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In this articleAAPLApple CEO, Tim Cook waves as he opens the door of the newly renovated Apple Store at Fifth Avenue on September 20, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Kena Betancur / AFP) (Photo credit should read KENA BETANCUR/AFP via Getty Images)KENA BETANCUR | AFP | Getty ImagesAs AT&T and Discovery discussed putting together their content assets, they specifically structured a deal to give the combined company flexibility to merge or sell down the road — perhaps to Apple.Apple is one of the few companies that has the balance sheet to buy WarnerMedia-Discovery, a company that will likely have a market capitalization of more than $100 billion when it begins trading publicly next year, assuming regulatory approval.But it’s not clear whether Apple has any interest in a major media acquisition. The company’s history suggests Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook would shy away from a huge deal. Apple’s biggest deal ever was a mere $3 billion — for headphones maker Beats Electronics in 2014. To put that in perspective, Apple has a market valuation of more than $2.1 trillion.Apple’s growing market power is also under increasing scrutiny by regulators and has been the subject of a recently concluded court trial brought by Fortnite maker Epic. Shelling out $100 billion or more for an external company may sound alarm bells with politicians that Cook would rather not ring.But, to quote a frequently used investment phrase, past performance is no guarantee of future results. Apple has made a relatively small investment in original content, with such series as “Ted Lasso” and “The Morning Show,” and Apple TV+ remains a minnow among streaming giants Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney and the newly combined WarnerMedia-Discovery. If Apple wants to compete, the easiest way forward is to buy a media giant — and there are already some historical ties between WarnerMedia and Apple.The Apple-Time Warner talksIn 2015, Cook, Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of internet software and services, Jeff Bewkes, CEO of the then-named Time Warner, and former Time Warner Executive Vice President Olaf Olafsson met to discuss partnership opportunities around Apple exclusively offering Time Warner’s content, according to people familiar with the matter. The meetings were reported by the Financial Times in 2016, but CNBC has learned of additional details.The four executives discussed offering Turner and HBO content outside of the cable bundle for about $19 per month, said a person familiar with the contents of the conversation, who asked not to be named because the discussions were private. While Time Warner was already offering HBO Go separately from the traditional pay-TV ecosystem for $15 per month, taking CNN, TBS, TNT and other Turner networks outside of the broader cable bundle would have been a groundbreaking step.Even today, nearly six years later, consumers can’t buy a monthly subscription to a company’s linear networks separate from the larger cable bundle. The broader idea of selling direct-to-consumer has taken over the media ecosystem, with every major media company offering a streaming product of its own.The executives discussed the possibility of Apple being the exclusive provider of the offer, giving Apple device users the ability to purchase the Time Warner bundle through the iTunes store.Over a series of weeks, both Apple and Time Warner soured on the idea. Taking Turner’s networks outside the cable bundle would likely have led to a chorus of angry pay-TV distributors who thought they were paying for exclusive content. And Apple already offered media content — movies and TV shows — from a large number of media companies through the iTunes store. Time Warner wanted Apple to market the bundle globally, but Apple was hesitant to annoy its other media partners.During the talks, Bewkes and Cook broached the subject of Apple acquiring Time Warner to deal with one of the biggest hurdles of the $19-per-month concept: What if Apple or Time Warner eventually wanted to back out? Once the companies went live with the offer, they’d need to stay aligned. Walking away from the deal could be disastrous to both companies’ external relationships.Cue expressed interest in a full acquisition, but Cook ultimately wasn’t ready to pull the trigger on what likely would have been a nearly $100 billion deal, two of the people said. Neither Bewkes nor Cook had initially expected the talks to lead to thoughts of an acquisition, said the people. Time Warner had successfully fought off a hostile takeover offer from Fox a year earlier.A year later, in late 2016, Bewkes agreed to sell Time Warner to AT&T for more than $105 billion including debt.A spokesman for Apple declined to comment.Another connection: Richard PleplerApple has another significant tie to WarnerMedia — former HBO chief Richard Plepler.Plepler left HBO after disagreeing with current AT&T CEO John Stankey about the direction of the premium network, as detailed by CNBC last year.Months later, he signed a five-year deal with Apple TV+ to produce TV series, documentaries and feature films exclusively for the streaming service. The coronavirus pandemic delayed the production of most of Plepler’s efforts, but some of his work at Eden Productions is beginning