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• Next week, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang will take the stage at its annual GTC conference.
• Investors expect updates to the new inference chip and GPU roadmaps.
• Geopolitics could shape Nvidia’s future as much as demand.

Nvidia’s GTC conference has become its biggest stage for outlining the future of AI.

The annual event increasingly attracts a broader crowd. At past gatherings, with Denny’s pop-ups and Taiwan-inspired night markets, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has unveiled sweeping product roadmaps for its GPUs and other AI chips. It’s also announced major pacts with tech giants and governments alike.

This year’s event comes on the heels of a blockbuster earnings report that barely nudged the company’s stock and raises questions about how long the AI spending boom can last.

Polymarket users are even wagering how many times Huang will utter phrases like “GPU” onstage.

Here’s what analysts and investors will be watching:

1. A new inference chip

Inference, or running trained models, is AI’s next act. Expect Nvidia to make a big statement as competitors — from cloud giants to a slew of chip startups — encroach on this space.

Huang previously teased “several new chips the world has never seen before,” and The Wall Street Journal reported in February that Nvidia is readying an inference-focused product incorporating technology from AI startup Groq, with OpenAI expected to be a key customer.

The chip’s design could have big supply chain implications. Inference relies heavily on memory, and with high bandwidth memory (HBM) in tight supply, investors will see whether Nvidia leans more on SRAM — a fast, on-chip memory used in inference designs — rather than solely relying on HBM.

Sid Sheth, founder and CEO of inference chip startup d-Matrix, said that while Nvidia will stay dominant in training, “inference is a different ballgame.”

He added that CUDA, Nvidia’s software that underpins most AI training and has locked developers into its ecosystem, is less of a moat in inference. Developers can turn to competitors other than Nvidia because running finished AI models doesn’t require the same kind of programming as training them, he said.

2. Life after Rubin

Nvidia has announced its next-generation Rubin Ultra systems. Rubin is expected to require far more power than past generations, and investors will eagerly see how Nvidia manages the transition and whether cloud giants will support it, said Sebastien Naji, a research analyst at William Blair.

Naji is also listening for what comes next: the Feynman generation. The big architectural breakthrough expected here is “copackaged optics,” or the use of light — not electricity — to move data between chips. This reduces power consumption and enables larger AI infrastructure clusters.

Earlier this month, Nvidia announced it secured multibillion-dollar supply agreements with optical component companies Coherent and Lumentum, signaling how central the technology could become in future systems.

3. Can agents and robots keep the AI Gold Rush alive?

As Nvidia matures, investors increasingly focus on durability rather than breakneck growth, said Brian Mulberry, chief market strategist at Zacks Investment Management.

Huang has emphasized agentic AI as the next driver of inference demand, a trend that recently reverberated across software stocks. Sheth, the d-Matrix CEO, says that’s only the beginning, with voice, video, and multimodal agents that have yet to show their potential.

“We haven’t even started,” he said of a forthcoming inference wave.

Robotics could add yet another layer, said Daniel Newman, CEO of The Futurum Group. Sometimes seen as a longer-term bet, he noted that Nvidia reported roughly $6 billion in robotics-related revenue last quarter and is predicting an “aggressive” timetable for humanoids.

4. The geopolitics of GPUs

Huang has entered the political fray at past GTCs, and the landscape is shifting rapidly.

Nvidia halted production of H200 chips for China and shifted capacity to its next-generation Rubin platform, The Financial Times reported. At the same time, the US is weighing export restrictions on AI chips that could turn it into a gatekeeper for international sales.

With China constrained, Newman said international markets are meaningful to Nvidia, pointing to massive AI infrastructure commitments in Saudi Arabia and the UAE — though conflicts in the Middle East have raised questions about sovereign demand, supply chains, energy costs, and the pace of data center buildouts.

In a world where AI is becoming a geopolitical tool, policy could shape Nvidia’s future as much as demand.

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• The US is lifting its sanctions on Russian oil for about four weeks to relieve surging prices.
• Scott Bessent said the move would “not provide significant financial benefit” to Russia.
• Sanctioning Russian oil is a key lever the West uses to pressure Moscow’s ability to invade Ukraine.

The US Treasury Department is lifting Russian oil sanctions until April 11, as the Trump administration seeks to relieve global crude supplies choked by war in the Middle East.

A notice issued by the department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control on Thursday laid out a roughly four-week window authorizing the “sale, delivery, or offloading of crude oil or petroleum products” from Russia.

The move eases a yearslong effort by the US and its allies to squeeze Russia’s finances in response to its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Moscow, however, has still benefited from its energy trade by quietly transporting it via what the West has called a “shadow fleet” of third-party tankers. Taxing the industry typically accounted for nearly half of its federal budget revenues before 2022.

An analysis from Urgewald, a German NGO, showed Russia’s fossil fuel export revenues averaged 510 million euros, or $587 million per day in the week following the strikes — 14% higher than the daily average in February.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Thursday that Russia stood to benefit from the temporary lifting of sanctions, but described the gains as limited in scale.

“This narrowly tailored, short-term measure applies only to oil already in transit and will not provide significant financial benefit to the Russian government, which derives the majority of its energy revenue from taxes assessed at the point of extraction,” he wrote in a post on X.

Brent crude oil prices were 0.6% higher at $101.07 per barrel at 11:16 p.m. on Thursday, while US West Texas Intermediate was 0.4% higher at $96.15 per barrel.

The US and Israel launched a massive airstrike campaign against Iran on February 28, attacking over 5,500 targets with land, sea, and air assets. Iran has, in turn, vowed to block the Strait of Hormuz, the critical waterway serving the Persian Gulf, which accounts for about a fifth of the world’s crude oil.

Traffic in the strait has plummeted in the past week amid over a dozen reports of commercial vessels being attacked in its vicinity.

Despite sweeping Western sanctions imposed after the invasion of Ukraine, Russia has reoriented much of its energy exports away from Europe and toward alternative partners in Asia, notably China and India, where discounted Russian crude has become a major source of demand.

Last week, the US granted a temporary 30-day waiver to allow Indian refiners to purchase Russian oil.

Ukraine and its allies have long raised concerns about Russia’s ability to muster resources from its global energy trade to feed its war manufacturing industry. The Kremlin is now spending record amounts of its federal budget on defense, reaching 6.3% of its GDP in 2025.

Daily revenues of $587 million would be the equivalent of about 11,000 to 29,000 of Russia’s Shahed-136 one-way attack drones, based on estimates that the loitering munitions cost $20,000 to $50,000 each.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly warned Iran that continuing to impede traffic along the strait would incur further US military action.

But Tehran has maintained a defiant posture, retaliating with drone and missile attacks on its neighbors and US forces in the region. Reports say it’s also begun to sparsely lay mines along the strait, which would further delay an opening of the strait by forcing the US and its allies to meticulously sweep for and clear explosives.

On Thursday, the new Iranian supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, issued a statement through a newscaster that his government would continue blocking the strait.

• Burned out during the pandemic, Gina Lai left her healthcare role in Toronto and returned to university.
• After completing her second degree, she decided to move to Hong Kong for a new start.
• She and her fiancé live in a one-bedroom apartment, which costs about $3,360 a month.

Gina Lai wasn’t expecting to make three major life changes before turning 30. But within the span of four years, she quit her healthcare career, went back to school, and moved across the world to Hong Kong.

It all started during the height of the pandemic, when Lai was working as an ultrasound technician in a Toronto hospital. The emotional toll of the job weighed heavily on her.

“That experience was so bad for my mental health that I decided that I couldn’t do this forever,” Lai, 28, told Business Insider.

After two years, she left and enrolled in a fitness and nutrition program. It felt like a natural transition: Lai had been working part time at a gym since college to help pay off student loans, and continued even after landing her full-time hospital job.

“I wanted to make more of an impact on people’s health in terms of prevention.”

After finishing her degree, she felt unsure of her next step. Becoming a registered dietitian would likely mean returning to a clinical setting — something she’d chosen to leave.

Around the same time, in January 2024, Lai’s partner moved to Hong Kong on a yearlong work contract. For about six months, they were in a long-distance relationship.

“I saw how exciting things were for him, and wondered what it would be like if I moved there, too,” Lai said. “I was contemplating what my next thing was, and I was like, well, if I don’t have anything set here, why not just try things out in Hong Kong?”

In June that same year, she moved over to Hong Kong on the Top Talent Pass visa, which allows qualified professionals and graduates from top universities to live and work there.

Moving to Hong Kong

Before moving, Lai had only passed through Hong Kong on a layover. Still, knowing her partner was already there made the leap feel less daunting.

With no kids or a mortgage tying her down, Lai felt like it was a good time to try something new.

“Worst-case scenario, I don’t like it, and I move back,” she said.

The original plan was to stay for six months, until her now-fiancé’s contract was up. The visa didn’t require her to have a job lined up, so Lai treated the move as a postgrad break.

But within the first week of arriving in Hong Kong, she found herself growing restless. She started applying for jobs at local gyms and landed a role as a personal trainer, nutritionist, and Pilates instructor.

“I just got busy with work, and because I enjoy the space and I really like the team, I was like, OK, I think maybe I could stay longer than six months and see how things go,” she said.

Six months turned into a year, and she’s now nearing two years in the city. She and her fiancé live in a one-bedroom apartment — their second place in Hong Kong.

Rent is 26,300 Hong Kong dollars monthly, or about $3,360. Their building has amenities like a gym and a pool.

Compared to their previous studio, their current home — about 360 square feet — is roughly three times larger, she said.

Hong Kong consistently ranks among the world’s priciest housing markets. Government data from March shows that apartments smaller than 40 square meters on Hong Kong Island rent for an average of about HK$517 per square meter, or roughly HK$48 per square foot.

Her apartment is situated on the west side of Hong Kong Island, in a laidback neighborhood that houses a mix of locals and expats.

“I mostly walk because everything is within the neighborhood, but if I go to appointments or to explore, I usually just take the subway, which is very, very convenient,” she said.

Safety in Hong Kong has also been a huge plus point, she added: “Generally, I find that I don’t have to kind of be on edge.”

Life in a new city

Adjusting to life in Hong Kong wasn’t seamless, and the language barrier was the first hurdle. Though Lai can speak a different Chinese dialect, she isn’t fluent in Cantonese — the main spoken language in Hong Kong — or Mandarin.

“Being in Canada, I always felt, oh, I’m not Canadian enough, because when people look at me, I’m just Chinese. But here I was like, oh, I don’t feel Chinese enough,” she said.

The nature of her job helped her build connections quickly. She attends monthly team dinners with coworkers, and some of the clients she initially trained have become close friends.

“I’ve been able to have a solid base when it comes to community,” she said.

One of the highlights about living in Hong Kong is how much there is to do, including scenic hiking trails just outside the urban areas, she said.

Looking back, Lai said the move forced her out of her comfort zone and helped her grow.

“Life is too short, and worst case scenario, you just go back to what you’re used to. But the experience of moving can open a lot of doors for you emotionally and mentally,” she said. “The world is just so big, and I feel like we should take the time to explore if we can.”

With their wedding set for next fall, the couple is considering returning to Canada to plan for the celebration and be closer to family. At the same time, they’re not certain they’re ready to leave Hong Kong behind.

Do you have a story to share about relocating to a new city? Contact this reporter at agoh@businessinsider.com.

• Some large companies are attributing recent mass layoffs to advancements in AI.
• Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he expects to hire more people as robotics boost productivty.
• The “output” per Tesla worker will get “nutty high,” Musk said.

As companies conduct AI-induced layoffs, Elon Musk expects to do the exact opposite at Tesla.

The CEO said during the Abundance Summit on Wednesday that workforce reductions aren’t in the cards for Tesla and that he expects to raise headcount, after entrepreneur Peter Diamandis asked when he expects robots to build robots.

“We’re not planning any layoffs or reductions in personnel,” Musk said. “In fact, we will increase our headcount. But the output per human at Tesla is going to get nutty high.”

Companies across industries are shedding employees, from administrative workers to engineers, and attributing the layoffs to advancements in AI.

Atlassian, an enterprise software company, announced Wednesday that it would cut 10% of its workforce as it invests in AI to reshape its workforce.

Block, a financial technology company co-founded by Jack Dorsey, laid off 40% of its workforce, or 4,000 employees, this month, citing AI as the main driver.

Musk himself has frequently said that advancements in robotics will eliminate the need for humans to have jobs. One of Tesla’s main bets is Optimus, a humanoid robot.

The CEO has advocated for a universal basic income because he predicts robots will fully take over the production of goods and services.

“We’ll basically just issue money to people,” Musk said at the summit, “because the output of goods and services will so far exceed the money supply that we’ll effectively have deflation.”

Automakers, including Tesla, are investing in humanoids and other robotics to fill in for manufacturing jobs.

Agility Robotics’ chief business officer, Daniel Diez, previously told Business Insider that companies are looking to robotics to fill labor gaps, particularly for jobs with highly repetitive physical tasks.

A Tesla spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

• Lucid Motors shared more details for its plans with robotaxis and autonomy in personal cars.
• The company unveiled a two-seater robotaxi called Lunar that would compete with Tesla’s Cybercab.
• The EV maker also had updates on its robotaxi partnership with Uber and road map for self-driving

Lucid Motors is making a big swing toward autonomy, pursuing self-driving in personal cars and a two-seater robotaxi that would rival Tesla’s Cybercab.

During the company’s investor day in New York City on Thursday, interim CEO Marc Winterhoff said Lucid Motors’ investment in robotaxis and autonomy will play a key role in bringing the company to profitability.

“L4 is our north star — to get there as fast as possible,” he said, “and in the end, be a profitable company and cash-flow positive.”

Lucid Motors executives laid out the road map for its robotaxi, which includes a “business-to-business” strategy partnering with companies like Uber, and a timeline for deploying self-driving technology for consumer vehicles by 2029.

With its current portfolio of luxury EV sedans and newly announced investments in midsize SUVs and autonomous driving, Lucid said in its presentation that it expects to target a market that will grow to more than $700 billion by 2035.

Here are the five biggest announcements the EV maker made on autonomy.

Uber partnership deepens

Lucid’s robotaxi partnership with Uber may go beyond the Gravity SUVs that the ride-hailing company has agreed to use for its self-driving fleet.

Lucid said it’s entering the midsize EV market, directly competing with the Tesla Model Y, with two new cars called Lucid Cosmos and Lucid Earth. Starting prices for the EVs will be under $50,000, the company said.

With those midsize SUVs, Lucid said it’s in “advanced discussions” with Uber to scale the ride-hailing company’s robotaxi vehicle platform.

Lucid announced last year that it committed 20,000 Gravity units for Uber’s robotaxis, while the ride-hailing giant has invested $300 million into the EV maker.

Lucid robotaxis set for 2026 launch

The company reaffirmed on Thursday that the commercial launch of Uber’s robotaxi service, through a partnership with Nuro and Lucid, is “on track” for late 2026.

Lucid’s VP of autonomy and advanced driver assistance systems, Kai Stepper, said on Thursday that Uber has been given 80 Gravity SUVs within the past half year for data collection and testing in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Lucid will take on Tesla’s Cybercab

Lucid unveiled a concept for its two-seater robotaxi called “Lunar.”

