Business

A.I. Computing Power Is Splitting the World Into Haves and Have-Nots

Published

8 months ago

June 23, 2025

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A.I. Computing Power Is Splitting the World Into Haves and Have-Nots

Where A.I. Data Centers Are Located

Only 32 nations, mostly in the Northern Hemisphere, have A.I.-specialized data centers.

Source: Oxford University

Note: Count of data centers in China excludes facilities in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Last month, Sam Altman, the chief executive of the artificial intelligence company OpenAI, donned a helmet, work boots and a luminescent high-visibility vest to visit the construction site of the company’s new data center project in Texas.

Bigger than New York’s Central Park, the estimated $60 billion project, which has its own natural gas plant, will be one of the most powerful computing hubs ever created when completed as soon as next year.

Around the same time as Mr. Altman’s visit to Texas, Nicolás Wolovick, a computer science professor at the National University of Córdoba in Argentina, was running what counts as one of his country’s most advanced A.I. computing hubs. It was in a converted room at the university, where wires snaked between aging A.I. chips and server computers.

“Everything is becoming more split,” Dr. Wolovick said. “We are losing.”

Nicolás Wolovick, a computer science professor at the National University of Cordoba in Argentina. “We are losing,” he said.

Sarah Pabst for The New York Times

Artificial intelligence has created a new digital divide, fracturing the world between nations with the computing power for building cutting-edge A.I. systems and those without. The split is influencing geopolitics and global economics, creating new dependencies and prompting a desperate rush to not be excluded from a technology race that could reorder economies, drive scientific discovery and change the way that people live and work.

The biggest beneficiaries by far are the United States, China and the European Union. Those regions host more than half of the world’s most powerful data centers, which are used for developing the most complex A.I. systems, according to data compiled by Oxford University researchers. Only 32 countries, or about 16 percent of nations, have these large facilities filled with microchips and computers, giving them what is known in industry parlance as “compute power.”

The United States and China, which dominate the tech world, have particular influence. American and Chinese companies operate more than 90 percent of the data centers that other companies and institutions use for A.I. work, according to the Oxford data and other research.

In contrast, Africa and South America have almost no A.I. computing hubs, while India has at least five and Japan at least four, according to the Oxford data. More than 150 countries have nothing.

Today’s A.I. data centers dwarf their predecessors, which powered simpler tasks like email and video streaming. Vast, power-hungry and packed with powerful chips, these hubs cost billions to build and require infrastructure that not every country can provide. With ownership concentrated among a few tech giants, the effects of the gap between those with such computing power and those without it are already playing out.

Mr. Wolovick runs one of Argentina’s most advanced A.I. computing hubs out of a converted classroom at his university.

Video by Sarah Pabst for The New York Times

The world’s most used A.I. systems, which power chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, are more proficient and accurate in English and Chinese, languages spoken in the countries where the compute power is concentrated. Tech giants with access to the top equipment are using A.I. to process data, automate tasks and develop new services. Scientific breakthroughs, including drug discovery and gene editing, rely on powerful computers. A.I.-powered weapons are making their way onto battlefields.

Nations with little or no A.I. compute power are running into limits in scientific work, in the growth of young companies and in talent retention. Some officials have become alarmed by how the need for computing resources has made them beholden to foreign corporations and governments.

“Oil-producing countries have had an oversized influence on international affairs; in an A.I.-powered near future, compute producers could have something similar since they control access to a critical resource,” said Vili Lehdonvirta, an Oxford professor who conducted the research on A.I. data centers with his colleagues Zoe Jay Hawkins and Boxi Wu.

A.I. computing power is so precious that the components in data centers, such as microchips, have become a crucial part of foreign and trade policies for China and the United States, which are jockeying for influence in the Persian Gulf, in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. At the same time, some countries are beginning to pour public funds into A.I. infrastructure, aiming for more control over their technological futures.

The Oxford researchers mapped the world’s A.I. data centers, information that companies and governments often keep secret. To create a representative sample, they went through the customer websites of nine of the world’s biggest cloud-service providers to see what compute power was available and where their hubs were at the end of last year. The companies were the U.S. firms Amazon, Google and Microsoft; China’s Tencent, Alibaba and Huawei; and Europe’s Exoscale, Hetzner and OVHcloud.