to trickle out, such as the limited series “In With The Devil,” starring Greg Kinnear, Sepideh Moafi, Taron Egerton and Ray Liotta.If Cook wants to know inside details about HBO, he’s got someone on his payroll to ask.Apple TV+ accounts for just 3.7% of the company’s total services revenue, according to Barclays analyst Tim Long. Free trial periods end in July, which is likely to lead to increased churn. Apple TV+ probably had about 40 million total subscribers — many on free trials — at the end of 2020, Barclays estimated.”Overall, Apple TV+ has underperformed versus original expectations after its launch at the end of 2019,” Long said in a note to clients. “We think Apple’s budget for producing original content is far below the amount Netflix has spent in the last decade. It could take years and still not move the needle.”If Apple wants to stay in the streaming video world, Cook may need to buck the company’s history of avoiding big-money M&A. The WarnerMedia-Discovery deal isn’t expected to close until mid-2022. That gives Cook a year to do some serious thinking about his company’s future.WATCH: CNBC’s full interview with Discovery CEO David Zaslav and AT&T CEO John Stankey

It’s been reported that a $10 billion bid made by Microsoft for gaming platform Discord fell apart. Discord CEO and co-founder Jason Citron can’t talk about it — he’s under non-disclosure agreements — but he did tell CNBC on Tuesday that there was more than a single offer for his internet chat start-up, which is turning into a much bigger communications phenomen for voice, video and text.”We did receive a lot of offers,” Citron said. “Our business is doing really well and we believe we are positioned to build a next-generation communications service.”Citron and his Discord co-founder Stanislav Vishnevskiy started the business as a platform for gamers, like Citron himself, frustrated by internet communications technology that he says wasn’t keeping up with the pace of change. Many used services like Microsoft’s Skype to communicate and six years ago, the company was focused on creating a way for people who played video games to hang out and talk to each other in a better way.But a lot has changed.”Now we see all these people using it in new ways,” Citron said of the company, which ranked No. 3 on the 2021 CNBC Disruptor 50 list.More coverage of the 2021 CNBC Disruptor 50Meet the 2021 CNBC Disruptor 50 companiesWhy Robinhood is the No. 1 companyA look back at the CNBC Disruptor 50: 9 years, 233 companiesWhen disruption becomes a force for good — and badHow we choose Disruptor companiesUsers are talking about TV shows on Discord, and many other communities of interest, from photography enthusiasts to people focused on learning a foreign language, are on the platform.That isn’t going to slow, Citron says, even if the pandemic ends and people return to more open, active lives.”Last year was obviously an outlier for many technology companies and humanity,” Citron said, and he added that resulted in a tripling of revenue for Discord. But he says the longer-term growth trend isn’t going away. “People spending more time online will continue. … at the end of the day, work day … school day … people will still want to spend quality time with friends and communities to study, play video games, or talk about ‘The Bachelor.'””We see tremendous opportunity to grow the business model,” he said.The San Francisco-based company claims about 150 million active users per month. Discord sells subscriptions to a premium service that allows customized profiles and high-resolution images and videos for $9.99 per month or $99.99 per year.The Discord app is seen on an iPhone in this photo illustration in Warsaw, Poland on April 3, 2021.Jaap Arriens | NurPhoto | Getty ImagesThe Discord CEO thinks the future will be one in which it wins by creating a better user interface for the equivalent of physical rooms on the internet, not just messaging technology. That room could be an auditorium, library, dorm, cafe or restaurant, and in the future, that space will be created, and experienced, virtually.Discord calls it Stage channels, and it is not the only company chasing new techniques for social media connection. Twitter has its Spaces platform and Clubhouse, ranked No. 33 on this year’s CNBC Disruptor 50 list, is also creating a new kind of audio app experience and growing quickly. Facebook also is readying its live audio product.Citron says many Discord users today experience it in smaller groups of friends, say six to 10 people, but the bigger communities around topics of interest — which can be as specific as people who like photographing trains — is a major focus of development efforts.”For many years people have been hosting large panels and Q&As and trying to use our service to make it work, and it’s been a little hard,” Citron said.The company has incorporated a new user interface and there is more to come in audio to make the experience better for communities to host talks, which will increase discovery on the platform. “So you can find the public conversations happening all around Discord. And we will allow communities to monetize it,” Citron said.SIGN UP for our weekly, original newsletter that goes beyond the list, offering a closer look at CNBC Disruptor 50 companies, and the founders who continue to innovate across every sector of the economy.