The Secret Retreats That Have CEOs, VIPs and Billionaires Jockeying for Invites

The crowd at the St. Regis hotel in Aspen, Colo., on one weekend last fall was handpicked, and if you had to ask to be invited, you wouldn’t be on the list. Guests, including Ron Howard, Karlie Kloss and Goldman Sachs Chief Executive David Solomon , were given Barbour vests, offered a walk-and-talk with Olympic running champion Allyson Felix, take a golf clinic with professional golfer Michael Block or bike with Gen. David Petraeus. The bike route climbs more than 2,000 feet starting from an 8,500-foot elevation.

One morning, a man in his 50s in a dark sweater was speaking to a group, while his security staff stood off to one side, an attendee recalled. He was Elon Musk , talking with the author of his newly released biography, Walter Isaacson , in an off-the-record conversation moderated by CBS anchor Gayle King. It was one of the hottest tickets on a packed agenda at the ultra exclusive and secretive conference known as the Weekend, co-hosted by Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel and other business, tech and finance leaders.

Musk and others attending the Weekend, and gatherings like it, get to exist for a brief time in a buffered safe space where CEOs, celebrities, athletes and political leaders know that no one will tweet a photo of them working out or waiting in line for Champagne. They are invitation-only, and attendees often arrive via private jet and tinted-out SUVs. The talks are off the record. No one who goes cares what it costs.

“There aren’t that many places for these people to have these conversations,” said Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff , who hosts his own intimately curated gatherings of business leaders and has attended other people’s as well. (In the parlor game of invitations, his dinners can feel like a rung up from anything called a conference.)

It has been 40-plus years since Allen & Co. put on its first so-called summer camp for the billionaire set in Sun Valley, Idaho, now an executive’s rite of passage, and more and smaller and intimate ultra-VIP conferences are exploding on the scene—from media mogul and venture investor Jeffrey Katzenberg ’s in Montecito, Calif., to restaurateur Danny Meyer’s in Tuscany. There are new ones popping up nearly every month.

Helping fuel the desire for invitations is the lore of what Sun Valley has spawned: Sam Altman connected with his most important investor, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella , at Allen & Co.’s annual July conference; Disney finance chief Christine McCarthy and CEO Bob Iger got some facetime over lunch at the same event a different year, a few months before Disney’s board ousted CEO Bob Chapek and reinstated Iger; Jeff Bezos ’ purchase of the Washington Post stems back to Sun Valley moments.

The newer events make the World Economic Forum’s Davos—with its pop-up media spaces and Getty photographers scattered about—look like a Vegas trade expo. There is a summer excursion to Stockholm for the humbly named Brilliant Minds gathering hosted by Spotify CEO Daniel Ek ’s foundation, which some attendees consider the most fun in the elite event lineup.

The Weekend in Aspen is in September, pre-ski season, but invitees to boutique bank LionTree’s conference called MediaSlopes head to Deer Valley, in Park City, Utah, in March and skiing is abundant in Davos in January. Google’s annual VIP camp has been held in Sicily at a resort with four outdoor thalassotherapy pools. The Brilliant Minds gathering included a cruise around Stockholm’s archipelago, and MediaSlopes offered high-intensity exercise classes taught by the CEO of video game company Take-Two, Strauss Zelnick , who prides himself on his physique. There is usually a concert—the Killers and John Mayer have played MediaSlopes (anyone who goes just calls it Slopes).

This account is based on interviews with people who attended the gatherings, event materials and social-media posts.

Benioff, who also owns Time, has attended the Weekend and Allen & Co.’s Sun Valley event, but says he “can’t do them all” and loves to host his own, even more exclusive events.

At Benioff’s gatherings, there is usually “a small group of somewhere between 25 and 35 people around a table,” he said, adding that he’s hired people he has met at such events. At a recent one, restaurateur Eric Ripert of Le Bernardin prepared the food and briefly spoke with attendees. Comedian Jerry Seinfeld performed and so has Japanese rock star and fashion designer Yoshiki. The gatherings have taken place in New York, Japan, Australia, France and the U.K .