The research does not include every data center worldwide, but the trends were unmistakable. U.S. companies operated 87 A.I. computing hubs, which can sometimes include multiple data centers, or almost two-thirds of the global total, compared with 39 operated by Chinese firms and six by Europeans, according to the research. Inside the data centers, most of the chips — the foundational components for making calculations — were from the U.S. chipmaker Nvidia.

An Nvidia H100 graphics processing unit.

Marlena Sloss/Bloomberg

“We have a computing divide at the heart of the A.I. revolution,” said Lacina Koné, the director general of Smart Africa, which coordinates digital policy across the continent. He added: “It’s not merely a hardware problem. It’s the sovereignty of our digital future.”

‘Sometimes I Want to Cry’

There has long been a tech gap between rich and developing countries. Over the past decade, cheap smartphones, expanding internet coverage and flourishing app-based businesses led some experts to conclude that the divide was diminishing. Last year, 68 percent of the world’s population used the internet, up from 33 percent in 2012, according to the International Telecommunication Union, a United Nations agency.

With a computer and knowledge of coding, getting a company off the ground became cheaper and easier. That lifted tech industries across the world, be they mobile payments in Africa or ride hailing in Southeast Asia.

But in April, the U.N. warned that the digital gap would widen without action on A.I. Just 100 companies, mostly in the United States and China, were behind 40 percent of global investment in the technology, the U.N. said. The biggest tech companies, it added, were “gaining control over the technology’s future.”

Few Companies Control A.I. Computing

Tiles show total availability zones for A.I. offered by each company, a metric used by researchers as a proxy for A.I. data centers.

Source: Oxford University

The gap stems partly from a component everyone wants: a microchip known as a graphics processing unit, or GPU. The chips require multibillion-dollar factories to produce. Packed into data centers by the thousands and mostly made by Nvidia, GPUs provide the computing power for creating and delivering cutting-edge A.I. models.

Obtaining these pieces of silicon is difficult. As demand has increased, prices for the chips have soared, and everyone wants to be at the front of the line for orders. Adding to the challenges, these chips then need to be corralled into giant data centers that guzzle up dizzying amounts of power and water.

Many wealthy nations have access to the chips in data centers, but other countries are being left behind, according to interviews with more than two dozen tech executives and experts across 20 countries. Renting computing power from faraway data centers is common but can lead to challenges, including high costs, slower connection speeds, compliance with different laws, and vulnerability to the whims of American and Chinese companies.

Qhala, a start-up in Kenya, illustrates the issues. The company, founded by a former Google engineer, is building an A.I. system known as a large language model that is based on African languages. But Qhala has no nearby computing power and rents from data centers outside Africa. Employees cram their work into the morning, when most American programmers are sleeping, so there is less traffic and faster speeds to transfer data across the world.

“Proximity is essential,” said Shikoh Gitau, 44, Qhala’s founder.

“If you don’t have the resources for compute to process the data and to build your A.I. models, then you can’t go anywhere,” said Kate Kallot, a former Nvidia executive and the founder of Amini, another A.I. start-up in Kenya.

Kate Kallot, founder of Amini, an A.I. start-up, at the company’s office in Nairobi, Kenya.

Natalia Jidovanu for The New York Times

In the United States, by contrast, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta and OpenAI have pledged to spend more than $300 billion this year, much of it on A.I. infrastructure. The expenditure approaches Canada’s national budget. Harvard’s Kempner Institute, which focuses on A.I., has more computing power than all African-owned facilities on that continent combined, according to one survey of the world’s largest supercomputers.

Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president, said many countries wanted more computing infrastructure as a form of sovereignty. But closing the gap will be difficult, particularly in Africa, where many places do not have reliable electricity, he said. Microsoft, which is building a data center in Kenya with a company in the United Arab Emirates, G42, chooses data center locations based largely on market need, electricity and skilled labor.

“The A.I. era runs the risk of leaving Africa even further behind,” Mr. Smith said.

Jay Puri, Nvidia’s executive vice president for global business, said the company was also working with various countries to build out their A.I. offerings.

“It is absolutely a challenge,” he said.

