'War of the tech stacks': Paramount and WBD employees brace for internal competition after the merger closes

Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison is on the verge of completing his WBD acquisition.

Mario Tama/Getty Images; Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images; Mario Tama/Getty Images Paramount settled the lawsuits that were slowing down its Warner Bros.

Discovery deal.

Staffers inside Paramount and WBD are bracing for competition as the companies merge.

A longtime WBD staffer said they predict an "internal war of the tech stacks." Employees at Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros.

Discovery are preparing themselves for not-so-friendly competition as their companies merge in the coming weeks .

"It'll be quite competitive to see whose services and teams stick around," a Paramount streaming manager said, reasoning that WBD has "some great engineers and teams doing very similar work to us." Paramount's $110 billion deal to buy WBD gives CEO David Ellison control over a treasure trove of media assets.

HBO, CBS, CNN, TNT, and MTV will live under one roof, as will streamers Paramount+, HBO Max, Discovery+, and free ad-supported service Pluto TV.

Ellison said in a Monday memo to staffers that he hoped to complete the transaction in "approximately two weeks." In the settlement agreement that paved the way for the deal, Paramount pledged to increase its production spending in the US, keep both its movie lot and the Warner Bros. lot, and release a certain number of movies in theaters over the next five years.

Ellison said in the memo that Paramount is still figuring out the logistics of the cross-company integration.

"I know you have questions about what happens next — your role, your team and how we will work day to day," Ellison wrote.

"We don't have all the answers yet, and I won't pretend otherwise." Paramount has spent the last year putting Paramount+ and Pluto TV on a shared tech platform .

Ellison has said that HBO Max will eventually be integrated as well, though it's unclear exactly how that would work.

"I see another internal war of the tech stacks happening," a veteran WBD streaming staffer said, referencing the Warner-Discovery merger that resulted in a new tech platform for HBO Max.