The car is purpose-built, much like Tesla’s Cybercab or Zoox’s robotaxi, which means the vehicle has no pedals or steering wheel. The concept car that was shown during the presentation included a large console screen that stretched across the dashboard.

Winterhoff said the Lunar will be based on the same platform as the new midsize EVs, allowing for quick ramp-up of production.

The executive said the company expects operating costs to be 40% lower than the robotaxis in the current market; although he did not specify an operator.

Lucid did not explicitly say whether Lunar would be deployed through its partnership with Uber, but Winterhoff revealed the concept car during his conversation with Andrew Macdonald, Uber’s chief operating officer.

“First of all, I feel like I’m sitting in a personal theater with a comfy chair and lots of leg room and the media center in front of me,” Macdonald said. “Second of all, I think our customers are going to love it.”

‘Full Self-Driving’ tech comes to Lucid

Lucid is also betting on self-driving in personally owned cars, outlining a timeline for fully autonomous driving, or Level 4 autonomy, during its investor day.

The company said it expects to deploy hands-free highway driving in the second quarter of 2026; hands-free highway and city driving by 2027; Level 3 autonomy, which allows for eyes-off driving, in 2028; and Level 4 autonomy, or the autonomous driving seen in Waymo’s robotaxi, in 2029.

Winterhoff said during the presentation that the software will be comparable to FSD, or Tesla’s Full Self-Driving, “or better.”

The company did not indicate whether this will enable Lucid to pursue its own robotaxi service. Stepper said Lucid is pursuing a business-to-business strategy for autonomous ride-hailing programs.

Subscription will be a key revenue driver

Lucid is joining a slew of automakers hoping to increase revenue through subscriptions to its self-driving technology.

The company revealed a tiered subscription service for its ADAS, called DreamDrive Pro, that ranges from $69 per month to $199 a month.

The specific features for each tier were not detailed, but the service will range from Level 2+ driving to Level 4 driving.

“Autonomy subscriptions are the single biggest software monetization opportunity,” the company said in its slide deck.

• Airline travelers’ wallets are taking a hit right now.
• Rising fuel costs and increased demand for direct flights are driving up ticket prices.
• Here are the airlines that have announced their airfares are going up.

The Iran war is making travel more expensive.

Some airlines have announced that they will raise ticket prices due to geopolitical instability.

In particular, jet fuel costs have risen due to the war. Oil prices have faced considerable volatility, with tankers attacked in the Strait of Hormuz.

Brent crude sat around $97 a barrel early Thursday, up 60% since the start of the year.

Meanwhile, the war is also changing flight maps.

The Gulf countries are home to airport megahubs that connect passengers from all over the world, helping to link Europe with Asia and Oceania.

Plus, the Gulf itself was one of the busiest air corridors in the world before traffic was forced to re-route when the first strikes were launched in late February.

More people have therefore been trying to book direct flights between Asia and Europe.

That increased demand and a lower capacity is also prompting price hikes.

Here are the airlines that have spoken about their plans:

Thai Airways

Thai Airways is raising ticket prices by 10% to 15% due to “overwhelming” demand and rising fuel costs, Chief Financial Officer Cherdchom Therdthirasak said this week.

“Passengers planning to travel should secure their tickets as soon as possible before fares rise further,” Cherdchom said, according to Bloomberg. “Over the next two weeks, tickets will be extremely limited across both European routes and other destinations.”

Cathay Pacific

The CEO of Hong Kong’s flag carrier said at a news conference this week that fuel prices this month are twice the average, compared to the last two months.

“In March, like ever since the Middle East episode began, the costs of our fuel already doubled,” CEO Ronald Lam said, according to the AFP. “So we are going to announce (a surcharge rise) very soon.”

Air New Zealand

The Kiwi airline said it will cancel 1,100 flights affecting over 44,000 passengers between now and early May, its CEO Nikhil Ravishankar told Radio New Zealand.

“It’s an unprecedented issue as far as fuel price is concerned, but managing fuel spikes is a well-trodden path if you’re running an airline,” Ravishankar said.

• Israeli cybersecurity startup Bold has raised $40 million and emerged from stealth.
• The startup is using AI agents to protect enterprise devices like laptops.
• Bold’s CEO, Nati Hazut, says the company has continued to build despite the spectre of war in Iran.

AI and the Iran war are two of the most disruptive forces affecting businesses in 2026. Bold, an Israeli cybersecurity startup that’s just emerged from stealth with $40 million in funding, is keenly familiar with both.

The Tel Aviv-based startup has developed AI software to protect enterprise devices like laptops from the rising threat of cyberattacks.

It’s also been building during a time of war, which the startup’s 35-year-old cofounder and CEO, Nati Hazut, told Business Insider gives Israel’s tech sector a sense of “resilience.”

“It’s part of our reality, and I think it’s part of our strength,” Hazut said.

Since the outbreak of the war, Israel has been hit by retaliatory Iranian strikes, which for some businesses has meant taking cover in bomb shelters. Despite the disruption, Hazut says the team has continued to operate and build new features.

“Living without it would be better, and this is what we are all wishing for,” Hazut added.

Bold has developed AI agents to install on employee devices — such as laptops, smartphones, or tablets — that are a potential entry point for cyber threats.

In cybersecurity, these are known as endpoints, and are one of the most common ways for hackers to break in. Hazut says that “AI fundamentally changed” how enterprises think about endpoints and the risks associated with them.

Once installed, Bold’s AI agent monitors for unusual activity on that device, such as how a user is interacting with apps and data. If the AI agent detects user behavior that’s out of the ordinary, it doesn’t just suggest to the organization to block or allow an action. Instead, it “communicates with the user” to suggest other actions and explains the risks, Hazut said.

The AI runs directly on the devices and doesn’t require an internet connection. By not sending information to and from the cloud, it reduces latency and lowers privacy risks, Bold says. The company uses smaller AI models, which means the devices don’t require powerful AI chips to run.

‘The market is used to us’

Hazut, who previously founded two other cybersecurity ventures, cofounded Bold with Hadar Krasner and Omri Mallis.

Bold’s customers include US enterprise companies Shutterfly and Tekion, as well as other Fortune 500 firms. Hazut said the startup is particularly focused on highly regulated industries.

“One of the biggest challenges with endpoint security is protecting users without slowing them down,” said Jeff Simon, CISO at Shutterfly. “As AI becomes part of daily workflows, Bold helps us apply security in a way that’s effective but unobtrusive, so teams can keep moving fast without creating new risks.”

The investment was led by Red Dot Capital Partners, with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners and Picture Capital. Bold plans to use the $40 million in funding to advance its go-to-market strategy and scale globally, with a focus on the US.

Hazut said that Bold began the fundraising process before the war with Iran broke out, but that investors are typically understanding when regional conflicts flare up, and instead focused on the company and its technology.

“I feel like the market is kind of like used to us, and it’s kind of agnostic to the situation,” Hazut said.

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I’ve got a brief on some legal beef.

Two AI startups are duking it out over the future of corporate law. Harvey and Legora both agree that artificial intelligence will upend the legal world. But they have very different views on who’ll do it.

BI’s Melia Russell, our resident legal-tech wizard, profiled Legora and its 26-year-old founder, Max Junestrand.

Legora is unquestionably the underdog. Its recent valuation of more than $5 billion is nothing to sneeze at, but it’s still well below Harvey’s reported $11 billion. A potential price tag only tells part of the story, but Harvey also counts more than half of the largest US law firms among its customers. Legora has cracked only about 20% of that group.

Legora’s second-place status isn’t slowing it down. Melia was first to report that Legora used its new $550 million funding round to secure its first acquisition, Canadian legal-tech startup Walter. (I’m not sure why legal tech loves using first names for their companies. I’ll check with Melia on that one.)

Not to be outdone, Harvey is partnering with The LegalTech Fund to start investing in young legal-tech startups.

It’s a sign of the times, as Melia has previously reported. Legal-tech giants looking to add more features and specialities to their products are hunting for deals.

Legora and Harvey’s biggest fight might not ultimately be with each other.

There are still traditional legal players like Thomson Reuters and RELX. And while they’ve certainly taken some bumps this year, they still hold an incredible amount of proprietary data that gives them a strong edge (and staying power).

But Legora, Harvey, and other AI-powered legal-tech startups face an even bigger potential challenge with their own customers.

The efficiencies they’re looking to provide could upend the current business of some of the people they’re looking to sell to. I realize being too good at your job sounds like a made-up problem, but the risk is there.

While in-house lawyers love speeding up their workflows, Big Law works on billable hours. There’s a fine line between AI streamlining how they work and cutting into how much they can charge clients.

Even if you think those fears are overblown, Big Law also needs to consider the impact the tech has on young lawyers getting experience. David Goldschmidt, a longtime partner at high-profile firm Skadden, told Melia he’s worried smarter machines don’t necessarily make better lawyers.

• Apple’s $599 MacBook Neo shocked lower-cost competitors like Asus.
• The MacBook Neo is priced $500 lower than the Air and features 8 gigabytes of memory.
• Asus called out MacBook Neo’s limitations, likening it more to a tablet for content consumption.

Apple is entering unfamiliar territory with a $599 MacBook, and competitors are noticing.

The tech giant is known for high price tags on pretty much all of its gadgets, but every once and while it offers an affordable option for those who want a lower price point. Such is the case with the new MacBook Neo it revealed in March.

Starting at $599, the MacBook Neo sells for $500 less than an entry-level MacBook Air. It costs less than an iPhone 17, and it runs on an A18 Pro chip.

The drop is making waves in the laptop business as Apple enters a new price bracket. Taiwanese PC maker Asus fielded questions about the impact of the affordable MacBook Neo during its earnings call on Tuesday.

“Given Apple’s historically very premium pricing, launching such an affordable product is certainly a shock to the entire market,” Asus financial chief Nick Wu said, according to a transcript translated to English that was published by Seeking Alpha.

However, he said Asus observed “limitations” in the MacBook Neo, such as its 8 GB of memory, which may limit certain applications. He said the device seems to be more focused on content consumption.

“This differs somewhat from mainstream notebook usage scenarios,” Wu said. “The Neo feels more like a tablet, because tablets are mostly for content consumption.”

By comparison, the lowest-memory laptop available on the Asus website on Wednesday was the ZenBook 14 with 16 GB of memory.

Apple has positioned the new laptop as an accessible product that aims to put the MacBook in more people’s hands around the world. The introduction of a lower-cost laptop came alongside a round of price increases for higher-end MacBooks.

Still, Apple has officially entered a new, lower price lane — and its rivals are bound to take note.

Wu said all PC vendors are taking this “very seriously,” and he expects rivals to launch their own products to compete with the MacBook Neo.

“The final market competition outcome is hard to predict,” Wu said.

• Business Insider has learned of three large loans Blue Owl recently placed against data centers.
• The deals show how the firm is broadening its exposure to lucrative digital infrastructure.
• The lending comes as the firm has faced investor withdrawals elsewhere in its portfolio.

Blue Owl Capital is doubling down on artificial intelligence infrastructure investments — including loans to two more data centers, Business Insider has learned.

Last year, the Wall Street investment and credit firm raised nearly $10 billion for digital infrastructure, primarily for ownership interests in data center projects. The company has also expanded its lending to the sector.

Blue Owl, based in New York City, recently agreed to provide $240 million of financing for a data center in Minneapolis that was purchased by investors Cloud Capital and Arcapita Group, according to two people with knowledge of the transaction.

The company plans to both invest in and lend to a recently announced large data center development in Wichita Falls, Texas, being built by the Dallas-based firm Skybox Datacenters, according to a person with knowledge of the structure of that project. Blue Owl’s role as a lender in that development hasn’t previously been public.

Blue Owl declined to comment on the loans.

In February, the firm disclosed that it holds a $500 million loan connected to a data center being built in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, for the AI cloud provider CoreWeave.

Analysts said they see the firm’s growing focus on debt as a way for it to broaden its exposure to lucrative digital assets.

“They are in a position to be able to evaluate the efficacy of any deal, and they are definitely smart credit investors,” Glenn Schorr, a research analyst at Evercore ISI who covers Blue Owl, said of the company’s data center lending. “It makes complete sense conceptually to me.”

The firm’s success in data center investment is a contrast to headwinds being felt elsewhere in its portfolio. In the fourth quarter, the company was hit with an increase in client withdrawals from two of its credit funds, in part because both hold collections of loans tied to software companies.

AI models have made rapid strides, enabling users to build sophisticated applications with simple prompts, stoking fears that software businesses could be upended.

The company’s credit business manages about $160 billion in assets and is the largest segment of the firm’s portfolio. The company has disclosed about $15.4 billion of digital infrastructure.

Focus on digital infrastructure

Blue Owl executives have said the firm plans to dramatically grow its data center portfolio. Much of that activity has focused on acquiring ownership stakes in deals and development projects. Last year, it agreed, for instance, to invest $2.45 billion to purchase an 80% ownership interest in a large data center campus being built for Meta in Louisiana, expected to cost $30 billion or more.

The company, through the data center platform it owns, Stack Infrastructure, is building large-scale data facilities in Texas and New Mexico, and recently announced it would develop a $12 billion campus for Amazon in Louisiana.

It is eyeing even more opportunities.

A person involved in the sale of a data center development land site outside of Birmingham, Alabama, told Business Insider that Blue Owl has expressed interest in acquiring the property. The person said the firm was one of several interested parties and that the sales effort for the site was at a preliminary stage and may not proceed.

In the fourth quarter, Blue Owl closed a $1.7 billion fundraise for a new private wealth-focused vehicle called Blue Owl Digital Infrastructure Trust that will acquire data centers. Last May, the company announced that it had separately raised its third digital infrastructure fund, with $7 billion of capital, almost double its initial target.

On its fourth-quarter earnings call, the company’s co-CEO Marc Lipschultz said another digital infrastructure fund would be raised this year.

“You saw the great success we had in raising our latest Digital Infrastructure Fund III, which we already are heavily invested, so we’ll be back this year with Digital Infrastructure Fund IV,” Lipschultz said, according to a transcript of the call from AlphaSense.

Credit fears and growing withdrawals

In the fourth quarter, two funds in Blue Owl’s credit portfolio saw elevated withdrawals. Blue Owl Technology Income Corporation, a roughly $3.5 billion fund, received redemptions totaling 15.6% of its net asset value — more than three times the fund’s quarterly withdrawal limit of 5%. Another fund, Blue Owl Credit Income Corporation, saw roughly $1 billion of redemptions totaling about 5.2% of the fund, which was also in excess of its 5% withdrawal cap. Although the redemption requests were above the funds’ exit thresholds, Blue Owl met them. Some analysts have said the concerns that drove the withdrawals are overblown.

The retreat among investors from private credit has reached beyond Blue Owl. Blackstone reported that a private credit fund saw withdrawal requests totaling 7.9% in the first quarter. It also met those redemptions.

A collection of private credit funds tracked by Robert A. Stanger & Company saw average withdrawals of 4.84% of their net asset value in the fourth quarter, more than double the third quarter average of 1.75%.

“We’re in the cycle of upcoming elevated redemptions for all of the BDCs,” said Michael Covello, a managing director at Stanger, referring to business development companies, a structure used by many private credit funds.