Always a celebrity chef, he said. “We actually end up with a regular set of celebrities and entertainment who are our favourites, and there’s just people we feel very connected to,” Benioff said. “There’s the right level of quality.”

Who’s invited, and where?

At last year’s Slopes, which attendees call the cool Sun Valley, Margot Robbie swapped her Barbie pink for black to be jointly interviewed with Mattel CEO Ynon Kreiz by LionTree Chairman and CEO Aryeh Bourkoff. Bourkoff has been one of the most prolific dealmakers in media, including as a lead banker in AT&T ’s 2022 $43 billion spinoff of Warner Media to Discovery. This year, Lionel Richie performed.

The competitive juices flow, too. Univision CEO Wade Davis has won annual slalom races. And there is a game-show style quiz focused on trends in tech, telecom and media. This year included the question: Who is the biggest streamer? (Answer: YouTube)

The Verdura resort, with “230 hectares of sun-kissed Mediterranean coastline” in southern Sicily, has been home base for what’s known as Google camp in recent years—the tech giant’s annual, invite-only retreat.

Google camp’s theme for 2024, according to a bare-bones website, is artificial intelligence’s role in scientific breakthroughs and addressing global challenges. The site doesn’t say if this summer’s camp will also be in Sicily.

Alicia Keys performed one year on a stage set against ancient ruins. YouTube star Lilly Singh snapped a photo amid the ruins with actress Charlize Theron. “We’re going to change the world. @charlizeafrica #GenEndIt #GirlLove ,” @Lilly posted on Instagram. Google owns YouTube.

Google said the majority of guests are customers and partners of Google and discussion sessions make up most of camp. It wouldn’t confirm names.

Jolie Hunt , who advises CEOs among others as founder of marketing and communications firm Hunt & Gather, said she increasingly fields calls from executives and powerful people about which VIP conferences are worth their time, alongside how to get a Birkin bag and book the best driver for Davos.

Part of building the allure of the events is the selective invite lists, with nobody there to pitch their agenda out of turn, some attendees said. Organizers manage the guest list, looking for buzz and mix, and asking for an invite isn’t a good look.

Midnight sun in Sweden

If Sicily didn’t make the calendar, summer’s lineup also includes Stockholm’s Brilliant Minds gathering—the brainchild of Spotify CEO Ek and Swedish entrepreneur Ash Pournouri, who hosted the first one in 2015 before establishing a foundation by the same name three years later.

Actor Jared Leto, Reddit co-founder and startup investor Alexis Ohanian and VaynerMedia CEO Gary Vaynerchuk were among 2022 attendees who boarded a boat for a tour around Stockholm’s archipelago that included a stop on one of the islands for dinner. Their cocktails were garnished with slices of fresh watermelon, and they took in a private concert by Florence & the Machine.

The intention is to bring together creative and influential figures with a goal of creating an impact, a representative for the organisation said. Brilliant Minds’ theme this year is “Discovery,” and so far, Harvard Business School’s Debora Spar , self-help personality Jay Shetty and Stockholm School of Economics Wellbeing, Welfare and Happiness professor Micael Dahlen are expected to present. Past attendees include former President Obama, filmmaker Darren Aronofsky, Snap’s Evan Spiegel , NBA All-Star Draymond Green and Malala Yousafzai.

Anu Duggal, founding partner of the Female Founders Fund who has attended Brilliant Minds and interviewed Trevor Noah and Yousafzai there, said the formal programming runs from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., adding that the gathering emphasises bringing people together through fun experiences. “They take advantage of the natural beauty of Sweden,” noting the late sunsets at that time of year. Her firm invested in a startup that took part in a pitch competition where she served as a judge.