Chris Lehane, OpenAI’s vice president of global affairs, said the company had started a program to adapt its products for local needs and languages. A risk of the A.I. divide, he said, is that “the benefits don’t get broadly distributed, they don’t get democratized.”

Tencent, Alibaba, Huawei, Google, Amazon, Hetzner and OVHcloud declined to comment.

The gap has led to brain drains. In Argentina, Dr. Wolovick, 51, the computer science professor, cannot offer much compute power. His top students regularly leave for the United States or Europe, where they can get access to GPUs, he said.

“Sometimes I want to cry, but I don’t give up,” he said. “I keep talking to people and saying: ‘I need more GPUs. I need more GPUs.’”

Few Choices

The uneven distribution of A.I. computing power has split the world into two camps: nations that rely on China and those that depend on the United States.

The two countries not only control the most data centers but are set to build more than others by far. And they have wielded their tech advantage to exert influence. The Biden and Trump administrations have used trade restrictions to control which countries can buy powerful A.I. chips, allowing the United States to pick winners. China has used state-backed loans to encourage sales of its companies’ networking equipment and data centers.

The effects are evident in Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

In the 2010s, Chinese companies made inroads into the tech infrastructure of Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, which are key American partners, with official visits and generous financing. The United States sought to use its A.I. lead to push back. In one deal with the Biden administration, an Emirati company promised to keep out Chinese technology in exchange for access to A.I. technology from Nvidia and Microsoft.

In May, President Trump signed additional deals to give Saudi Arabia and the Emirates even more access to American chips.

A similar jostling is taking place in Southeast Asia. Chinese and U.S. companies like Amazon, Alibaba, Nvidia, Google and ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, are building data centers in Singapore and Malaysia to deliver services across Asia.

Globally, the United States has the lead, with American companies building 63 A.I computing hubs outside the country’s borders, compared with 19 by China, according to the Oxford data. All but three of the data centers operated by Chinese firms outside their home country use chips from Nvidia, despite efforts by China to produce competing chips. Chinese firms were able to buy Nvidia chips before U.S. government restrictions.

Where the World Gets Its A.I.

Companies and countries throughout the world rely mostly on major American and Chinese cloud operators for A.I. facilities.

Source: Oxford University

Even U.S.-friendly countries have been left out of the A.I. race by trade limits. Last year, William Ruto, Kenya’s president, visited Washington for a state dinner hosted by President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Several months later, Kenya was omitted from a list of countries that had open access to needed semiconductors.

That has given China an opening, even though experts consider the country’s A.I. chips to be less advanced. In Africa, policymakers are talking with Huawei, which is developing its own A.I. chips, about converting existing data centers to include Chinese-made chips, said Mr. Koné of Smart Africa.

“Africa will strike a deal with whoever can give access to GPUs,” he said.

If You Build It

An aerial view of the construction underway on an A.I. infrastructure site that is a collaboration between OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle in Abilene, Texas.

Daniel Cole/Reuters

Alarmed by the concentration of A.I. power, many countries and regions are trying to close the gap. They are providing access to land and cheaper energy, fast-tracking development permits and using public funds and other resources to acquire chips and construct data centers. The goal is to create “sovereign A.I.” available to local businesses and institutions.

In India, the government is subsidizing compute power and the creation of an A.I. model proficient in the country’s languages. In Africa, governments are discussing collaborating on regional compute hubs. Brazil has pledged $4 billion on A.I. projects.

“Instead of waiting for A.I. to come from China, the U.S., South Korea, Japan, why not have our own?” Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said last year when he proposed the investment plan.

Even in Europe, there is growing concern that American companies control most of the data centers. In February, the European Union outlined plans to invest 200 billion euros for A.I. projects, including new data centers across the 27-nation bloc.

Mathias Nobauer, the chief executive of Exoscale, a cloud computing provider in Switzerland, said many European businesses want to reduce their reliance on U.S. tech companies. Such a change will take time and “doesn’t happen overnight,” he said.

Still, closing the divide is likely to require help from the United States or China.

Cassava, a tech company founded by a Zimbabwean billionaire, Strive Masiyiwa, is scheduled to open one of Africa’s most advanced data centers this summer. The plans, three years in the making, culminated in an October meeting in California between Cassava executives and Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive, to buy hundreds of his company’s chips. Google is also one of Cassava’s investors.