• Vibe coding faces two big risks, Emergent CEO Mukund Jha told BI.
• Poor software quality and AI agents replacing apps could threaten the growing market.
• Jha’s comments come as Emergent hits $100M in ARR just eight months after launch.

Emergent CEO Mukund Jha told Business Insider the fast-growing vibe coding movement faces two major risks.

The “biggest threat to vibe coding” is the quality of the software it produces, Jha said.

Many AI coding tools can generate apps quickly, but the output can still be buggy, fragile, or difficult to scale. The vibe coding industry depends on those systems getting better.

“There’s a big bet that the quality of software that gets produced is going to improve exponentially,” he said. “If that doesn’t happen, that’s a big threat,” he added.

Another risk could come from AI itself. Jha said it is possible the industry could eventually “skip the whole software building aspect” if autonomous AI systems become powerful enough to replace software.

“We went from like Nokia phones to BlackBerry, and then everybody went to iPhone,” he said. “It could be that the software was the BlackBerry.”

People might eventually rely on AI agents or large language models that perform tasks without needing apps, he added.

Emergent announced in February that it reached $100 million in annual recurring revenue, or ARR, in just eight months after launching. ARR is the revenue a company expects to generate in a year from subscriptions or other recurring payments.

The company said it doubled its ARR from $50 million to $100 million in a single month, underscoring the rapid growth of AI coding startups.

In January, Business Insider reported that the vibe coding startup raised a $70 million Series B round, bringing its total funding to about $100 million. Investors include Khosla Ventures, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Lightspeed, Prosus, Together, Y Combinator, and Google’s AI Futures Fund.

Just six months earlier, the startup raised $23 million in a Series A round, highlighting how quickly top AI startups are attracting capital during the boom.

The rise of AI coding startups

It’s not just Emergent. Ryan Meadows, the chief revenue officer at Lovable, a Swedish vibe-coding startup, told Business Insider in an exclusive interview that its annual recurring revenue jumped more than 30% in one month, rising from $300 million to $400 million.

Meadows, said that the recent growth surge came after the launch of Claude Code, Anthropics’ AI coding tool. Rather than hurting Lovable’s business, Meadows said many developers are using both products.

“It’s a rising tide,” he told Business Insider. “We’ve been super happy with what we’re seeing.”

Other players are also seeing explosive growth. In late 2025, Cursor, another breakout company in the vibe coding space, said it had reached $1 billion in annualized revenue and was valued at nearly $30 billion, according to a company announcement in November.

But some industry leaders have warned about the rising costs associated with AI coding tools.

Billionaire investor Chamath Palihapitiya said his software company is reconsidering its use of Cursor amid rising expenses tied to AI development.

“Our costs have more than tripled since November,” Palihapitiya said on an episode of the “All-In Podcast” published Friday. “Between the inference cost that we pay AWS, which is ginormous, between our cost with Cursor, between Anthropic, we are just spending millions.”

AI companies themselves have acknowledged that more advanced features can drive up costs. Earlier this week, Anthropic introduced Code Review, a tool designed to detect complex coding issues and identify bugs. The company said the feature “optimizes for depth,” which makes it “more expensive than lighter-weight solutions like the Claude Code GitHub Action.”

• Companies such as eBay, Amazon, and Atlassian have said they’re trimming staff this year.
• Pinterest, for one, cited AI as a factor in its decision to shed less than 15% of its workforce.
• See the list of companies letting workers go in 2026.

The first quarter of 2026 is halfway through, and layoffs are well underway.

Companies, including Angi (formerly Angie’s List) and the popular web tool Tailwind, have cut staff, citing the impact of artificial intelligence among the reasons for the layoffs.

Target, meanwhile, is shifting resources from its supply chain into stores as part of the new CEO’s turnaround strategy

More than 100 other companies, from Amazon to Nike to Verizon, have filed legally mandated WARN notices about job cuts to come in 2026, according to WARN Tracker. Some of the cuts are part of previously announced reductions.

This year’s cuts follow three years of significant workforce reductions across a broad range of industries, including tech, media, finance, and retail.

The moves come as artificial intelligence, public policy, and broader economic conditions are driving sweeping changes in the business landscape.

A World Economic Forum survey last year found that some 41% of companies worldwide expected to reduce their workforces in the next five years because of the rise of artificial intelligence. The survey also found that jobs in big data, fintech, and AI are expected to double by 2030.

Last year, Business Insider tracked layoffs at around 65 major companies, such as Amazon, Meta, Paramount, and Starbucks. In 2026, we’ll continue to track additional job cuts based on company announcements, WARN notices, and our own reporting.

Here are the companies with job cuts underway in 2026, listed in alphabetical order.

Amazon is laying off thousands of employees

Amazon said in January that it is eliminating around 16,000 corporate roles globally.

This marks its second round of mass layoffs since October, when the tech and retail giant shed 14,000 roles.

Beth Galetti, senior vice president of people experience and technology, described the move in a company memo as part of broader efforts to cut back on bureaucracy inside the company.

Angi is cutting 350 jobs

Angi, the popular contractor listing site once known as Angie’s List, said in January that it was cutting around 350 jobs “to reduce operating expenses and optimize the organizational structure in support of long-term growth.” The company also said it’s making the cuts “in light of AI-driven efficiency improvements.”

In a January 7 SEC filing, Angi said that the cuts would save between $70 million and $80 million in annual spending. The layoffs will cost the company between $22 million and $30 million, according to the filing.

Atlassian will cut 1,600 employees

Atlassian, the enterprise software company and maker of Confluence, said on March 11 that it will be cutting about 10% of its workforce as it invests in AI to reshape its organization.

CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes said in a statement that about 1,600 employees will be affected by the cuts.

“We fundamentally believe people and AI create the best outcomes. Our approach is not ‘AI replaces people,'” Cannon-Brookes said. “But it would be disingenuous to pretend AI doesn’t change the mix of skills we need or the number of roles required in certain areas. It does.”

The company expects to incur $225 million and $236 million in restructuring charges, according to an SEC filing.

Citi’s job cuts continue this year

Citi will cut more jobs this year as part of its plan to reduce its workforce by 10%, or 20,000 employees.

In a statement on January 13, the bank said that it will continue to reduce head count in 2026.

“These changes reflect adjustments we’re making to ensure our staffing levels, locations and expertise align with current business needs,” a spokesperson for Citi said.

The plan was detailed in the company’s January 2024 earnings report and could save the bank as much as $2.5 billion.

eBay is expected to lay off 6% of its employees

eBay is set to eliminate about 800 jobs globally, making up 6% of its workforce. The company told Business Insider that it’s taking steps to better align with its strategic priorities.

“We are grateful for the contributions of the employees impacted and are committed to supporting them with care and respect,” a company spokesperson said in a statement.

Expedia laid off some employees

Expedia confirmed to Business Insider that it had laid off some employees on January 26 and had also posted new job openings. It’s unclear how many of its workers were affected by the cuts.

“We are eliminating roles as well as opening some new roles as we remain disciplined about assessing the skills we need for the future,” an Expedia Group spokesperson said in a statement. “We are also simplifying our structure and reducing organizational layers to move faster and with more accountability. These are not easy decisions, and we are grateful for the contributions of our colleagues who are impacted.”

Heineken has a multi-year plan to reduce its workforce

Heineken is cutting 5,000 to 6,000 roles over the next two years to boost productivity and bring down costs, according to its latest full-year earnings report.

The company told Business Insider that the divisions and regions where the layoffs are due to take place are yet to be confirmed.

Heineken said in its 2025 report that it faced “subdued consumer sentiment” in the Americas, alongside a “challenging year” for brewers in Europe.

Kenvue cuts 3.5% of workforce

Consumer healthcare brand Kenvue, which produces Tylenol, plans to cut 3.5% of its staff. Kenvue had about 22,000 employees globally, per its latest annual report.

The company wrote in a mid-February SEC filing that its board aimed to reduce complexity and drive operational efficiencies.

The company’s layoffs and restructuring efforts are expected to cost $250 million in 2026, per the filing.

Lululemon laid off 100 part-time employees at its customer service center

The athleisure giant said it laid off 100 part-time employees to “strengthen the business.” The affected roles are in the company’s North American contact center.

“After careful consideration, we have made the decision to transition our North America GEC to a full-time employee staffing model. As a result, approximately 100 part-time positions in our GEC have been impacted,” a Lululemon spokesperson said.

Meta is preparing for layoffs

Meta is preparing to slash jobs within its Reality Labs division, the unit responsible for Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse ambitions, three people familiar with the matter told Business Insider in January.

Two employees said that teams working on virtual reality headsets and Horizon Worlds, the company’s VR social network, will be disproportionately affected. The New York Times reported that roughly 10% to 15% of the division’s 15,000 employees are expected to be laid off.

Meta has shifted away from virtual reality in recent years in favor of spending hundreds of billions of dollars on beefing up its AI capabilities.

Nike is set to eliminate 775 distribution center jobs

Nike said on January 26 that it plans to lay off 775 employees across Tennessee and Mississippi, citing efforts to “streamline” its distribution center operations.

“We are sharpening our supply chain footprint, accelerating the use of advanced technology and automation, and investing in the skills our teams need for the future,” Nike said in a statement to Business Insider.

Pinterest is expected to lay off 15% of its workforce

Pinterest announced a global restructuring plan that includes layoffs affecting less than 15% of its workforce, according to a January securities filing. The cuts come with reductions in office space.

“We are making organizational changes to further deliver on our AI-forward strategy, which includes hiring AI-proficient talent,” a Pinterest spokesperson said.

“As a result, we’ve made the difficult decision to say goodbye to some of our team members. We are grateful for their service and supporting them with separation packages and benefits,” they added.

Saks said it will lay off 74 employees

Saks will be shutting down a facility in Miramar, Florida, according to a WARN letter. As a result, at least 74 positions will be affected by the closure, per the letter.

Affected employees are expected to be laid off between March 27 and April 30. Saks filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January.

“Saks Global made the strategic decision to close operations at the Southeast Service Center (SESC) and shift current SESC capabilities to our stores and alternate Saks Global fulfillment centers, which are well-equipped to manage this additional work,” Saks said in a statement to Business Insider.

T-Mobile cut some jobs

T-Mobile cut some staff in early 2026, though the scope of the layoffs is unclear. Some workers posted on LinkedIn saying they’d been affected by the changes in January.

“As the next step in our evolution, we’re making some changes while continuing to hire to ensure we have the right focus, structure, and momentum to keep changing the industry through innovation and our long-standing focus on customers,” T-Mobile told Business Insider in a statement.

Tailwind cut 3 of its 4 engineers

Tailwind, a popular web tool, said it cut three of its four engineers in January, citing an AI-driven decline in revenue.

“75% of the people on our engineering team lost their jobs here yesterday because of the brutal impact AI has had on our business,” CEO Adam Wathan wrote in a GitHub comment on January 6 that made waves in the tech community.

Target is cutting 500 roles from its distribution and regional offices

Target confirmed to Business Insider in February that it would cut 100 district office roles and 400 supply chain positions. It plans to invest instead in additional labor hours at stores to improve the shopping experience and return to growth.

The store improvement effort is a signature priority of the retailer’s new CEO, Michael Fiddelke, who started on February 1.

In November, Fiddelke said the company intends to invest an additional $1 billion in capital expenditures for 2026, an increase of 25% from 2025.

UPS said it will eliminate 30,000 jobs

UPS CEO Brian Dykes told analysts during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call that the company plans to reduce its operational workforce by 30,000 in 2026.

“This will be accomplished through attrition, and we expect to offer a second voluntary separation program for full-time drivers,” Dykes said.

He told analysts that the company has identified 24 buildings for closure in the first half of 2026 and will continue to evaluate additional buildings for closure.

WiseTech is cutting 30% of its workforce

Logistics software maker Wisetech is cutting 2,000 jobs, or 30% of its staff, citing AI-driven efficiency gains.

In a conference call on February 25, CEO Zubin Appoo embraced AI and said that it means more productivity, in less time, and from fewer employees. The Sydney-based company employed about 7,000 people, according to its annual report released in October.

“I am prepared to say this clearly: the era of manually writing code as the core act of engineering is over,” Appoo said. AI is “unlocking levels of efficiency gains across WiseTech that were previously out of reach.”

Workday

Workday is cutting about 400 jobs, and said on February 4 that the move will help the enterprise software company redirect resources toward priority areas.

The layoffs will primarily affect customer-facing roles that are “non-revenue generating,” Workday said in a regulatory filing.

The cuts represent roughly 2% of its workforce and are expected to result in about $135 million in charges in the fiscal fourth quarter, which ended in January.

Workday announced a larger round of layoffs about a year ago, citing the need to invest more heavily in strategic areas such as AI. The company reported about 20,600 employees as of late October.

Papa Johns

Papa Johns said it is laying off 7% of its corporate staff amid a broader restructuring.

The pizza chain said it will also close 300 locations in North America through 2027, starting with 200 this year.

“Optimizing our restaurant portfolio and strategically closing underperforming restaurants are among the most impactful actions we can take to improve restaurant profitability and fleet health,” Papa Johns CFO Ravi Thanawala said during the company’s fourth quarter earnings call on February 26.

Is your company conducting layoffs? Got a tip?

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• Google’s $32 billion Wiz deal has officially closed.
• The search giant said last year it would buy the cybersecurity firm to bolster its cloud business.
• It’s Google’s biggest-ever acquisition.

Google’s $32 billion acquisition of cybersecurity firm Wiz has officially closed.

The search giant announced on Wednesday that Wiz will join Google Cloud at a moment when AI is making cloud security more vital. Wiz offers a platform that helps customers protect data across different cloud services.

“In today’s AI era, more businesses and governments are migrating their most important data and systems to the cloud and turning to agile and continuous software development,” Google wrote in a post announcing the news.

“As these organizations operate in a multicloud environment and adopt AI, attackers are using AI to operate with greater speed and sophistication,” the company added.

Google announced last year that it intended to buy Wiz for $32 billion in the search giant’s biggest-ever acquisition.

The deal, which was also viewed as a test for President Donald Trump’s antitrust agenda, could be a boon for Google’s cloud business as it pursues customers for its AI products.

Google said Wiz would remain a multicloud offering after the acquisition, meaning it will continue to be made available through rival cloud providers such as Amazon and Microsoft.

“Our mission remains as bold as ever: to protect everything organizations build and run,” Assaf Rappaport, the CEO of Wiz, said in a blog post. “And we are still just getting started.”

• The inflation rate was 2.4% in February, new consumer price index data showed.
• The Fed can use this and other inflation indicators to make its interest rate decision next week.
• Meanwhile, data published Friday showed job creation wildly missed expectations last month.

US inflation held steady in February as economists expected, with prices rising 2.4% over the year, new consumer price index data showed.

CPI rose 0.3% over the month, matching the forecast and above the previous 0.2% increase.

Core CPI, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, rose 2.5% over the year, as expected and as it did in January. It rose 0.2% over the month, matching the forecast and cooler than the previous 0.3% increase.

The new consumer price index data doesn’t reflect the oil shock due to the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, but economists expect the effects of the Iran War to show up in the next report.

Alexandra Wilson-Elizondo, global co-chief investment officer of multi-asset solutions at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, said data from the new report “was collected before the conflict in Iran sent crude oil surging roughly 30%, with natural gas, aluminum, fertilizer, freight rates, and shipping insurance moving higher with it.”