Stagecraft opportunities

Sometimes attending Allen & Co.’s Sun Valley conference is about making a very public statement from a very secluded place. Bill Gates used the gathering in 2021 as a soft launch for his return to public after the announcement of his divorce from longtime wife Melinda French Gates . Gates was spotted walking and chatting with Evan Greenberg , CEO of insurance giant Chubb . Gates wore khakis and a navy sweater, and both business leaders had white name tags.

In the summer of 2021, as reports emerged of a deteriorating partnership between Facebook ’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg and then-Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg , the two appeared in photos strolling together along the lush grounds. Sandberg, in a T-shirt with the words “just love” scrawled in cursive, smiled as Zuckerberg, in a navy hoodie, looked at her, also smiling.

Marc Ganis, founder and president of the sports-industry consulting firm Sportscorp, said he has been attending more invite-only retreats or gatherings than ever before, estimating he attends three or four a year in addition to industry-specific events.

“This is where the ideas for business can be developed,” said Ganis. “What makes one better than the other is who actually attends.”

A relative newcomer is an invite-only conference for sports executives put on by Bruin Capital and Penske Media’s Sportico held on Kiawah Island in South Carolina. Bruin CEO George Pyne and Penske Media CEO Jay Penske bring together about 150 attendees including billionaires, commissioners, team owners and investors to play golf and talk about more than sports. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and the former prime ministers of New Zealand and Finland, Jacinda Ardern and Sanna Marin , spoke this year—the event’s third year—as did former Pimco CEO Mohamed El-Erian .

The world’s biggest advertising agency, WPP, calls Stream, its invite-only event for about 300 invitees, an “unconference.” Attendees, this year in Santa Barbara, Calif., determine discussion topics, which have included “Should we teach robots how to lie?” Its website describes “two days of off-record debate alongside dancing robots; slam poetry; drone races; a space launch” and more.

WPP CEO Mark Read says the event is unique for its lack of PowerPoint slides and that the idea is to foster chance meetings among people in the business. In 2023, Linda Yaccarino spoke after Musk at Stream—a few days before she resigned from NBCUniversal and Musk announced her as X’s new CEO. Also last year, Paris Hilton ran a breakout group, said Read. “We had one famous music executive who turned up and couldn’t deal with the lack of structure and left,” he said.

The surge in exclusive events comes as the World Economic Forum’s conference, held in January in Davos, Switzerland, has ballooned over the past several years. In 2024, more than 800 CEOs and chairs attended Davos, in addition to government leaders and others, according to a WEF spokesperson.

Musk has knocked Davos, tweeting in December 2022 : “My reason for declining the Davos invitation was not because I thought they were engaged in diabolical scheming, but because it sounded boring af lol.” Organizers for the World Economic Forum later said Musk was not among the invited.

But at the Weekend in 2022 Musk got personal. During a conversation with Carlyle Co-Chairman David Rubenstein as Musk’s acquisition of Twitter was pending, Musk said he lost 25 pounds, attendees recounted. He said—in a self-deprecating way—that topless photos of him on a yacht from the summer that circulated around the internet motivated him to lose weight, which he said he did through intermittent fasting.

“It’s craziest when you’re around people like this—there’s always another Champagne room, always another VIP level,” one attendee said, and quipped: “Even the CEO of Goldman Sachs isn’t treated like a VIP. That’s a third-tier guest.”

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is set to make its stock-market debut Friday in the largest IPO ever—and perhaps the most closely watched. The company sold an outsized portion of the offering to individuals. Its performance on Friday will be a crucial gauge of investor appetite for mega-offerings from OpenAI and Anthropic expected later this year.

The rocket maker, which derives most of its revenue from its satellite internet unit and has a nascent artificial-intelligence business, will trade under the ticker “SPCX.” It sold 555.6 million shares at $135 each, raising about $75 billion in a deal that valued the company at roughly $1.77 trillion.

When will shares open for trading?

SpaceX executives are set to ring the Nasdaq’s opening bell in New York, but shares in buzzy initial public offerings don’t tend to start trading until later in the day.