The data center is part of a $500 million effort to build five such facilities across Africa. Even so, Cassava expects it to address only 10 percent to 20 percent of the region’s demand for A.I. At least 3,000 start-ups have expressed interest in using the computing systems.

“I don’t think Africa can afford to outsource this A.I. sovereignty to others,” said Hardy Pemhiwa, Cassava’s chief executive. “We absolutely have to focus on and ensure that we don’t get left behind.”

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Business

For Disney’s board, a meticulous CEO handoff — not ‘a rigged game’ — was the imperative

Published

5 hours ago

February 4, 2026

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For Disney’s board, a meticulous CEO handoff — not ‘a rigged game’ — was the imperative

Casual conversation in Hollywood often drifted to a familiar question: “Will Bob extend his contract again?”

Walt Disney Co.’s board had initially set Chief Executive Bob Iger’s target retirement date for 2015. The board instead renewed his contract multiple times, then called him back in 2022 — nearly a year after he had retired — when the last leadership handoff famously unraveled.

Disney’s struggles with succession over the decades have become epic dramas filled with false starts, larger-than-life leaders reticent to go and allegations of hollow searches for a new CEO. Twenty-plus years ago, one candidate for the top job — former Ebay and Hewlett-Packard chief Meg Whitman — withdrew from the running, suggesting the fix was in.

Disney’s board at the time wanted to give Iger, a longtime ABC executive who had toiled years in the shadow of former Chief Executive Michael Eisner, a shot.

With all that history, Disney’s board recognized its imperative of choreographing a meticulous transition. Iger, 74, was ready to go, and the process to find his successor was certain to go under the microscope.

“We had to be open — we couldn’t be questioned on it,” Disney Chairman James Gorman told The Times in an interview to shed light on what, until this week, had been a closely guarded boardroom process. “We didn’t just want to have this as a rigged game.”

This week, Disney’s board unanimously approved the selection of 54-year-old parks chief Josh D’Amaro to succeed Iger on March 18 when the company holds its annual meeting with shareholders. The switch will mark the end of an era, as Iger has been a towering presence in Hollywood for more than 20 years.

Two years of planning led up to D’Amaro’s selection. When Iger’s last successor, Bob Chapek, was ousted in November 2022, Disney’s board announced that Iger would return to serve as CEO for just two years.

But a series of high-level executive departures had thinned Disney’s executive bench. The board later acknowledged it needed additional time to plan succession and Iger’s contract was extended again, this time to December 2026.

Disney Chairman James Gorman, former chairman of Morgan Stanley, led the succession search that culminated this week.

(Hollie Adams / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Gorman — a former chairman and chief executive of Morgan Stanley — joined Disney’s board in the fall of 2024. He became chairman in January 2025 and succession planning began in earnest. Unlike in early 2020, when Iger was in charge of the board that tapped Chapek, this time the board formed a succession committee comprised of current and former CEOs of different firms.

The committee, led by Gorman, included General Motors Chief Executive Mary Barra, former CEO of Lululemon Athletica Calvin McDonald; and the former head of Britain’s Sky broadcasting, Sir Jeremy Darroch.

The search began with a list of about 100 potential candidates, Gorman said, including names provided by search firm Heidrick & Struggles. The group eventually culled the list to 30, he said, then narrowed it even more. They met with a few outsiders.

“We wanted to see what was out there … but it’s always difficult to go outside for any company,” Gorman said, adding that typically happens during a crisis, such as an abrupt CEO retirement due to illness or some other unforeseen event.

“You don’t take somebody from the industrials world and plop them in a media company,” he said. “That’s just too big a lift.”

Increasing the challenge, the 102-year-old company has a distinct corporate culture — one that still pays homage to founder Walt and instills in its employees (known internally as cast members) the need to serve as guardians of Disney’s treasured characters and brands.

Any outside pick would have been a risky bet.

Four Disney executives were under evaluation. D’Amaro, television and streaming chief Dana Walden, movie chief Alan Bergman and ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro were all viewed as contenders for the job.

