Warren Buffett and Diane Von Furstenberg arrive for Sun Valley day two

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Warren Buffett, Diane Von Furstenberg and husband Barry Diller were among those spotted arriving for day two of the Sun Valley ‘billionaire’s summer camp’ where the estimated wealth of attendees surpasses $700 billion.

Big names and moguls in tech, business, film and media have been descending on Sun Valley, a tiny resort town in rural Idaho, for the annual five-day conference put on by Allen & Company.

Buffett, the 90-year-old CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, was spotted on Wednesday being escorted to the conference in a golf cart. 

Belgian fashion designer Diane Von Furstenberg, 74, and her IAC chairman husband Barry Diller, 79, strolled in together for one of the conference’s morning sessions.

Others who were spotted arriving for the day two events included Snap Inc.’s Evan Spiegel, Rupert Murdoch’s ex-wife Wendi Deng, ViacomCBS Chair Shari Redstone, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and his girlfriend Dana Blumberg, and Alice and Olivia CEO Stacey Bendet. 

Among the major figures who have already made an appearance include Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Netflix Co-CEOs Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos, CBS News’ Gayle King, CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Nike CEO John Donahoe and ex-Disney CEO Michael Eisner.

Others who are rumored to be attending include Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, his successor Andy Jassy, Apple’s Tim Cook, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft’s Bill Gates.  

A jet belonging to Bezos was spotted arriving at the airport but the billionaire has not yet been spotted publicly. 

Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley are also expected to attend. Robert Thomson, chief executive of News Corp, is also among the invitees, as is Fox Corp. Chief Operating Officer John Nallen.  

An estimate based on the latest available figures puts the total wealth of those known to be in attendance and those rumored to be attending at more than $700 billion.  

The elite gathering, which brings together top names from various industries each year, was canceled last year due to COVID-19.

This year, the event – running from July 6 to 10 –  includes strict COVID measures, including proof of vaccination, onsite testing and outside meetings to minimize any potential spread. 

Over the holiday weekend, private jets belonging to attendees began arriving and taking up space on the tarmac at Friedman Memorial Airport in Hailey as they parked up for the week.

From there, guests were chauffeured the 15 miles to the lodge at the edge of Idaho’s Sawtooth National Forest in a tiny town of just 1,500. 

The event is where major business deals have been made in the past.  

Discovery’s David Zaslav has already teased some potential business deals, saying that more might follow after the announcement in May of its $43billion merger deal with AT&T’s entertainment arm WarnerMedia.

‘We’re not done yet,’ he told the New York Post as he entered the conference, saying he’ll continue to search for more viable mergers once the deal is closed in eight months.

‘There’s a lot of assets out there that have good IP that will probably get new homes.’ 

In May, AT&T said it was spinning off WarnerMedia which is made up from HBO, the Warner Bros. film and TV studio along with the cable networks of TNT and TBS into a new venture being formed with Discovery. 

The following week, Amazon announced its intention to acquire MGM studios. 

Previous deals that have their roots at Sun Valley include the 1995 purchase of Capital Cities/ABC by Disney, Comcast’s acquisition of NBCUniversal in 2009, the purchase of AOL by Verizon in 2015, and Jeff Bezos’ purchase of The Washington Post in 2013.

The conference began in 1982, and in its early days founder Herbert Allen – who co-founded Allen & Company with brother Charles – had to beg invitees to come.