Bankers leading an IPO typically want to match buyers and sellers for about 10% of the shares sold before opening trading to lessen volatility. For SpaceX, that would be about 55 million shares, or roughly $7.5 billion worth.

Because pre-IPO investors are restricted from selling shares for a while, it can take time to find willing sellers among those who bought shares in a high-demand IPO.

Shares of Alibaba , the largest U.S. IPO until SpaceX, opened for trading a little before noon in its 2014 offering. Last year, one of the highest-profile offerings was that of software maker Figma , whose shares started trading just before 2 p.m.

It is possible that SpaceX’s bankers will decide to start trading without matching the typical portion of orders to ensure the shares have several hours of trading on their first day, people familiar with the matter say.

How volatile will the stock be?

Bankers and traders expect SpaceX’s share price could be volatile in initial trading, thanks in part to the large portion of its shares expected to be held by individual investors. Some who anticipate individuals will rush into the shares worry they could just as easily get spooked and rush out.

Any sharp movement in stock price could trigger so-called circuit breakers that could pause trading. For most newly listed companies, a 10% swing in either direction prompts a five-minute pause. Companies that had their shares halted include Figma and Cerebras Systems , the chip company whose shares soared in its May debut.

These forced timeouts applied to single stocks came after the so-called flash crash in 2010, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 700 points in eight minutes before recouping much of the loss.

What is all the talk about the ‘green-shoe’ option?

If the stock starts trading erratically, bankers have a secret weapon to attempt to calm things down.

Underwriters typically sell more shares to investors than an IPO’s total offer size, colloquially called the green shoe. In SpaceX’s case, they sold about 15% more shares than the stated offering size.

Because this means they technically allocated more than the offering amount, the so-called stabilisation agent, in this case, Morgan Stanley , needs to buy back the excess number of shares to deliver them. If the stock starts to fall, the bank will buy the shares in the open market, which helps buoy the stock price. If the stock isn’t faltering, the stabilisation agent can buy the additional shares they need to deliver to investors directly from the company.

The term “green shoe” comes from the first company to employ a version of this method years ago, a shoemaker that was a predecessor to Stride Rite. When Meta Platforms , then known as Facebook, went public in 2012, its shares started dropping and its bankers stepped in to buy more shares.

How will Elon Musk’s take-it-or-leave-it pricing fare?

Like all things Musk, SpaceX’s IPO bucked the norms. Instead of approaching prospective investors with a possible price range for shares ahead of the IPO and incorporating their feedback, the company set an exact share price from the beginning: $135.

The idea was to limit drama for what is already the biggest IPO of all time. It did, however, remove what many see as an important step along the way: price discovery. The success of this approach will partly be judged by how SpaceX’s shares trade Friday. If the stock surges, critics will say SpaceX left money on the table by not pricing shares higher. If the stock falls or trades flat, there will likely be critiques that SpaceX and its advisers overestimated demand.

Will the machinery hold up—and what will be the wider market impact?

The sheer size of SpaceX’s IPO will test the trading infrastructure at Nasdaq and could have ripple effects in the broader market.

Nasdaq has practiced with mock openings to make sure its trading platform is prepared. When Facebook went public, some investors who tried to change or cancel orders ahead of trading didn’t get confirmations because of a technology malfunction. The confusion contributed to Facebook shares dropping on the first day of trading. They didn’t return back above their IPO price for more than a year.

Meanwhile, some market watchers expect added activity Friday in stocks that individual investors might sell to buy SpaceX shares, such as those of technology companies and Musk’s electric-car maker Tesla . Such sales already appeared to be under way earlier in the week, when individual investors dumped single-stock holdings on a net basis for two days in a row, according to Vanda Research. (To be sure, those sales came on days that were poor showings for tech stocks broadly.)

It will take several days for SpaceX shares to show up in any major index funds , so the offering’s wider impact on the market could play out over the next several weeks or longer.