The board spent months sizing up strengths and weaknesses of external and internal candidates. Candidates made presentations to the board, laid out their visions for Disney’s future, received mentoring from Iger and spent hours meeting with Gorman and other succession committee members as well as the full board.

Hopefuls were questioned on their visions for the company. They were quizzed about such topics as teamwork and corporate culture.

“We wanted to know that whomever we picked beat all comers,” Gorman said. “And our people stress-tested unbelievably well. Yes, the [Disney executives] were given a huge advantage because they understand the culture, it’s a very unique culture, but it wasn’t just that.

“They were capable and they were ready,” Gorman said.

The board increasingly became comfortable with D’Amaro — who joined the company 28 years ago in Disneyland’s accounting division. For the past six years, D’Amaro has run Disney’s parks and experiences division, which now is the company’s largest business unit amid the decline of traditional television.

The board also carved out a new role as president and chief creative officer for longtime television executive Walden, 61, who becomes the first woman to serve as Disney’s president.

Gorman said Walden, 61, was impressive.

“She’s a strong leader. She’s decisive. She’s got great creative chops,” Gorman said. “She’s worked well with Alan Bergman as co-chair of entertainment. The idea is to ensure we bring creativity to all parts of the company and in all corners of the world.”

“A new CEO is massively, positively enabled by having their team, if they’re capable,” Gorman said. “And we are blessed with [our team] in place.”

Business

Netflix’s Ted Sarandos grilled in Senate hearing

Published

17 hours ago

February 4, 2026

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Netflix’s Ted Sarandos grilled in Senate hearing

Netflix Inc. Co-Chief Executive Ted Sarandos pledged to maintain a 45-day theatrical window for Warner Bros. films during a Senate subcommittee hearing Tuesday.

Sarandos also tried to dampen concerns about potential job losses and U.S. production declines related to the companies’ proposed multibillion-dollar deal.

During a two-hour hearing before the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights, Sarandos told lawmakers the proposed merger would not run afoul of antitrust concerns and would, instead, “strengthen the American entertainment industry.”

About 80% of HBO Max subscribers also have Netflix subscriptions, which he said showed the two services were “complementary.” Netflix also plans to increase its film and television production spending to $26 billion this year, with a majority of that happening in the U.S., he said.

“We are doubling down, even as much of the industry has pulled back,” Sarandos said, according to a written transcript of his opening remarks. “With this deal, we’re going to increase, not reduce, production investments going forward, supported by a stronger combined business and balance sheet.”

Sarandos was joined at the hearing by Warner Bros. Discovery Chief Revenue and Strategy Officer Bruce Campbell.

When asked by Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) whether senators should expect a “round of layoffs” or consumer price increases as a result of the deal, Campbell said no. He pointed to Netflix’s lack of comparable film and TV studios, or the distribution infrastructure that Warner Bros. has.

“We believe, based on our discussions with them in the negotiation process, that they’re not only going to keep those operations intact, in fact, they’re going to invest in those operations and invest in continued production, including on our lots in Burbank and elsewhere,” Campbell said.

Paramount Chief Executive David Ellison was also invited to appear as a witness, but declined because he did not believe it would be useful or helpful since the company’s bid for Warner had been rejected, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) said during the hearing. Ellison did, however, meet with him and other senators privately to answer questions, Booker said.

Sarandos also tried to assuage concerns about the deal’s potential effect on theatrical distribution.

“I know I’ve earned some skepticism over there over the years on this because I was talking a lot about Netflix’s business model, which was different from that,” he said. “We didn’t own a theatrical distributor before. We do now, and a great one.”

When asked if the 45-day window would be “self-enforced,” Sarandos agreed, saying that was an industry standard. He did, however, note the general caveat that “routinely, movies that underperform, the window moves a little bit” but is still referred to as a 45-day window.

And in a sign of the growing role politics has played in the perception of the deal, Sarandos tried to sidestep questions from Republican senators about perceived “woke” content on the streaming platform, as well as inquiries from Booker about President Trump’s involvement in the merger. Trump previously said he “would be involved” in his administration’s decision to approve any deal.

The hearing comes just two months after Netflix prevailed in a hotly contested bidding war for Warner Bros. The $72-billion deal would dramatically reshape the Hollywood landscape and give the streamer control over Warner Bros.’ storied Burbank film and TV studios, its lot, HBO and HBO Max.

