Affinity Partners, the fund tied to President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, has backed out of Paramount's bid for Warner Bros. Discovery.

• 🔥 The news comes ahead of an expected announcement from the Warner Bros. board that it plans to reject Paramount's latest $30-a-share, all-cash offer for the company.

State of play: If the board does reject Paramount's offer, the onus will be on Paramount to decide whether or not to increase its bid.

• The Warner Bros. board faces a legal deadline of Dec. 22 to respond to Paramount's hostile takeover, but a source tells Axios that a response should come sooner.

Behind the scenes: Affinity Partners never had a substantial stake in the bid, sources tell Axios, but some believed Kushner's affiliation with the Paramount offer could help Paramount with any regulatory scrutiny.

• Kushner is believed to have helped Paramount broker funding relationships with certain sovereign wealth funds.

The big picture: WBD had earlier agreed to a deal with Netflix, where it agreed to sell its studio and streaming assets for an enterprise value of nearly $83 billion.

Go deeper

Databricks today announced it is raising $4 billion in new funding at a $134 billion valuation — 34% higher than where it was valued just three months ago, Axios' Pete Gannon writes.

💵 Why it matters: Databricks' growth shows that companies — from retailers to manufacturers to financial firms — aren't just hyping AI, they're investing in the data infrastructure needed to make it pay off.

The big picture: Databricks helps customers manage their data by building proprietary AI-powered apps — a big tool in helping businesses extract ROI from artificial intelligence.

• 🔥 That business right now is hot, it says.

By the numbers: The company's revenue is up 55% from a year ago, to $4.8 billion, it says.

• Two of its major product areas — data warehousing and AI tools — are each seeing more than $1 billion in revenue run rate, and the company is generating more cash than it spends.
• 700 of its customers are consuming over $1 million annual-revenue run rate, it says.

Zoom out: The funding round also says quite a bit about investment appetite in the private market.

• The round was a Series L, a letter of the alphabet seldom seen attached to fund raises — and the company expects to use some of the capital to provide liquidity for employees.

What we're watching: Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi said in a CNBC interview this afternoon that he wouldn't rule out going public in 2026, and expects the company would be public some day.

💼 Kraft Heinz named Steve Cahillane as its next CEO as the company plans to break up in 2026. He previously served as CEO of Kellogg snacks spinoff Kellanova. (CNBC)

🏭 Volkswagen closed a plant in Germany for the first time in its 88-year history. The automaker has been dogged by excessive costs and bureaucracy for years. (NYT)

💊 Pfizer projected little to no sales growth in 2026. The drug giant is dealing with declining sales of COVID vaccines and treatments. (Bloomberg)

O, Christmas trees are a lot more expensive this year.

• Artificial tree prices are up 10%–15% due to President Trump's tariffs, AP reports, citing the American Christmas Tree Association.

Zoom in: Even a financial wizard like Ebenezer Scrooge couldn't avoid these tariffs: There are very few artificial Christmas trees made in the U.S.

• And tree companies "say they aren't likely to shift large-scale production back to the U.S. after decades in Asia" because the manufacturing process is "labor-intensive" and requires "holiday lights and other components the U.S. doesn't make," AP reports.

💭 Nathan's thought bubble: Please send tips on how to rescue a pre-lit tree with a strand that didn't come back on this year when we plugged it in.