“The Strait of Hormuz remains the wildcard, and if disruption is sustained, the inflation improvement embedded in today’s print could reverse quickly,” Wilson-Elizondo said in commentary.

The Federal Open Market Committee will meet next week to decide on interest rates for the second time this year. The Fed held rates steady in January, and experts and traders expect the same outcome this month.

“While Wednesday’s CPI for February does not account for the recent spike in oil prices, the print was in-line with expectations suggesting that inflation was stable before the Iran conflict,” Skyler Weinand, chief investment officer at Regan Capital, said in commentary.

There’s a nearly 100% chance of another Fed hold based on CME FedWatch, which shows market-based chances of the Fed’s decision. Data published on Friday showed that an unexpectedly weak February jobs report didn’t move the chances much. The US lost 92,000 jobs last month, with net losses of over 20,000 in the healthcare sector and leisure and hospitality.

Healthcare’s decline was a reversal of its previous strength that had helped support the job market, and employment in the sector was lower because of a Kaiser Permanente strike.

“It’s certainly a difficult time for job seekers right now because we are seeing that employers are just hiring a lot less than they did a couple years ago,” Cory Stahle, an economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab, told Business Insider.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

• XAI’s Macrohard project has stalled amid leadership changes and a data project pause.
• Tesla is working on a ‘Digital Optimus’ project that involves developing an AI agent.
• Elon Musk first announced Macrohard in August.

Macrohard, XAI’s ambitious AI agent project, has stalled following leadership shake-ups and suspension of a data project involving 600 contractors, people familiar with the situation told Business Insider.

At the same time, Musk’s other company, Tesla, has been ramping up its own AI agent project called “Digital Optimus,” according to workers.

CEO Elon Musk announced Macrohard — a tongue-in-cheek reference to “Microsoft” — in August. Since “software companies like Microsoft do not themselves manufacture any physical hardware, it should be possible to simulate them entirely with AI,” he said on X at the time. The effort has aimed to build an AI white-collar worker.

Macrohard has been considered one of xAI’s core projects, alongside Grok Code and Grok Imagine.

Since its launch, Macrohard has shuffled between a number of leaders and faced difficulty scaling up, according to company insiders.

Two Macrohard leaders left the company in February, people with knowledge of the departures said.

During an all-hands meeting shortly thereafter, Musk announced that xAI cofounder Toby Pohlen would oversee the project. Pohlen announced his exit 16 days later.

He had faced pressure from Musk regarding the project’s development, although Musk also expressed displeasure with the team’s progress in the months before he took over.

Pohlen declined to comment.

Musk and representatives for xAI and Tesla did not respond to requests for comment.

Nearly two dozen xAI engineers identified themselves as working on Macrohard via X or LinkedIn. Most have left the company or shifted to a different team in recent months, including more than a dozen departures in the past month alone.

It’s unclear how many people remain assigned to the project.

Enter Tesla

In recent weeks, some employees were told some Macrohard work would shift to Tesla’s Autopilot team, along with some of Macrohard’s computing capacity, insiders said.

Tesla has also been working on an AI agent known internally as “Digital Optimus,” a nod to the humanoid robot Tesla has been building since 2021. The digital version is meant to act as an AI agent that can perform tasks on a computer.

In February, Tesla posted a role for an AI engineer to work on a computer use agent — a similar type of agent that xAI’s Macrohard has focused on — that can perform tasks like “autonomous software interaction, code generation, and real-time decision-making.”

Instead of relying primarily on models that analyze screenshots, which is a common approach for computer-use agents, the team is focusing on real-time control methods. In other words, the AI processes a continuous stream of information and responds, rather than analyzing a frozen image and acting step by step.

The approach is similar to how its Full Self-Driving system processes live video. Musk has repeatedly told xAI employees that the project should emulate Tesla’s work with Full Self-Driving, which uses video data to help the AI learn to navigate its environment in real time.

Tesla has also used similar techniques in developing its humanoid robot.

It marks a different strategy from xAI’s Macrohard project, which was trained primarily on static images rather than continuous video.

XAI does not currently have any job openings listed for the Macrohard team, according to a review of the company’s careers page.

A pause on data collection

A data annotation project for Macrohard that involved more than 600 AI tutors was paused last month, according to a memo viewed by Business Insider. xAI employs around a thousand contract workers who help hone Grok and teach it to do everything from maintain a conversational tone to generate realistic images.

The workers on the Macrohard project were told to screen record their work and leisure activities in order to train the AI how to emulate their actions and act as a digital agent.

A project lead told workers in early February that researchers had “discovered many flaws within the model, and would like to make some changes to our model and the way we collect data,” the memo said. Workers were told at the time that data collection would resume in two to four weeks.

As of this week, the project is still on pause.

Separately, xAI had tutors working to hone the agent’s ability to act as an AI sales assistant for SpaceX’s website and a separate project that trained the system on how to use spreadsheets, people with knowledge of the teams said.

Tesla and xAI have collaborated in the past, including on integrating Grok into vehicles.

In January, Tesla announced it had agreed to invest $2 billion in xAI to begin “evaluating potential AI collaborations between the companies.”

In a January podcast appearance, Sulaiman Ghori, an xAI engineer who worked on Macrohard and has since left the company, compared xAI’s work to a digital version of Optimus.

Just as the humanoid robot performs physical human actions, he said, the AI agent would be able to perform human actions in a digital environment.

Ghori also mentioned using unused Teslas to power the system in the future as they continued to scale Macrohard.

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• Legora is acquiring startup Walter to strengthen its AI tools for law firms.
• With $550 million in new funding, Legora could acquire more legal tech startups.
• The companies declined to disclose the amount of the transaction.

In the battle for Big Law’s business, legal artificial intelligence startup Legora is bulking up its talent roster. Legora is acquiring Canadian legal-tech startup Walter to sharpen its tools for lawyers, the companies tell Business Insider exclusively.

Legora, based in Stockholm, sells software to law firms and corporate legal departments that aims to free up lawyers from busywork. It announced earlier this week that it raised $550 million in new funding, giving it a war chest to fund expansion and potentially more deals.

Legal tech is entering its consolidation era. In recent years, investors have poured billions of dollars into startups trying to win over law firms as customers. Firms are now coming out of those software pressure tests and are beginning to choose long-term vendors. Not all of the tools will survive the transition, and some are looking for buyers with distribution and balance sheets strong enough to carry them.

With this initial acquisition, Legora is signaling its intent to be one of those buyers. The companies declined to disclose the terms of the deal.

Legora’s chief executive Max Junestrand said that after seeing Walter’s product, it became clear the companies were operating from the same “blueprint for the future of legal AI.” Bringing Walter into the fold, he said, accelerates that vision — and gives Legora a team already building in the direction it wants to go.

Swedish meatballs and a handshake

Forty days ago, Ryan Wilson, Walter’s cofounder and chief executive, had never met Junestrand. One warm intro, a flight to Stockholm, and dinner at a Swedish meatball restaurant later, they shook hands on a deal to combine forces.

Wilson isn’t a lawyer. A repeat tech founder based in Vancouver, he created the company after growing frustrated with how legal services are delivered. He felt clients pay appropriately for legal judgment, but too much for the administrative grind surrounding the work.

Founded in 2022, Walter began as a shared portal for law firms and their clients to manage their data. Last year, the company pivoted. Instead of trying to pull lawyers into a new software platform, it began building agents — tools that can carry out multi-step tasks with minimal human hand-holding. These agents worked directly inside Microsoft Word and Outlook, where much of the legal profession already lives and works.

The fleet of agents debuted last September. Over the next few months, Walter booked more revenue than it had totaled in three years prior, Wilson said. Law firms, including Fasken Martineau and McCarthy Tétrault, two of Canada’s top firms by revenue, are using Walter.

The company had raised millions of dollars in investment, Wilson said.

Wilson said on his first call with Junestrand, the two traded demos and discovered they were building many of the same features, just in a slightly different order. They were, as Wilson put it, “an ocean apart,” but pursuing an eerily similar vision for how legal tech should evolve and how to get there.

Just as important, he said, was alignment on values. After multiple exits — he most recently sold Ollie Order, a Canadian alcohol marketplace, to the private-equity backed software company Next Glass in 2021 — Wilson said he had the luxury of putting culture over price. Walter’s team is small and tightly knit, and all nine employees have invested their own money in the company. Any deal, he said, had to reflect that.

Everyone at Walter is joining Legora, with most moving to Stockholm.

For Legora, this acquisition looks to be about speed. By absorbing a team that was building similar tools inside a lawyer’s daily workflow, the company can accelerate its push toward more autonomous software and deepen its bench in a tight AI talent market.

For Walter, the deal offers scale. Instead of competing for distribution in an increasingly crowded field, its team will plug into a better-capitalized platform with ambitions to become Big Law’s global default workspace.

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• Oil’s price surge is rattling chip stocks and raising AI cost fears.
• Rising energy prices could slow AI expansion and pressure corporate margins.
• Qatar’s LNG shutdown is also tightening helium supply, which is critical to chipmaking.

Oil’s sharp rally amid the Iran war has injected fresh volatility into semiconductor stocks and raised new questions about the cost and pace of the AI boom.

Shares of TSMC, Samsung Electronics, and SK Hynix — key AI chip suppliers — have swung sharply since the conflict began, at one point falling between 9% and 22%, as investors assess rising energy and supply risks.

“Higher energy costs for AI data centers could slow AI infrastructure buildouts, while fabs in Taiwan and South Korea would face growing cost pressures from higher LNG prices,” wrote Phelix Lee, an equity analyst at Morningstar, in a Tuesday note, referencing the costs of liquified natural gas.

Energy markets have been at the center of the turbulence.

Oil accounts for roughly 38% of total US energy consumption, according to Lee, and the US hosts most of the world’s AI data centers. While oil is not the primary source of electricity generation, higher crude prices tend to ripple across energy markets.

AI data centers consume far more electricity than traditional server facilities, driven by power-hungry graphics processing units and advanced cooling systems.

If energy prices remain elevated, cloud providers may reconsider the pace of AI server deployments — a potential knock-on effect for chipmakers riding a wave of AI-driven demand.

Oil prices have swung sharply since the US and Israel attacked Iran at the end of February, disrupting traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most critical energy shipping chokepoint.

Brent crude futures were trading around $87 per barrel early Wednesday, while US West Texas Intermediate hovered near $83, after both benchmarks breached $100 earlier this week before retreating.

Liquefied natural gas prices have also jumped following the shutdown of Qatar’s largest LNG export facility, tightening global supply.

The US Energy Information Administration said Tuesday it expects Brent to average above $95 a barrel over the next two months as the war disrupts supplies, before easing toward $70 by year-end.

With oil prices more than 40% higher this year, operating costs for chip fabs and data centers are likely to rise. Morningstar estimates energy expenses account for roughly 3% to 6% of projected 2025 revenue for TSMC, Samsung, and SK Hynix.

“Should the war be prolonged, we could see these costs rise materially,” Lee wrote, adding that much of the burden could ultimately be passed on to customers given the tight supply of AI-related chips.

Beyond oil: material and shipping risks

Energy isn’t the only vulnerability.

Lee also flagged risks to critical semiconductor inputs such as helium and bromine.

Qatar supplies nearly one-third of the world’s helium, a byproduct of LNG production that is critical for semiconductor manufacturing.

A prolonged shutdown of LNG production could tighten helium markets, dent chip yields, or, in a worst-case scenario, temporarily halt fab operations.

Bromine poses a smaller immediate risk, as 98% of South Korea’s bromine supply comes from Israel and flows remain relatively stable, Lee wrote.

“Tail risks remain, however, as a severe escalation or extension of the war could destabilize bromine supply, potentially affecting supplies of memory chips as well,” he wrote.

• MrBeast is exploring offering advertising services, according to new trademark filings.
• The top YouTuber has filed applications that list plans for a range of ad and marketing services.
• It’s the latest sign of his ambitions to expand beyond his core media business.

YouTuber MrBeast broke the code for getting attention online. Now, he may be looking to share his strategies with others.

The content creator’s company filed a new set of trademark applications in the past few weeks that lay the groundwork for branching into advertising and marketing services.

Two of those filings, for “MrBeast Social” and “Beast Social,” include activities such as advertising, marketing, and promotion services, as well as facilitating connections between creators, brands, and agencies.

A third filing, under the name “Creator Industries,” lists plans for services for online content creators, like software and mobile apps for content creation, editing, monetization, and more.

The CEO of Beast Industries, Jeffrey Housenbold, said in December that the company planned to build a platform to connect brands and creators. Donaldson’s company already offers a “clipping” marketing service called Vyro, which matches brands with creators to promote video clips across social media. He also operates other content-related service businesses, such as the analytics company Viewstats and the dubbing company CreatorGlobal.

A fourth new trademark application, for “Watchtime Studios,” describes a video production arm focused on developing and producing video content for others.

MrBeast’s applications didn’t give a timeframe, but they were filed on an “intent to use” basis, which means the applicant has a bona fide intent to launch such services, said Josh Gerben, a trademark attorney whose firm’s clients include entrepreneurs, celebrities, and pro athletes, and who spotted the filings.

A spokesperson for MrBeast declined to comment.

Donaldson would be entering a crowded field in advertising and content creator services. The competition includes ad holding companies, tech platforms, and independent agencies. On the other hand, brands and creators could be drawn to the idea of the world’s biggest online creator helping them master social media themselves. For example, Donaldson recently worked with Salesforce to develop a concept for its Super Bowl commercial, which he also appeared in.

Other entertainers have entered the advertising and marketing space lately, most notably Ryan Reynolds through his agency, Maximum Effort. Other recent examples are podcaster Alex Cooper, who in 2025 launched the Unwell Creative Agency, a division of her media company Unwell, and Kristen Bell, who launched Dunshire Productions in 2022.

Two former MrBeast staffers, Anthony Potero and Talia Schulhof, also launched a stunt-marketing startup called Pufferfish last year.

MrBeast has been branching out into new businesses beyond media as he tries to improve the company’s financial footing ahead of a possible IPO.

In the past year, he’s acquired Step, a financial app for teens; explored a mobile phone service in the vein of Ryan Reynolds’ Mint Mobile; and dipped a toe into experiences with Beast Land, a pop-up theme park in Saudi Arabia. He also has a growing candy business, Feastables.

In January, Beast Industries, which was previously valued at around $5 billion, announced it raised $200 million in new funding from the ethereum holding company Bitmine Immersion Technologies.

• YouTube’s advertising revenue now exceeds that of its four largest traditional media competitors combined.
• Google’s streamer also laps its rivals in US TV viewership and has a booming subscription business.
• Looking forward, YouTube could benefit from AI as well.

Hollywood has another reason to fear YouTube.

The Google-owned streaming giant generated more advertising revenue last year than Disney, NBCUniversal, Paramount Skydance, and Warner Bros. Discovery — combined.

YouTube’s $40.4 billion in ad revenue in 2025 exceeded the $37.8 billion sum from its four closest Hollywood competitors, according to new estimates from media research firm MoffettNathanson. (With fifth-place rival Fox added in, the traditional media cohort would be ahead of YouTube at $44.8 billion.)

