
It's second only to Tesla's Model Y.
Rivian also plans to make cheaper models available that'll cost as low as around $45,000.
If Rivian hits those numbers, the company believes it can sell between 65,000 and 70,000 vehicles this year, including its R1 lineup of vehicles and its commercial electric van.
That would be its best sales year.
ever, as the company has spent the last few years stuck at around the 50,000 vehicles sold mark.
Rivian is currently building the R2 at its factory in Normal, Illinois, where it recently expanded the production space to accommodate the new SUV.
But Rivian's also building a brand new factory outside Atlanta, Georgia, where it expects to be able to build as many as 300,000 vehicles per year in the near future, with the option to expand that capacity down the road.
Rivian needs the R2 to sell well in order to staunch years of heavy losses due in part to the company's expensive infrastructure required to support this mass-market vehicle.
Shopify introduced a new site-building tool Thursday called Canvas that lets merchants set up their Shopify store by chatting with AI.
Now, while Shopify already offered a fairly capable no-code builder before Canvas, it involved editing a selected theme by rearranging modular sections and blocks.
Deeper customization, however, would require editing code or bringing in a developer.
Well, now, with Canvas, merchants simply chat with Shopify's AI agent, Sidekick, to create their site.
As the AI makes changes, Canvas displays the results in real time, allowing merchants to see how the store looks overall as it comes together or zoom in to focus on certain details.
Notably, this isn't a static preview, but the real code behind their store being rendered according to Shopify.
That means merchants can test the page's full interactivity and animation and view pages as they'd appear across different screen sizes.
Sidekick also takes screenshots of the work so it can see the same thing the merchant sees as the site updates.
Canvas's launch, well, it's part of a broader shift toward a future where building a website no longer requires coding it directly.
It joins numerous other AI-powered site-building tools from companies like Wix, Squarespace, Webflow, and Framer, alongside Vibe coding platforms like Lovable and Replit.
In the future, as it becomes more robust, Canvas could make becoming an online seller more accessible to those who don't have the budget for developers and designers or the time to learn code.
And folks, that's your Daily Crunch.
Today's stories were reported by Sarah Perez, Sean O'Kane, Lauren Forrestal, and more awesome TechCrunch journalists.
We'll see you here next week.
And until then, find us at TechCrunch.com.