Netflix also agreed to take on more than $10 billion in Warner Bros. debt, pushing the enterprise value of the transaction to $82.7 billion.

But Paramount has continued to pursue the company, fighting to acquire all of Warner Bros. Discovery, including its cable networks.

The company, led by Ellison, has made a direct appeal to Warner shareholders to tender their shares in support of a Paramount deal. A deadline for that offer was recently extended to Feb. 20.

Paramount has also filed proxy materials to ask Warner shareholders to reject the Netflix deal at an upcoming shareholders meeting.

Business

Disney names theme parks head Josh D’Amaro as new CEO

Published

1 day ago

February 3, 2026

Press Room

Disney names theme parks head Josh D’Amaro as new CEO

Walt Disney Co. selected theme parks chief Josh D’Amaro to be the company’s next chief executive, culminating the most closely watched succession drama in Hollywood.

D’Amaro, who has run the company’s pivotal parks and experiences division for six years, will be charged with steering the Burbank entertainment giant through increasingly turbulent times.

He officially becomes chief executive at the company’s March 18 shareholder meeting — replacing Chief Executive Bob Iger, who will hand over the reins after two decades in the top job revitalizing the company.

Iger will stay on as a senior advisor and board member until his retirement from the company when his contract expires in December.

Dana Walden, co-chair of Disney Entertainment, was named the company’s president and chief creative officer, becoming the first woman to serve as president at the 102-year-old company. She will report to D’Amaro.

“Josh D’Amaro is an exceptional leader and the right person to become our next CEO,” Iger said in a statement. “He has an instinctive appreciation of the Disney brand, and a deep understanding of what resonates with our audiences, paired with the rigor and attention to detail required to deliver some of our most ambitious projects.”

D’Amaro, who turns 55 this month, is respected on Wall Street and has long been a favorite among legions of Disney superfans who view him as a charismatic cheerleader for Mickey Mouse, Buzz Lightyear and other inhabitants of the Magic Kingdom.

Within Disney, D’Amaro is known for his consensus-building style, his mastery of Disney’s distinct culture and for safeguarding its beloved brands.

D’Amaro, a native of Massachusetts, joined Disney 28 years ago in Anaheim’s Disneyland accounting department and will become the ninth person to lead the company. He steadily rose through the ranks, working in finance, business strategy and marketing and eventually leading Disneyland and then the larger Disney World Resort in Florida.

A big promotion came in early 2020 when he was entrusted with all of the company’s theme parks, cruise lines and its creative cadre of Imagineers.

His portfolio includes video games and consumer products. He’s overseen numerous high-profile construction projects, including Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge and the Marvel-themed Avengers Campus at Disneyland as well as the current $60-billion expansion of cruise lines and theme parks, which includes plans for a new venture in Abu Dhabi.

In a statement, Disney’s board noted that D’Amaro currently leads Disney’s largest division, which produced $36 billion in the last fiscal year.

He will oversee all of Disney and its workforce of 230,000 as the entertainment colossus tries to soar in the streaming age amid the erosion of the company’s once-mighty legacy cable TV business and a punishing theatrical business climate.

He also must balance the promise of artificial intelligence without allowing it to destroy the value of Disney’s characters and movie franchises. A further challenge is to help Disney navigate the nation’s divisive political landscape.

Succession planning stretched more than two years.

“All of the directors became very comfortable with Josh’s skills, aptitude and readiness,” Disney board Chair James Gorman said in an interview. “Readiness was key, and that’s why we moved at this time. We were ready, Bob was ready to step aside, and he felt like Josh was ready as well as Dana and the whole team.”

Disney noted the board, in a meeting Monday, unanimously selected D’Amaro as CEO.

“D’Amaro’s most immediate priorities will be managing the Parks business through what continues to be a bumpy economic environment, particularly for non-wealthy consumers,” TD Cowen media analyst Doug Creutz wrote in a research report. He will also be tasked with “maintaining creative momentum in the Studios, both at the box office and on Disney+.”

While D’Amaro “lacks experience on the creative side of the business,” Creutz wrote, the promotion of Walden, who is respected in Hollywood, should fill that gap.