That’s a substantial change from 2024, when YouTube’s $36.1 billion in ad revenue fell short of the $41.8 billion total from Disney, Comcast’s NBCU, Paramount, and WBD, per MoffettNathanson.

YouTube keeps close to half its ad revenue, paying creators a 55% cut on ads from standard videos.

The ad business isn’t the only arena YouTube dominates.

It also generated more viewership on US TVs in January than Disney, NBCU, Paramount, and WBD’s streamers combined, according to Nielsen. Netflix is the only paid streamer that rivals YouTube’s 12.5% share, with 8.8% TV viewership, though it isn’t yet a major player in ads.

YouTube also brought in nearly $22 billion in subscription revenue in 2025, driven by live-TV streamer YouTube TV, ad-free tiers YouTube Premium and YouTube Music, and the NFL Sunday Ticket service for football superfans.

Google is looking to accelerate that growth this year with “skinny bundles” for YouTube TV, including a sports-focused package.

MoffettNathanson predicted that YouTube’s subscription revenue growth would outpace that of its ads business. However, the firm still expects its ad revenue to grow at a healthy rate of about 10% in each of the next three years.

By one definition, YouTube is now the world’s biggest media company, passing Disney — if you exclude its experiences revenue — MoffettNathanson analysts Michael Nathanson and Robert Fishman said in a Monday note. However, YouTube’s ad revenue is well below tech giants like Facebook-parent Meta, which generated about $196.2 billion in ad revenue in 2025, and its own parent company, Alphabet, which made $224.5 billion last year from search ads.

Even scarier for the Hollywood giants than YouTube’s current position is that the platform may be uniquely suited to thrive as AI-powered videos and short-form clips flood the internet.

YouTube is “one of the only” media companies that “will become stronger in the age of AI,” Nathanson and Fishman wrote.

• Meta has acquired Moltbook, the viral, Reddit-style forum for AI agents.
• Moltbook’s creators, Matt Schlicht and Ben Parr, will join Meta’s Superintelligence Labs.
• It comes after Peter Steinberger, the creator of Openclaw, joined OpenAI after also being courted by Mark Zuckerberg.

Mark Zuckerberg couldn’t score OpenClaw’s creator, but he has scooped up the guys behind Moltbook.

On Tuesday, Meta confirmed it had acquired Moltbook, a Reddit-style forum for AI agents. As part of the deal, first reported by Axios, Moltbook’s creators, Matt Schlicht and Ben Parr, will join Meta’s Superintelligence Labs.

“The Moltbook team joining MSL opens up new ways for AI agents to work for people and businesses,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement to Business Insider. “Their approach to connecting agents through an always-on directory is a novel step in a rapidly developing space, and we look forward to working together to bring innovative, secure agentic experiences to everyone.”

Alexandr Wang, Meta’s chief AI officer, runs its AI lab and has overhauled its efforts in the space since the company invested $14 billion in Scale AI to poach him amid the heated AI talent wars.

Moltbook, a social network of sorts for AI agents, is designed to run alongside OpenClaw, the popular open-source AI agent that has taken off among techies. Mark Zuckerberg, who attempted to recruit OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger, was ultimately unsuccessful in his pursuit, as Steinberger joined OpenAI. Steinberger has said OpenClaw will continue to operate.

Meta did not disclose a price for its Moltbook deal.

• This post originally appeared in the Business Insider Today newsletter.
• You can sign up for Business Insider’s daily newsletter here.

Stocks emerged unscathed from a wild day in the oil markets. Can it last?

The price of oil eclipsed the all-important $100-a-barrel benchmark, and everyone got really nervous. (Here’s a roundup of what a bunch of smart people said.)

But G7 countries pledged to release strategic oil reserves if needed, easing oil prices. President Donald Trump’s insistence the war is “very complete” was another boost. By market close, major indexes actually finished the day in the green as oil prices dropped.

At least, for now.

Wall Street vet Ed Yardeni, who is typically bullish, raised the chances of a stock meltdown from 20% to 35%. He also mentioned the dreaded s-word — stagflation — in a nod to the 1970s oil crisis that gave investors headaches.

Others are less fearful. Pantheon Macroeconomics said in a note to clients on Monday that fears over oil prices spiking inflation are overblown. The reason? The US labor market is too weak to support large price spikes.

“Higher inflation expectations will be meaningless if employers still hold the cards in wage setting and their customers retrench,” wrote Samuel Tombs, Pantheon’s chief US economist.

Energy economist Daniel Yergin is also taking an optimistic view. He believes the global economy is more resilient than we’re giving it credit for.

Ultimately, what matters most is how long this oil crisis lasts.

An extended closure of the Strait of Hormuz will be a lot harder for the markets and economy to shake off than just a one-off price spike.

“While market and survey-based inflation expectations can be sensitive to oil at high frequency, history suggests only marked and persistent spikes in the price of crude trigger persistent inflationary cycles,” BofA analysts wrote.

That’s not stopping some people from preparing for the worst.

Governments are offering suggestions to help people mitigate the impact of oil price spikes, from cutting out non-essential travel to offering more flexible work.

As useful as some of that advice might be, it’s not always actionable for Americans. With so many US cities suffering from subpar public transportation, avoiding the gas pump won’t be easy.

• Bill Ackman’s hedge fund, Pershing Square, is going public.
• The company said in a Tuesday statement that it has filed for an IPO on the NYSE.
• Pershing Square is seeking to raise at least $5 billion in the IPO, it said.

Pershing Square, the investment fund run by famed investor Bill Ackman, has filed for an IPO, it announced on Tuesday.

Ackman’s fund is planning a dual listing of Pershing Square and a closed-end investment company, Pershing Square USA, on the New York Stock Exchange.

The company is seeking to raise at least $5 billion in the IPO, it said in a statement announcing the planned listing.

“Shares are being offered at a price of $50.00 per PSUS Share and investors in the PSUS IPO will receive, for no additional consideration, 20 PSI Shares for every 100 PSUS Shares purchased,” the company said.

The planned company will be listed under the stock market tickers “PS” and “PSUS,” the statement added.

This is a developing story.

• AT&T is committing $250 billion over five years to expand US network connectivity.
• The telecom giant aims to be the provider of choice for the AI age.
• AT&T is replacing its copper lines with a mix of fiber, 5G, and satellite links.

AT&T built much of the communication network that US households and businesses rely on every day, and now it’s rebuilding it.

The 150-year-old company said Tuesday it is investing $250 billion to modernize its US telecom infrastructure over the next five years.

“The first phone call sparked an entirely new way for people and businesses to deepen connections and thrive,” CEO John Stankey said in a statement. “Today, we carry the spirit of communication forward in bold new ways, powering connections for a new generation — more instantaneous, seamless, and limitless than ever before.”

By comparison, competitor Verizon reported spending $17 billion on capital expenditures last year and projected $16.5 billion this year, a figure it says puts the company in the top 10 investors in data infrastructure, apart from those companies building data centers.

The world has come a long way in the century and a half since inventor and entrepreneur Alexander Graham Bell linked the first pair of telephones with a copper wire. Now, AT&T says voice calls account for only a small fraction of the traffic on its network, which is now dominated by text and data.

And the demands are only going up from here in the age of AI.

“We expect to increase the need for dense fiber networks and more symmetrical connectivity into and out of homes, businesses, and devices,” Stankey said during AT&T’s earnings call in January.

Unlike video streaming, which mostly requires one-way data downloads, cloud-based AI computing and remote work require a much more robust upload connection.

AT&T’s answer to that growing demand is to decommission its sprawling web of copper wires and replace them with a combination of fiber-optic cable, 5G wireless, and satellite links. The Dallas-based company says this approach will bring faster speeds to users in urban, suburban, and rural markets.

It is also strengthening its responders network for public safety and resilience, called FirstNet.

Stankey has also credited President Donald Trump’s favorable tax and regulatory policies for facilitating the upgrades now, including depreciation provisions of the One Big, Beautiful Bill.

“Current Federal telecommunications policy is as strong as I’ve seen in my career, making our commitment to invest possible,” he said in Tuesday’s statement.

• Nearly 1,300 US retail stores and restaurants are set to close by the end of 2026.
• Major chains, including Wendy’s and Macy’s, are citing efficiency as the reason behind the closures.
• Saks is one of the latest companies to announce closures.

Retailers and restaurants are gearing up for another wave of store closures.

It’s shaping up to be the continuation of a retail pullback that Business Insider tracked in 2024 and 2025. Major chains, from department stores like Macy’s and Saks Fifth Avenue to restaurant chains Pizza Hut and Wendy’s, have already announced multiyear closure plans that extend into 2026, as have some niche stores.

Some companies, such as Macy’s, are closing their physical stores to invest more resources into their online businesses.

In 2025, Business Insider tracked around 4,100 closures as of late December. Retail data and consultant firm Coresight Research predicted earlier in the year that roughly 15,000 retail locations would close in the year.

So far for 2026, Business Insider has identified nearly 1,300 planned closures.

See the list of major closures below.

Francesca’s: over 400 stores

After filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on February 5, apparel retailer Francesca’s said it will conduct going-out-of-business sales at all of its roughly 400 stores across the US.

Francesca’s previously filed for bankruptcy protection in 2020 before being acquired by TerraMar Capital and Tiger Group.

“This process provides a structured path to pursue the best outcome for all stakeholders,” Curt Kroll, CFO, said in a February statement about the bankruptcy. “We remain focused on operating responsibly and supporting our teams, partners, and guests throughout this process.”

Wendy’s: 300 stores

In a February 13 earnings call, Wendy’s interim CEO Ken Cook said the company planned to close underperforming restaurants in the US, representing 5% to 6% of its roughly 6,000 locations. An estimated 5% of Wendy’s restaurants would come out to around 300 locations.

Cook told investors to expect the closings to take place in the first half of 2026.

Pizza Hut: 250 stores

Restaurant chain Pizza Hut is set to close 250 underperforming stores in the US during the first half of 2026, its parent company, Yum! Brands, said in February. The reduction comes as part of a program to accelerate the Pizza Hut brand in the long term.

The company said that the 250 targeted closures are a fraction of the 20,000 locations that Yum! Brands operates globally.

Carter’s: 100 stores

Carter’s, one of North America’s biggest children’s and baby apparel retailers, said in October that it plans to close 150 stores across the region over the next three years as leases expire, including about 100 by the end of 2026.

Macy’s: 80 stores

In January 2025, Macy’s said it planned to close 150 locations through 2026, allowing it to focus on its best-performing locations and online experience. After the closures are complete, about 350 Macy’s stores are expected to remain. Macy’s closed at least 66 stores in 2025.

Kroger: 60 stores

Grocery giant Kroger said in June 2025 that it planned to close 60 “unprofitable” stores across the US over the next 18 months. The company said in September that it had begun that process.

The company said in its last annual report that it operated 2,731 supermarkets in 35 states and Washington, DC, as of February 2025.

Saks Off 5th: 57 stores

Saks Off 5th, a luxury outlet retailer offering discounted designer brands, plans to close 57 stores in early 2026. It announced plans to close nine of those stores last year, and the rest were announced in January.

Saks Global, the parent company of Saks Off 5th, as well as Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, and Bergdorf Goodman, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in early January. The outlet’s website, a separate legal entity, is also winding down operations.

In addition to the Saks Off 5th closures, Saks Global is closing five Last Call locations, the off-price Neiman Marcus stores.

Saks Fifth Avenue: 20 stores

After filing for bankruptcy in January, Saks Global announced a series of closures.

The first wave was announced in February, with the company saying it would optimize its Saks Fifth Avenue footprint by closing eight locations. In March, it announced that another 12 locations would close.

Those closures leave 13 Saks Fifth Avenue locations remaining.

Yankee Candle: 20 stores

Newell Brands said in December 2025 that it would close 20 Yankee Candle stores in the US and Canada beginning in January 2026. The closures were announced alongside the reduction of its workforce by over 900 employees.

“This productivity plan is about taking the next, disciplined step to enhance efficiency, sharpen our strategic focus, and deliver stronger, more consistent performance,” CEO Chris Peterson said in a press release.

Neiman Marcus: 4 stores

In addition to many Saks Fifth Avenue and Off Fifth locations, Saks Global closed four Neiman Marcus locations. The company announced one of the closures — a Boston store — in February and another three in March.

REI: 3 stores

REI confirmed to Business Insider that it plans to close three stores, starting with a location in New Jersey, in the first quarter of 2026. Its stores in New York City’s SoHo neighborhood and Boston are set to follow in late 2026.

“As markets and customer needs evolve, we must adapt to position the co-op for long-term success,” the company said in a statement.

• OpenAI exec highlights the rising importance of AI compute in tech job compensation.
• AI tokens emerge as a new component of tech salaries, alongside traditional pay elements.
• CFOs face new challenges as AI inference costs become a significant part of tech budgets.

Silicon Valley has long competed for talent with ever-richer pay packages built around salary, bonus, and equity. Now, a fourth line item is creeping into the mix: AI inference.

As generative AI tools become embedded in software development, the cost of running the underlying models — known as inference — is emerging as a productivity driver and a budget line that finance chiefs can’t ignore.

Software engineers and AI researchers inside tech companies have already been jousting for access to GPUs, with this AI compute capacity being carefully parceled out based on which projects are most important. Now, some tech job candidates have begun asking about what AI compute budget they will have access to if they decide to join.

“I am increasingly asked during candidate interviews how much dedicated inference compute they will have to build with Codex,” Thibault Sottiaux, engineering lead at OpenAI’s Codex, the startup’s AI coding service, wrote on X recently.

He added that usage per user is growing much faster than overall user growth, a sign that AI compute is becoming even scarcer and more valuable.

That scarcity is reshaping how engineers think about their work and pay. OpenAI President Greg Brockman put it bluntly: “The inference compute available to you is increasingly going to drive overall software productivity.”

In other words, access to AI may soon matter as much as access to a fat salary and juicy equity awards. As a coder in the AI era, if you don’t have access to massive compute, you might end up producing far less software than your colleagues, threatening your career prospects.

Hakeem Shibly, a data specialist at Levels.fyi, recently spotted a compensation submission from a software engineer that listed “Copilot subscription” as part of the pay and benefits, a small but symbolic step toward AI access as a standard perk.

Getting paid in AI tokens

Some in the AI community see an even more explicit future.

“OpenAI and Anthropic should create recruitment sites where their clients can advertise roles, listing the token budget for the job alongside the salary range,” said Peter Gostev, AI capability lead at Arena, a startup that measures the performance of models. Those startups didn’t respond to requests for comment on Monday.

Investors are taking note. Tomasz Tunguz of Theory Ventures said companies are effectively adding AI inference as a fourth component of engineering compensation: salary, bonus, equity, and now tokens.

Tokens are the economic language of generative AI. Models break down words and other inputs into numerical tokens to make them easier to process and understand. One token is about ¾ of a word. They’re also used to price AI model use, via an industry-standard cost per million tokens.

“Will you be paid in tokens? In 2026, you likely will start to be,” Tunguz said.

CFOs are watching

For CFOs, this potentially big new expense must be tracked as closely as other headcount-related costs, Tunguz said.

“It is starting to happen,” Tunguz told me, as employee use of AI increasingly contributes to total cash burn. “It is a consideration for the Office of the CFO.”

