Jeffrey Katzenberg's WndrCo Invests in Kimbal Musk's Drone LightShow Company Todd SpanglerAugust 22, 2025 at 9:00 PM Jeffrey Katzenberg wants to bring new kinds of IRL entertainment to the night sky with Kimbal Musk, the younger brother of tech billionaire Elon Musk.
- - Jeffrey Katzenberg's WndrCo Invests in Kimbal Musk's Drone Light-Show Company
Todd SpanglerAugust 22, 2025 at 9:00 PM
Jeffrey Katzenberg wants to bring new kinds of IRL entertainment to the night sky with Kimbal Musk, the younger brother of tech billionaire Elon Musk.
Katzenberg, the former Hollywood mogul who is founding partner of investment and holding company WndrCo, has joined the board of Kimbal Musk's Nova Sky Stories, a company that produces drone light shows, and will serve as a strategic adviser. Katzenberg's WndrCo is investing an undisclosed amount of funding in Nova "to support the company's continued expansion into large-scale live events, media partnerships and original content production." WndrCo's investment is part of a $50 million round that Nova Sky is currently raising, according to Musk.
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Nova Sky's first "sky story" co-developed with Katzenberg will debut in 2026, touted as a "large-scale public experience." Details will be announced later this year. Katzenberg for now is mum on what he has in mind, but he said, "Think of these as multidimensional, 70-80 minute shows. They are driven by story, with beginnings, middles and ends." Large-scale Nova Sky shows use as many as 10,000 drones.
Katzenberg co-founded and led DreamWorks Animation and before that served as head of Walt Disney Studios and Paramount Pictures. "I've spent a lifetime telling stories on every kind of screen you can imagine, and I'm excited to help Nova explore the newest canvas for great storytelling: the sky," he said.
Kimbal Musk, who serves on the board of Elon's Tesla and SpaceX companies, acquired the light drone division of Intel in 2022 and launched Nova Sky Stories. The company, based in Boulder, Colorado, with a team in Munich, Germany, says it combines "technical innovation with artistic storytelling to craft captivating narratives in the sky through light, music and motion." Intel's drone light-show division produced shows for the 2017 Super Bowl halftime show featuring Lady Gaga and the 2019 Maroon 5 halftime show, as well as the 2021 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. In July 2023, Nova produced drone light shows for what was billed as Dead & Co.'s final tour, and did one for the NBA All-Star Game last year.
Katzenberg first saw Nova Sky's drones in action in 2022 at Burning Man in Nevada, where the company staged a light-show tribute to festival co-founder Larry Harvey. "Kimbal put on this dazzling show, both creatively and technically," said Katzenberg. The two kept in touch and talks earlier this summer led to WndrCo's investment and Katzenberg coming on board as an adviser.
Katzenberg compared the experience of seeing Nova Sky's drone light show to when he saw Pixar's first animated project, "Luxo Jr.," by John Lasseter, in terms of the creative possibilities presented by new technology.
"Nobody else is doing this," Katzenberg said of Nova Sky. "Right now, technology is pulling us into screens. This does the opposite — it pulls us outside, together." That makes Nova Sky's business sound like a 180-degree turn from Quibi, Katzenberg's WndrCo-backed mobile subscription video start-up that shut down less than a year after it launched in 2020 amid the COVID pandemic outbreak. Katzenberg wasn't interested in revisiting Quibi: "That was five years ago!" he said.
Musk, CEO of Nova Sky Stories, said the funding from WndrCo and others will let the company ramp up its drone production, from 10,000 this year to more than 30,000 in 2026. Nova Sky hopes to team with an array of animators and musicians on new drone-based storytelling projects. "The real magic will come from the creatives we bring on who can work in this new medium," Musk said.
Nova Sky has produced drone light shows about outer space, Vincent van Gogh and Antonio Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons." Last year, it sold a total of 6,000 tickets to its shows; this year, Nova Sky is on pace to sell more than 500,000 tickets, Musk said.
Here's a sizzle reel from one of Nova Sky's "Four Seasons" shows in L.A.:
Katzenberg envisions Nova Sky's shows becoming a third revenue stream for stadiums, alongside sports and concerts. He's most excited by how Nova is "using cutting-edge technology" to do something brand new. "The innovations coming in the next 12-18 months will unlock a level of complexity and immersion in live entertainment that anyone has yet to experience," Katzenberg said.
Musk praised Katzenberg as "a once-in-a-generation storyteller." "Jeffrey has shaped the world's most iconic entertainment experiences, and now he's bringing that magic to Nova," he said. "His belief in what we're building — and his decision to join our board and invest through WndrCo — means everything to us."
WndrCo was founded in 2016 by Katzenberg, former Dropbox CFO Sujay Jaswa and Ann Daly, former president of DreamWorks Animation. WndrCo's portfolio includes 1Password, Airtable, Aura, Abridge, Databricks, Deel, Figma, Point Wild and Super Unlimited.
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