“It will however be critical for the two executives to be able to forge a strong partnership,” Creutz said.

Gorman, in the interview, said having a chief creative officer is new for Disney (Iger has largely filled that role without the title). The elevation expands Walden’s purview over Disney’s movie studios and all streaming service content.

“Dana is a strong leader. She’s decisive. She’s got great creative chops and she’s worked well with Alan Bergman as co-chair of entertainment,” Gorman said. “The idea is to ensure we bring creativity to all parts of the company in all corners of the world.”

After Disney’s March meeting, D’Amaro will join the company’s board.

His pay package will be about $38.5 million, consisting of a $2.5-million base salary, a $26.3-million long-term incentive each fiscal year subject to adjustment for performance or economic conditions and a one-time long-term incentive award of $9.7 million. He’s also eligible for an annual performance-based bonus worth 250% of his base pay, which could work out to about $6.3 million.

“Throughout this search process, Josh has demonstrated a strong vision for the company’s future and a deep understanding of the creative spirit that makes Disney unique in an ever-changing marketplace,” Gorman said. “The Board believes he is exceptionally well prepared to guide this global company forward to serve our consumers around the world and create long-term value for shareholders.”

Disney shares recovered slightly from an earlier slump Tuesday, closing at $104.22. Investors had been rooting for D’Amaro to succeed Iger. He bested three other senior executives for the job: Walden; movie studio head Alan Bergman; and ESPN Chair Jimmy Pitaro.

Bergman and Pitaro will continue in their “critical leadership roles” and work with D’Amaro and Walden, the company said Tuesday.

D’Amaro’s elevation comes six years after Disney’s disastrous CEO handoff to then-parks chief Bob Chapek, who was D’Amaro’s boss for many years. Chapek was sacked after less than three years in the job — a chaotic period marked by COVID-19 pandemic closures and battles with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, actor Scarlett Johansson and senior Disney executives.

Iger returned in November 2022 to quell concerns among investors and Disney staff. He has spent the last three years putting the Mouse House back in order, cutting costs with thousands of layoffs and planning for Disney’s future. The changes included transitioning ESPN into a stand-alone streaming app, laying the groundwork for the parks expansion, making a $1.5-billion investment in “Fortnite” developer Epic Games to bolster Disney’s video games and preparing for this week’s long-anticipated succession.

“We have done a lot of fixing, but we’ve also put in place a number of opportunities … to essentially expand at every location that we do business and on the high seas,” Iger said on a Monday earnings call with Wall Street analysts.

CEO of Disney Bob Iger arrives for a conference in 2023 in Sun Valley, Idaho.

(Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images)

Succession has been a top priority for Disney’s board since Gorman, former chair and chief executive of investment bank Morgan Stanley, took over in early 2025 as chair of Disney’s board.

Seeking to avoid another blunder, board members formalized the succession planning, establishing a committee led by Gorman, who instituted a more rigorous evaluation. Gorman and other committee members spent time with the CEO candidates to learn their strengths, weaknesses and visions for the future.

The board’s succession committee comprised Gorman, General Motors CEO Mary Barra, Lululemon Athletica CEO Calvin McDonald and Sir Jeremy Darroch, the former head of Sky broadcasting in Britain.

Iger spent hours mentoring the various candidates, including during Disney’s crisis last September when ABC briefly suspended late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel over remarks in the wake of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s killing.

Iger helped navigate the conflict amid outrage from political conservatives, President Trump and the chair of the Federal Communications Commission. On the other side, free-speech advocates were furious that Disney appeared to be ready to cut ties with Kimmel to appease the Trump administration.

Instead, Kimmel extended his stay through May 2027.

For D’Amaro, part of the challenge will be living up to the standards set by Iger, who helped the company prosper during his long career.

“Iger was really the visionary deal maker and the global brand quarterback,” said Bill Campbell, head of research for Paragon Intel in Connecticut. “D’Amaro is really the builder-operator who can protect the magic and make the machine more predictable.”

But Iger himself noted that D’Amaro would have to chart a new path.

“In the world that changes as much as it does, in some form or another trying to preserve the status quo is a mistake,” he said in the Monday earnings call. “I’m certain that my successor will not do that.”