With Levels.fyi pegging the 75th percentile software engineer salary at $375,000, Tunguz estimates that adding $100,000 in annual inference costs brings the fully loaded cost to $475,000 — meaning just over 20% of the compensation cost could come from AI usage in the future.

The key question for finance leaders: what’s the return on that AI spend? If cloud infrastructure performance is judged by gross profit per hour of GPU use, Tunguz suggests the employee equivalent is productive work per dollar of inference.

Tunguz has been building AI tools and models into his daily workflow and is automating 31 tasks a day at a cost of about $12,000 a year in inference.

“The engineer still burning $100k? They’d better be 8x more productive!” he wrote in a recent LinkedIn post.

If this trend continues, 2026 may mark the year engineers don’t just negotiate pay in dollars and equity, but in tokens.

Sign up for BI’s Tech Memo newsletter here. Reach out to me via email at abarr@businessinsider.com.

• Yann LeCun’s AI startup just raised $1.03 billion and hired a CEO.
• Entrepreneur Alex LeBrun said in a post on X that he is joining AMI Labs as CEO.
• AMI Labs is recruiting engineers, scientists, and researchers across its four global hubs.

Yann LeCun’s AI startup has raised more than $1 billion in seed funding and appointed a new CEO.

In a post on X on Tuesday, entrepreneur and former Facebook researcher Alex LeBrun said he is joining LeCun and the founding team of Advanced Machine Intelligence (AMI) Labs, also known as AMI Labs, as CEO.

“We have secured a $1.03 billion USD seed round to fuel our mission to build intelligent systems capable of truly understanding the real world—a long-term scientific endeavor,” LeBrun said.

AMI Labs said in an X post on Tuesday the round was co-led by Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital, and Bezos Expeditions, alongside other investors.

The startup added it is building a team of researchers and engineers across Paris, New York, Montreal, and Singapore.

AI researcher and New York University computer science professor Saining Xie also said in a post on X on Tuesday that he has joined the founding team. Xie, who serves as cofounder and chief science officer, wrote that “AMI isn’t a conventional lab.”

“We don’t intend to become one,” he added.

AMI Labs is recruiting engineers, scientists, and researchers across its four global hubs, according to the company’s job postings.

LeCun revealed plans to launch the startup in November after departing Meta, where he spent 12 years leading its AI research efforts.

AMI Labs will focus on building world models, a type of AI system designed to better understand and reflect how the real world works. LeCun had said that the startup will be among the few frontier AI labs that are “neither Chinese nor American.”

Speaking at an event in Paris in December, LeCun said Meta would partner with the new venture, though it would not invest in the company.

“This new architecture is a project that Mark Zuckerberg really likes. He thinks maybe that’s the future,” LeCun said.

In an interview with MIT Technology Review published in January, the AI pioneer said he disagreed with some of the decisions made by Zuckerberg, including the shutdown of the robotics team inside FAIR.

LeCun also took aim at Alexandr Wang, the former CEO of Scale AI, after Wang briefly became his boss following Meta’s AI reorganization.

“There’s no experience with research or how you practice research, how you do it. Or what would be attractive or repulsive to a researcher,” LeCun said in an interview with the Financial Times in January.

“You don’t tell a researcher what to do,” LeCun said. “You certainly don’t tell a researcher like me what to do.”

• 100 CEOs of large US companies shared their AI spending and hiring plans with KPMG.
• They said they expect to invest in AI despite concerns that the tech has been overhyped.
• Cybersecurity topped the list of CEOs’ worries, in part due to AI.

After a lot of big talk about AI, CEOs say the real upheaval is still ahead.

In a KPMG US survey, three-quarters of large-company CEOs said generative AI might have been overhyped in the past year, but its true impact and “disruptive potential” over the next five to 10 years is likely underappreciated.

“The sentiment about deploying AI is most certainly accelerating,” Tim Walsh, the company’s US chair and CEO, told Business Insider.

He said that many organizations are moving beyond pilot stages into implementation. The investments are taking place in what he called an “environment of disruption.”

KPMG US conducted the survey of 100 CEOs of large US-based companies from late January to mid-February on topics ranging from AI to hiring plans to the economy.

Most CEOs are still spending on AI

One in four CEOs polled believes an AI investment bubble exists, yet AI remains a key spending category, with nearly 80% of chiefs saying they will allocate at least 5% of their capital budgets to AI this year.

About two-thirds of leaders said they are boosting their cybersecurity spending amid growing fears about risks associated with AI.

Six in 10 CEOs said they are prioritizing AI spending on building workers’ skills. About half said they’re using funds to speed innovation and incorporate the technology into day-to-day operations.

While AI training is likely welcome news to workers worried about AI taking their work, about one in five CEOs still expects to cut jobs over the next year.

Asked about the effect of AI, about half expected modest or significant hiring, while just 9% said they expect the technology to result in job reductions.

Recruiting challenges

At KPMG, Walsh said, AI is allowing workers to “do things more effectively, to do more of it and to do it faster.”

That doesn’t necessarily mean the company will need fewer workers. If a hypothetical team had 20 people before AI, it might now have only 17, he said. At the same time, Walsh added, there might also be five people on the tech side handling tasks such as data extraction, analysis, and transformation to run the actual AI. All told, that would bring the team above 20.

Other CEOs struck a similar note, even as 61% said they worry they won’t be able to recruit workers with the technical expertise required.

Beyond staffing levels, some execs are concerned that AI could stunt leadership development. Roughly one in three CEOs cited reduced opportunities for early-career employees to build judgment via experience as their primary concern. Others pointed to overreliance on AI in decision-making and, to a lesser degree, diminished exposure to ambiguity and trial-and-error learning.

Big worries about cybersecurity

Six in 10 said that the speed of AI innovation and risk management is the factor most likely to affect their companies’ prosperity over the next three years.

Bosses’ fears about security are acute. About nine in 10 CEOs reported being concerned about data and privacy risks posed by AI agents and AI-assisted malware attacks. A similar share pointed to concerns about AI-driven phishing, while eight in 10 cited insider threats from AI agents.

About six in 10 CEOs remain worried about quantum computing attacks against encryption.

Walsh said corporate leaders he speaks with are concerned about the acceleration of cyber risks and what part AI and agents might play.

Just over two-thirds of CEOs said that they’re apprehensive about their ability to attract the cybersecurity talent they need. About six in 10 leaders are responding by training existing employees.

Economic concerns

CEOs’ views on their company’s prospects and those of the broader economy revealed a split screen. While 86% expressed confidence in their own industry’s growth and 83% in their company’s prospects over the next year, that conviction dropped when asked about the broader economy: Just 55% feel good about US growth and 53% in global growth.

KPMG US conducted the survey before the start of the war with Iran, and the resulting spike in oil prices, though the buildup had been underway.

Just over half of CEOs saw policy uncertainty — factors such as tariffs, interest rates, and regulation — as the main pressure driving short-term decision-making.

A hunger for deals

Even as they juggle a host of worries, most CEOs still have an appetite for dealmaking. Nearly two-thirds said their companies would “seriously pursue” transactions in 2026, while another quarter plan to hold off until 2027.

Walsh said that in the last six months or so, large-cap deals have picked up. He said he’s also now seeing an uptick in midsize transactions.

In the survey, about half of CEOs reported that there is sufficient market certainty to make “significant” investment decisions, though one in five said unpredictability hampered their ability to do so.

The interest in deals is a shift from a year ago, when M&A activity took a hit over uncertainty about tariffs, Walsh said.

“Businesses were just trying to navigate their day-to-day, but we are seeing a sustained increase in that activity in the markets,” he said.

• Jay Graber is stepping down as the CEO of Bluesky to transition into a position made just for her.
• Bluesky’s open protocol offers a decentralized alternative to X and Meta platforms.
• Here is a look at Graber’s career and her unconventional path to Silicon Valley.

Jay Graber is the engineer behind one of the most ambitious experiments in reimagining social media.

The Tulsa-born technologist is best known for steering Bluesky between 2021 and 2026, the decentralized platform she describes as a “billionaire-proof” alternative to X and Meta-owned platforms.

On March 9, Graber announced in a statement that she will be leaving her role as CEO of Bluesky and that someone “focused on scaling and execution” will take over. Meanwhile, she will return to her passion for “building new things” as the chief innovation officer, which is a role made just for her.

She will also remain on Bluesky’s board and have a say in picking her successor.

Graber’s emergence as a Silicon Valley power player was unconventional. In 2021, former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey tapped her to lead the Bluesky project, which was spun off as an independent public benefit company, just before Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter.

Since then, Bluesky’s user base has grown to over 40 million as of November 2025, powered by its open protocol, customizable moderation system, and promise of a more democratic digital ecosystem.

Here’s a look at Graber’s career timeline, from her early work in cryptocurrency to her rise as the architect of a new, user-owned social media platform:

Early life

Jay Graber was born Lantian Graber in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to a mother who is an immigrant from China during the Cultural Revolution and a father of Swiss descent. Her mother, who is an acupuncturist, named Graber “Lantian”, which means “blue sky” in Chinese, as a wish that she would have “boundless freedom.” She was aptly named for the job she would eventually be given.

Her father is a mathematics teacher, and in a 2024 profile of Graber in Cosmico, he is cited as a source of intellectual and academic influence for Graber.

Education

At the University of Pennsylvania, Graber studied Science, Technology & Society, which is an interdisciplinary program that examines how technological innovation intersects with culture, politics, and ethics.

Rather than focusing solely on coding or engineering, the program allowed Graber to explore the broader systems that shape how technology is developed and utilized, an approach that later influenced her views on social networks and digital governance.

Some of her key guiding views include a decentralized internet and open source social media protocols. “We believe that the protocol is the fundamental guarantee on freedom of speech,” Graber said once during an interview with Fast Company.

Before Bluesky

Graber’s early career unfolded during the first wave of blockchain innovation in the mid-2010s. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, she began her career as a software engineer at SkuChain, a startup focused on utilizing blockchain for supply-chain management. Around the same time, she also built and soldered bitcoin-mining rigs, deepening her technical grasp of decentralized systems beyond software.

Between 2016 and 2018, Graber joined the privacy-focused cryptocurrency project Zcash as a junior developer, contributing to one of the most advanced implementations of zero-knowledge proofs. Later, in 2019, she founded Happening, Inc., an events app that aimed to help communities organize and connect through shared experiences.

Happening, Inc. never really took off, but these early roles grounded Graber in both the engineering and ideological foundations of decentralized technology, which later shaped the vision for Bluesky as an open, user-controlled social network.

Joining Bluesky

When Jack Dorsey, then CEO of Twitter, first announced Bluesky in late 2019, it was a small, Twitter-funded initiative tasked with researching an open and decentralized standard for social media.

By August 2021, Dorsey decided to onboard Graber, who was then known in crypto circles for her work on Zcash and decentralized community tools, to lead and accelerate the effort. However, according to an April 2025 profile of Graber in the New Yorker, she quickly realized that for Bluesky to fulfill its mission, it needs to create a social protocol separate from any single corporation and maintain independence from Twitter.

With Dorsey’s backing, Graber negotiated a formal spin-out by October 2021 and incorporated Bluesky as a public benefit corporation, a legal structure that allowed it to prioritize user benefits and open standards over shareholder profit.

Twitter provided an initial $13 million in funding to give the new entity “freedom and independence to get started,” as Dorsey publicly described at the time.

Bluesky’s rise

Graber’s early move to separate Bluesky from Twitter may have saved it.

When Elon Musk acquired Twitter in 2022 and renamed the platform X, Bluesky’s independence allowed it to thrive and emerge as a competitor to X as droves of users left the platform.

In September 2023, Bluesky only had around 1 million registered users, but this figure climbed to more than 20 million by the end of November 2024. The meteoric rise came after a user surge in Brazil after X was temporarily restricted there, as well as 1.25 million user gains the week after Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election.

As of November 2025, Bluesky has around 40 million registered users. That is no match for X’s roughly 560 million users, but it provided an alternative for those dissatisfied with X’s ownership and content moderation.

Calling out Big Tech

Graber has taken a subtle dig at Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.

During SXSW in Austin in March 2025, Graber wore a black T-shirt that reads “Mundus sine caesaribus,” meaning “a world without Caesars.” The design and font are widely interpreted as a response to Zuckerberg’s own Latin slogan shirt, which reads “Aut Zuck aut nihil,” meaning “either Zuck or nothing.”

The shirt drew public curiosity, and Bluesky began selling the same shirt. A spokesperson for the company told Business Insider at the time that the shirts sold out in 30 minutes, representing the company’s “democratic approach, where no single CEO or company controls your experience online.”

A modest net worth

Compared to other Silicon Valley CEOs who run major social media platforms, all of whom are billionaires, Graber has a very modest net worth.

Estimates of Graber’s net worth fall between $2.95 million and $5 million, mostly depending on her equity in Bluesky. Since Bluesky is not a publicly traded company, Graber’s stake in the company and her annual compensation are not publicly disclosed.

As of early 2025, Bluesky’s valuation is estimated to be around $700 million.

A ‘billionaire-proof’ platform

Graber positions Bluesky as a new kind of social network.

Bluesky is built on an open-source Authenticated Transfer Protocol, which decentralizes social networking and hands more control to users rather than a single company or executive.

“The billionaire proof is in the way everything is designed, and so if someone bought or if the Bluesky company went down, everything is open source,” Graber told CNBC in an interview in November 2024.

“What happened to Twitter couldn’t happen to us in the same ways, because you would always have the option to immediately move without having to start over,” Graber added, referring to Musk’s purchase of the platform that is now named X.

Unlike traditional social platforms like X or Facebook, Bluesky is built on an open-source ecosystem called the ATmosphere, powered by the Authenticated Transfer Protocol. The system gives users the ability to design and customize their own ranking algorithms, carry their posts and followers with them across different apps, and avoid being subject to any platform’s arbitrary or politically driven moderation decisions.

Activism on Bluesky

Bluesky became a platform widely used by progressive activists and community organizers.

The Tesla Takedown movement, a pushback against Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s involvement with Donald Trump and the White House’s DOGE office, famously spread via Bluesky when actor Alex Winter contacted a sociologist in Boston to build a website where people could organize local protests.

But the progressiveness of Bluesky also seems to have spooked some politicians. Semafor’s media reporter Max Tani wrote in May 2025 that some congressional staffers told him that they gave up on using Bluesky as an alternative to X, because “their bosses kept getting yelled at by Democratic users angry at their impotence.”

Changing the ecosystem

Graber is unfazed by Bluesky’s slower growth in terms of registered and active users.

In an interview in May with Fast Company, Graber said that reports of Bluesky’s death are “greatly exaggerated” and that growth “comes in waves,” with new communities being established at each stage.

“We’re still seeing a lot of community formation, and one of the most exciting things is how structurally different this is,” said Graber. “It’s not just another social site that has to be a singular winner-take-all in an ecosystem with existing incumbents.”

In 2025, Bluesky still added around 10 million newly registered users.

A warning against AI over-reliance

Graber has tips on how to thrive in an era of AI, and reliance is not the answer.

“AI can handle many reasoning tasks, but if we fully outsource our thinking, it’s not good enough,” Graber told Business Insider.

She added that for students, that might mean writing essays by hand to “build the muscle for critical thinking.”

At Bluesky, Graber said AI is used for moderation and curation but never runs on its own, because while AI delivers packaged expertise, human value lies in judgment and adaptability.

For job seekers, Graber encourages workers to adopt a generalist mindset and master core skills such as writing and coding.

“If you don’t know what good code looks like,” she said, “you won’t be able to evaluate AI’s output.”

Stepping down as CEO of Bluesky

Graber is starting a new era in 2026.

On March 9, Graber said in a public statement that she will be stepping down as Bluesky’s CEO and transitioning into a position made just for her: chief innovation officer.

“As Bluesky matures, the company needs a seasoned operator focused on scaling and execution, while I return to what I do best: building new things,” Graber wrote in a blog on Bluesky.

“As we’ve grown, I’ve found that people thrive when they’re in a role where their passions overlap with their strengths. This is as true for me as it is for our team,” Graber added. “Transitioning to a more focused role where I can do what brings me energy is my way of putting that belief into practice.”

Graber’s new role focuses on Bluesky’s technology stack rather than on growth and business operations. She will also play a role in choosing her successor. For now, venture capitalist Toni Schneider will be Bluesky’s interim CEO.

• Applied Intuition’s CEO says the biggest winners of the AI boom may not be software companies.
• Physical industries like farming, mining, and trucking will benefit from the technology, says Qasar Younis.
• Younis’s comments come as Wall Street debates whether AI could wipe out white-collar jobs.

AI’s biggest impact will likely happen far from laptops, says the CEO of a $15 billion AI company.

Qasar Younis, the cofounder and CEO of Applied Intuition, said on an episode of “Lenny’s Podcast” published Sunday that “the real impact of AI in the next 5 to 10 years” would show up in physical industries, like “in farming, in mining, in construction, in self-driving trucks.”

Applied Intuition develops software to test and power autonomous vehicles and other machines. The company said in June that it raised $600 million in a funding round, valuing it at $15 billion.

Software tools like Moltbook and OpenClaw may excite developers, but Younis said they touch only a small slice of society.

“I love the stuff that’s happening on these platforms, but it’s still segregated to, like, frankly, developers,” he added.

Instead, he said the biggest shift will come from adding intelligence to machines already embedded in the physical economy.

“More pragmatically, it’s actually just putting intelligence into things that already exist all around us.”

Industries like trucking and farming urgently need that kind of autonomy, he said.

“People are not fighting for those trucking jobs,” Younis said. The average farmer is already in their late 50s, meaning many will retire in the coming decade, potentially worsening labor shortages.

AI is more likely to help fill labor shortages in these industries than replace them entirely, he added.

AI’s impact on blue-collar industries

Earlier this year, Wall Street grew worried that new AI tools and agents could replace some software products entirely.

A research paper by Citrini, an investment firm focused on thematic equity investing, triggered a global stock sell-off last month after researchers outlined a scenario in which the AI boom wipes out white-collar jobs and ultimately slows economic growth.

Against that backdrop, some industry leaders say physical industries could end up benefiting from the technology.

For instance, robots could help address labor shortages in manufacturing. Daniel Diez, the chief business officer of Agility Robotics, told Business Insider in a report published on Sunday that manufacturers globally “simply can’t find the people to do this work.”

Ford CEO Jim Farley said last year that AI-powered augmented-reality tools are helping technicians repair trucks more efficiently, though he warned that automation could still reshape jobs across the broader economy.

Business Insider reported last year that some Gen Z workers are increasingly considering trade and blue-collar careers as automation and AI create uncertainty around traditional white-collar professions.

• Oil prices surpassed $100 a barrel on Sunday.
• The US energy secretary is working to reassure Americans that high gas prices won’t last.
• Chris Wright said the conflict in Iran is a “temporary movement,” rather than a “long-term war.”

US Energy Secretary Chris Wright made the morning show rounds on Sunday to downplay concerns about surging gas and oil prices, assuring Americans that the war with Iran isn’t “long-term.”

Hours later, the price of a barrel of oil surged passed $100 for the first time in almost four years.

“What you are seeing is emotional reactions and fear that this is a long-term war,” Wright told “Face the Nation” on CBS News. “This is not a long-term war. This is a temporary movement.”

Wright made similar remarks in an interview with Fox News Sunday.

“The run-up on prices doesn’t have anything to do with any shortage of barrels of oil or natural gas. It’s just fear and perception, the unknown that this could be some long, drawn-out crisis, but it won’t be,” Wright said.

After the US and Israel launched airstrikes on Iran on February 28, the Islamic Republic moved quickly to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway critical to the movement of oil around the world. About 20% of the globe’s petroleum liquids pass through the Strait.

Although there are storage tanks across the Gulf, they are already nearing capacity after a week of conflict and limited shipping options, forcing producers to reduce operations. Iraq’s oil output has shrunk by 60% since last week, Bloomberg reported. Other countries, like Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, have also reduced output.

All of this means higher gas prices for Americans. The US Energy Information Administration says gas prices averaged $2.93 on February 23. By March 2, they were at $3.15. On Sunday, they were $3.40.

During his media tour on Sunday, Wright said regular ship traffic through the Strait of Hurmoz could resume in “a few weeks,” meaning gas prices could ease sooner rather than later.

“We want it back below $3 a gallon, and it will be again before too long,” Wright told CNN’s “State of the Union.” “You never know exactly the timeframe of this, but, in the worst case, this is a weeks, this is not a months, thing.”

• Maria Wainer, based in Israel, canceled her trip to Boston after the strikes against Iran.
• Much of the region has shut down air travel in the wake of Iranian retaliation. So Wainer can’t fly.
• Airbnb, however, refused to refund Wainer’s reservation.

Maria Wainer should have been boarding a flight from Israel to Boston on Thursday to visit loved ones. Instead, another war had broken out, and she was locked in a protracted row with an Airbnb support agent.

She was trying to get a refund after canceling her reservation. The agent was sympathetic, yet unwilling.

“It tears me apart to know you are constantly threatened by the ongoing geopolitical conflict in your location right now. And I feel so bad that I still cannot help you with your full-refund request at the moment,” an Airbnb agent wrote in a message to Wainer on Thursday.

Israel’s airspace has been closed since February 28 after it and the US launched a joint attack on Iran, sparking retaliatory strikes across the region. Those strikes brought travel to a near-total halt, forcing stranded tourists to launch GoFundMe campaigns to afford extended stays.

It was in this climate that Wainer contacted her Airbnb host in Boston to cancel her trip before reaching out to the company about a refund, citing its Major Disruptive Events policy. The policy covers “military actions and other hostilities,” which includes bombings, acts of war, and explosions, among others. Wainer had paid about $800 for the room.

“Our Major Disruptive Events Policy is in effect for areas of the world impacted by issues covered under this policy, like military actions or closed airspaces,” an Airbnb spokesperson told Business Insider. “This means guests who have an eligible booking in one of those areas can cancel for a refund, and hosts can cancel without consequences. To be clear, this means the listing itself needs to be in the impacted area.”

So, even though she was unable to fly due to the conflict, since Wainer’s reservation was elsewhere, she didn’t qualify.

“For now, the only option there is for this reservation is a cancellation outside the policy,” the support agent told Wainer in messages viewed by Business Insider.

The company eventually offered her a partial refund. When Wainer asked why Airbnb couldn’t provide her with a full refund, the support agent said the policy “states that ‘guests can cancel their reservation and receive a refund.’ Please know that it does not state a ‘full refund’ clause. I hope you understand better now.”

Wainer, who said it was her first time booking with Airbnb, told Business Insider that the decision baffled her. “I said, ‘Well, it doesn’t say ‘partial refund’ either. If you don’t put in that adjective, you assume it’s full,” Wainer said.

Airbnb eventually gave Wainer a full refund after Business Insider contacted the company for comment.

Some travelers in the region who posted online also said they struggled to secure refunds from Airbnb over the past week.

On Tuesday, a Reddit user with a booking at an Airbnb in Abu Dhabi said they requested a refund under the Major Disruptive Events policy, but were told to refer to the host’s cancellation policy instead. An X user described a similar scenario on Wednesday.

Wainer’s advice for them: Be persistent.

“I really am into consumer rights. I’ll write letters if I feel like I’m not being treated fairly, and I figure it’s not just me,” Wainer said. “Maybe other people will just give up, but I don’t think they should have to.”

• Agility Robotics is deploying humanoid robots at Toyota’s Canada manufacturing plant.
• The company says its robot, Digit, will take on jobs involving highly repetitive tasks.
• Agility’s chief business officer, Daniel Diez, said companies see labor gaps in these positions.

Backflipping robots make for splashy demos and viral videos, but Agility Robotics sees humanoid bots doing something simpler — solving an urgent global labor issue inside manufacturing plants.

The Oregon-based startup has so far deployed its humanoid robot, Digit, at Amazon, Schaeffler Group, and GXO, a logistics company. The startup announced in February that a few Digit robots would be deployed in Toyota’s massive manufacturing plant in Canada, marking yet another automaker betting on bipedal bots.

Daniel Diez, Agility’s chief business officer, told Business Insider that there’s a common thread at the companies he visits around the world. In Germany, Korea, Japan, or the US, manufacturers just don’t have enough people who want to work mundane, repetitive jobs.

“It’s the same exact issue: Labor gaps in these highly repetitive physical tasks,” Diez said. “They simply can’t find the people to do this work.”

There is no shortage of manufacturing roles. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are more than 400,000 job openings in the sector in the US as of December 2025.

In addition to vacancies, talent retention remains a top concern for manufacturers, according to a 2024 survey of more than 200 companies conducted by The Manufacturing Institute and Deloitte.

Diez said there are “compounding effects” to the so-called labor gap.

A significant share of the manufacturing workforce is 55 and over, he said, meaning they’re approaching retirement. BLS’s Current Population Survey clocks the number at a little over 25%.

Add to that the Trump Administration’s push to bring onshore manufacturing back, which Diez said will only create more jobs and a greater need for automation.

“This re-shoring of manufacturing in the US is going to only occur through a combination of human employment and automation technology, like humans and robotics,” he said.

Automakers are notably bracing for this shifting tide. Tesla, Volkswagen, Ford, Mercedes-Benz, and Hyundai, among others, have made significant investments in humanoid robots with the prospect that they’ll work the assembly lines in the near future.

Boston Dynamics in January unveiled a new iteration of Atlas, an all-electric humanoid, that the startup aims to deploy in Hyundai’s Georgia factory in a few years.

The company’s former CEO, Robert Playter, previously told Business Insider that Boston Dynamics is helping companies brace for population decline and increased manufacturing demand.

At Toyota Motor’s manufacturing plant in Ontario, the automaker is starting with three Digit bots that will do the simple task of moving totes, or plastic containers, from one spot to another.

There are robots out there that could execute much more complex tasks, while some industry insiders say humanoids, or bots with two legs and arms, are still years away from scaling. Part of the pitch for the bipedal form factor is easier integration into existing or older factories, Diez said.

“At this moment in time, it feels like an ideal solution for brownfield facilities,” he said, referring to underutilized industrial facilities that tend to have a baked-in layout. In other words, with humanoids, manufacturers can automate their properties without making significant changes to the factory layout and workflow.

Diez said that any industry with highly repetitive tasks is ripe for the adoption of humanoid robots. The industries Agility Robotics is seeing with the most “inbound” requests are coming from warehouse logistics, e-commerce fulfillment, automotive, and pharmaceutical manufacturing, he said.

“We’re not having to convince people that this is a technology need,” Diez said. “We have more than enough hand-raisers who are coming to us.”

• Automakers have been reorganizing their EV lineups since September 2025.
• Legacy car brands — like Ford, Nissan, and Acura — announced discontinuations last year.
• Business Insider compiled a list of EVs that have been killed or indefinitely delayed in 2026.

American EV sales are slumping.

Since September 2025, when the federal $7,500 tax credit for US-made EVs ended, fewer shoppers have chosen a battery-powered car for their next set of wheels.

In January 2026, EV sales fell 53.5%, per CarGurus’ data shared with Business Insider. The figures exclude direct-to-consumer brands like Tesla, Rivian, and Lucid.

Carmakers have responded to the sales collapse with several product cancellations. Last year, Ford ended production of the F-150 Lightning, Nissan axed the Ariya, Acura stopped building the ZDX, and Volkswagen paused the ID. Buzz.

The cancellations aren’t a wholesale retreat from EVs. Each of those brands has next-generation EV models in the pipeline — they’re cheaper, longer-range, and faster charging.

But the shake-up hasn’t stopped. It’s continued into this year.

Business Insider has compiled a running list of electric vehicles discontinued or indefinitely delayed since January 1, 2026 — a tally that we will keep updating as automakers continue tinkering with their EV road map.

Hyundai Ioniq 6 Standard

Hyundai confirmed to Business Insider that it will stop selling the Korean-built, standard-range Ioniq 6 in the US.

The retro-styled sedan never matched the success of its crossover sibling, the Ioniq 5 (which the company said saw a surprising 33% sales increase in February).

Hyundai said it sold just 229 Ioniq 6 units last month.

“Sedan sales have declined a lot over the past decade, and the Ioniq 6 is no exception,” Sam Abuelsamid, the vice president of market research at Telemetry, told Business Insider. “Without enough sales to justify US production, the numbers just don’t add up for Hyundai.”

Hyundai said it plans to import a limited number of high-performance Ioniq 6 N models to the US — a pricier variant with more oomph in the electric motor and track-focused upgrades.

“In the meantime, 2025 Ioniq 6 sedans continue to be available at dealers alongside our award-winning, US-assembled Ioniq 5 and Ioniq 9 SUVs,” the automaker said.

The Ioniq 6 will still ship to Canadian dealerships.

2026 Hyundai Kona Electric

In 2019, Hyundai electrified its popular Kona crossover, swapping the gas engine for a battery-powered drivetrain.

It became one of the automaker’s first mass-market EVs.

That run is now on pause. Hyundai said in February that it would not ship the 2026 Kona Electric from its Korean plants to US dealerships. Like the Ioniq 6, the Kona Electric remains available in limited numbers as a 2025 model.

The model could return for the 2027 model year.

With a starting price around $33,000, it was one of the cheapest EVs on the US market in 2025.

Tesla Model S

The Model S was critical to Tesla’s historic ascent.

When the sedan debuted in 2012, it was the company’s first ground-up vehicle — and a sharp break from the slow, quirky EVs that came before it.

With hypercar-like acceleration, sleek body lines, and a tech-forward cabin, the sedan made going electric feel aspirational rather than a legacy automaker’s compliance exercise.

That shift helped propel Tesla into America’s dominant EV automaker.

Now, despite its historic role, CEO Elon Musk says the $94,990 sedan is headed for an “honorable discharge” after years of sliding sales.

Tesla Model X

The Model X is also going the way of the dodo.

Tesla’s second built-from-scratch vehicle will end production in the second quarter of 2026 amid soft demand. The SUV starts at $99,990.

Launched in 2015, the Model X was ambitious. And complicated.

Its signature second-row falcon-wing doors — which opened by pivoting upward via electronically connected hinges mounted to the roof — became a production headache.

Musk once called the car a “Fabergé egg.“

The production lines that made the two vehicles will now build the company’s Optimus robots.

“We’re really moving into a future that is based on autonomy,” Musk said while announcing their final days, adding that the decision was “slightly sad.”

Kia EV6 GT, EV9 GT

Kia is also tweaking its EV plans — but more narrowly.

The Korean automaker is delaying the GT trims of two models, the EV6 and EV9. Those versions are the highest-performance variants in each lineup.

Kia confirmed to Business Insider that the GT trims are delayed “until further notice” due to “changing market conditions.”

Other trims — which are made at Kia’s plant in West Point, Georgia — remain on sale in the US.

“This delay does not impact the availability of other trims in the EV6 and EV9 lineups,” the company said.

• OpenAI agreed to a deal with the Pentagon in February.
• Staffers have quit in opposition, and customers are uninstalling ChatGPT.
• CEO Sam Altman said OpenAI amended the deal following public criticism.

For OpenAI, securing a high-profile deal with the Pentagon would normally be grounds for celebration. Instead, the company is navigating a wave of backlash from both staffers and consumers over how its AI tech could be weaponized.

CEO Sam Altman announced the agreement — which gave the Pentagon access to its AI models — on February 28, days after rival Anthropic rejected a similar deal.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said his company wouldn’t sign a deal without assurances the technology wouldn’t be used to power autonomous weapons or mass domestic surveillance.

“We cannot in good conscience accede to their request,” Amodei said at the time.

Altman moved to amend the deal amid mounting criticism. It wasn’t enough to quell the backlash, which came fast and threatened both OpenAI’s reputation and its reign as the leading AI company.

OpenAI’s head of robotics quits

Caitlin Kalinowski, a hardware executive who joined OpenAI from Meta in 2024 to lead its robotics division, announced her resignation on Saturday.

In a post on X, she denounced OpenAI’s deal with the Pentagon.

“AI has an important role in national security. But surveillance of Americans without judicial oversight and lethal autonomy without human authorization are lines that deserved more deliberation than they got,” she wrote.

A spokesperson confirmed Kalinowski’s departure and defended the Defense Department agreement.

“We believe our agreement with the Pentagon creates a workable path for responsible national security uses of AI while making clear our red lines: no domestic surveillance and no autonomous weapons,” the spokesperson told Business Insider. “We recognize that people have strong views about these issues and we will continue to engage in discussion with employees, government, civil society, and communities around the world.”

OpenAI employees push back

Many other OpenAI staffers have also publicly criticized the company’s Pentagon deal.

“i personally don’t think this deal was worth it,” Aidan McLaughlin, a research scientist at OpenAI, wrote on X.

Another employee told CNN that many of them “really respect” Anthropic for refusing the Pentagon’s deal.

Clive Chan, a technical staffer, wrote in an X post that he believed OpenAI’s contract barred the use of its models for mass weapons or mass domestic surveillance. Chan wrote that he’s advocating for the company to share more information.

“If we later learn this is not the case, then I will advocate internally to terminate the contract,” Chan wrote.

Even before the deal, nearly 900 former and current OpenAI and Google staffers signed a joint petition supporting Anthropic, one of their primary competitors, and opposing the use of their companies’ technology for weapons that can kill without human oversight and mass surveillance.

“The Pentagon is negotiating with Google and OpenAI to try to get them to agree to what Anthropic has refused,” the petition said.

Claude overtakes ChatGPT as consumers protest OpenAI’s Pentagon deal

After the deal, users flocked to Claude, criticizing Altman’s decision on social media. Scores of Reddit posts urged consumers to “cancel ChatGPT.”

Uninstalls of ChatGPT spiked by more than 295% on February 28, the day after the deal was announced. By Monday, Claude ranked No. 1 among the most downloaded free apps on the US Apple App Store. It remained in the top spot as of Saturday.

Claude is also now at the top of the list of most-downloaded productivity apps on the App Store. ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini are close behind, as is xAI’s Grok.

OpenAI also faced IRL protests.

Activists gathered outside its Mission Bay headquarters in San Francisco on Tuesday, calling for a “QuitGPT” movement. Their anger with OpenAI went far beyond just the Pentagon deal.

One of the protesters, Sarah Gao, told Business Insider that Altman lived in a “super villain’s mansion” and used his “billionaire buddies” to help President Donald Trump with “his disastrous budget bills that stole trillions of dollars from everyday Americans just to line their pockets.”

OpenAI’s deal also grabbed lawmakers’ attention

In response to the drama between Anthropic and the Pentagon, and then OpenAI, California Democratic Rep. Sam Liccardo introduced an amendment to the Defense Production Act that would prohibit the Defense Department “from retaliating against developers for instituting safeguards on high-risk technologies.”

The amendment failed on a 16-25 vote in the House Financial Services Committee.

“Full disclosure: I am a Claude subscriber, though I can’t claim to have used it to create any homicidal bots,” Liccardo said during a committee meeting. “Regardless, when the company that designs and builds the jet fighter tells us when to use the brakes, we should listen. Instead, the Pentagon’s bureaucrats and lawyers believe they know better. They think they can fly the plane without brakes.”

Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii also announced on X that he had “downloaded Claude.”

Altman does damage control

In the days after the deal and subsequent backlash, Altman took steps to make amends.

He fielded questions publicly on X the day after, at one point saying that the process “was definitely rushed, and the optics don’t look good.”

In an internal memo sent on March 2 and later shared on X, Altman said that OpenAI had revised the contract to include clearer safeguards preventing the Pentagon from using its models for mass domestic surveillance.

Altman said he would rework the contract, adding explicit prohibitions on using OpenAI’s technology on “commercially acquired” data, which had not been covered in the original terms.

Altman also again said in the memo that he “shouldn’t have rushed” to get the deal out, saying “it just looked opportunistic and sloppy.”

• Air travel across the Middle East has been in a state of chaos since last Saturday.
• Some travelers are racking up mounting hotel bills as they wait for a flight home.
• Many are confused about whether they will be saddled with or reimbursed for these bills.

Emilia Vasquez, a business development manager for Goodwill, landed in Dubai on Thursday, February 26. She and her 6-year-old son had flown in to celebrate her birthday, and they were planning to stay until Tuesday.

Two days later, the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran, and everything changed — across the Middle East, airspaces shut down, airports closed, and thousands of travelers, like Vasquez, found themselves stuck in place.

As they navigated the logistics of getting stranded, they also faced another issue: the cost of getting stranded.

In a statement on March 1, the General Civil Aviation Authority of the United Arab Emirates, or GCAA, announced that the State would be bearing “all hosting and accommodation costs for affected and stranded passengers.” The announcement did not specify how or when travelers would be reimbursed.

For Vasquez, the flight cancellations meant watching her hotel stay grow longer by the day. She was staying at Taj Dubai hotel, a 5-star hotel near the Dubai Mall, and spending about $500 a day, roughly $300 of which went to her hotel bill. As of Thursday, she had spent $6,800.

With bills racking up and no immediate money from the Emirati government, she was only a few thousand dollars away from her credit card limit.

“I’m being responsible for paying for this hotel, the hotel literally telling us that if I cannot afford the hotel to leave and go somewhere else,” Vasquez told Business Insider on Wednesday. “I don’t feel safe to leave the hotel and go somewhere else. So I’ve been extending the days every day.”

With some airlines slowly resuming limited service out of the region, Vasquez managed to leave Dubai on Friday, but for many of the travelers who remain on the ground, bills continue to mount and confusion remains about whether they will be saddled with or reimbursed for these bills.

The Abu Dhabi and Dubai tourist ministries did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider. The General Civil Aviation Authority of the United Arab Emirates did not respond to a request for comment.

‘We’re just trying to be as cheap as possible’

While some well-heeled visitors paid six figures to get out of Dubai, others have been funding their extended stays through a mix of credit cards, airline-provided vouchers, and crowdfunding.

As of Saturday, two of the region’s biggest airlines — Emirates and Etihad — have resumed limited flight schedules, prioritizing existing customers. Qatar Airlines remained grounded with the exception of limited flights to Doha. While the airlines haven’t released guidance around obtaining hotel vouchers, several travelers said they’ve been able to receive them.

Fate Show, a Ph.D. student, was flying from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to London with her dad after seeing her family for Chinese New Year. Their flight was scheduled to stop in Dubai on Saturday afternoon. When she arrived at the airport, she was met with chaos.

Emirates canceled their flight to London and provided a voucher to cover food and a hotel stay at the S Hotel Al Barsha, a 4-star hotel about 20 minutes from Dubai International Airport.

That voucher lasted four nights. On Tuesday, after the voucher ran out, they switched hotels to the Hampton by Hilton Dubai Al Barsha, where they paid for their stay out of pocket. The room, with two single beds, cost $112 a night and included breakfast.

They are trying to limit additional spending on food to $30 a day.

“We’re not trying to do anything fancy,” she said. “We’re just trying to be as cheap as possible.”

She and her father tried to buy new tickets home, but said they were too expensive. On Friday, they moved to the Copthorne Hotel with their Emirates voucher. Her flight has been rescheduled for Tuesday.

Even with the help of the Emirates hotel voucher, Show and her father have had to spend hundreds of dollars during their unexpectedly extended stay in Dubai.

“Obviously, that’s a lot of money we were not intending to spend,” she said. “We’re using a credit card, so we’re hoping to be reimbursed by next month when we repay it.”

Shanice Day, a stylist from Houston, traveled to Dubai on February 24 to celebrate her 30th birthday with her friend Remy Thomas, staying at the FIVE Luxe hotel near Jumeirah Beach. Their original flight home on March 1 was canceled, along with subsequent rebookings, and they were left paying for their hotel out of pocket.

On Tuesday, Thomas started a GoFundMe to fundraise for their accommodation and flights back. As of Friday, the pair had raised $9,978 of their $11,000 target.

Day managed to secure a flight out of Dubai to Sydney on Thursday. The following day, she flew from Sydney to Los Angeles, the penultimate leg of her round-the-world journey back to Texas.

“I’ll probably get therapy after this experience,” Day told Business Insider. “I know it’s going to take me a while to build up the courage to travel again.”

Shrihari Madhu, the manager of Coral Cove, which rents out three apartments in Dubai Marina, told Business Insider they have been helping tourists stranded by flight cancellations by offering free accommodation or a base fee of around $40 a night. Ordinarily, they rent their properties out for prices starting around $110.

“Many travelers are reaching out because they need an immediate reliable place to stay while navigating these disruptions,” Madhu said.

Madhu said the three apartments are currently occupied by guests whose travel plans were canceled.

The only thing more expensive than staying is leaving

On Monday, as tensions escalated and airspaces across the region shut down, some wealthy travelers in the UAE hired chauffeurs to drive them into Oman and Saudi Arabia. The trips involved hours in the car, including long waits at border crossings.

From there, they chartered private planes, spending upward of $200,000 to make it out, Ameerh Naran, the CEO of Vimana Private Jets, previously told Business Insider.

He said demand to leave the region had started to tick up on Friday, when the possibility of a conflict with Iran became more acute.

“There has been a clear emphasis on speed and certainty of departure, with many clients prioritizing the earliest viable routing rather than specific aircraft types or traditional preferences,” Naran said. “We have also seen increased demand for coordinated ground support to facilitate access to airports where airspace remains open.”

• Target is plowing billions into revamping its products and stores under its new CEO.
• Key to its efforts is a suite of new AI tools.
• Business Insider got a look at several AI projects that Target’s tech chief said are speeding things up and spotting trends.

Generative AI couldn’t have come along at a better time for Target.

That’s the assessment Target’s tech chief, Prat Vemana, told Business Insider after newly minted CEO Michael Fiddelke spent the morning laying out an ambitious turnaround strategy at the retailer’s Minneapolis headquarters.

The company had just reported its 13th consecutive quarter of weak sales — a stretch that saw big box competitors like Walmart and Costco gain market share — and leaders from across the organization were assembled to make the case that it was a new day at Target.

“I couldn’t have asked for a better time for AI to show up, because now we have a need. We have a bold agenda ahead of us,” Vemana said.

By the numbers for the coming year alone, Target’s agenda is indeed bold: $1 billion in additional capital investments, $1 billion more in new operational commitments, 30 new stores, 130 remodels, overhauls to as much as 75% of the assortment in certain categories, and blisteringly fast product releases.

Fiddelke said the work is already paying off with an acceleration in February sales, and the company expects to report sales growth in every quarter of 2026.

Underpinning the success or failure of nearly every aspect of that strategy are a host of AI-powered tools developed by Vemana’s teams.

“Tech is a through-line in everything that we do,” Vemana said.

Target has a long tech legacy, but the competition is as fierce as ever

Target has long based marketing and operational decisions on vast troves of data, and it was an early mover in applying machine learning to its business.

The company’s predictive analytics department even became the subject of controversy in 2012 when it was revealed that buyer behavior could be used to infer something about a shopper so intimate as a pregnancy. (Whether or not it actually did is unclear.)

A decade-plus later, that almost seems quaint in the age of Meta AI glasses, Ring doorbells, and hackable robot vacuums. Indeed, an entire industry now generates astronomical revenues by anticipating users’ tiniest impulses.

And in just the last few years, generative AI technologies started running laps around what their ML predecessors could do. Meanwhile giants like Amazon and Walmart are reaping the advantages that come with scale.

In other words, the competition caught up, and machine learning that was once such an advantage for Target is arguably less of a leg up in the hyper-paced world of AI.

But as companies around the world cite AI in trimming their tech workforces, Vemana said he needs his teams in the US and India to match the output of an even larger company.

“Generative AI actually opened up a completely other dimension of growth,” he said.

Target is investing in tools to help teams save time — and predict trends

For Target’s apparel teams, a new Trend Brain platform combines visual analysis of fashion photos with social media sentiment analysis in an effort to predict what styles will take off in the next season.

That lets designers pull a new designs together in a matter of weeks rather than months, positioning Target to rotate through collections nearly twice as fast as before, said Gena Fox, Target’s head of apparel.

It also gives the company an early alert for products that might not sell as strongly.

“We saw really early that polka dots were trending,” she added, referring to a line of swimsuits. “So we were actually able to go back and buy into that more and then move out of styles that weren’t performing as well.”

Trend Brain offers another advantage when it comes to handling the endless details of designing a fashion campaign.

“After a few hours of this, you’re going to skip a few things, right?” Vemana said. “AI doesn’t get tired.”

And as that product arrives in stores, managers and associates now have a new suite of Target-designed tools on their handheld Zebra scanners that simplify everything from planning displays, to prioritizing restocking tasks, to getting immediate support without having to go find a desktop computer and fill out forms.

“We really care about human touch — that’s what matters,” Vemana said. “Anything that gives time back to the team, they give back to the guest, and guest is happy.”

Meeting customers where and how they shop

Agentic shopping grabbed headlines last fall, and Target is among the first retailers to offer multi-item baskets through ChatGPT. It’s also one of Google’s partners in developing the open commerce protocol on Gemini.

But beyond those more obvious applications, Vemana said AI is helping the Target team deliver improvements to how customers shop with its app.

For starters, the executive said the way generative AI handles information required a complete overhaul of the app’s code base — a task that AI coding companions made much faster.

“We’ve rewritten the entire app already — what would have taken years and years — in, like, 18 months,” he said.

And with a third of in-store shoppers using the app during their visits, the changes aren’t just for chatbots.

The app itself now has several customer-friendly features, like shopping list scanner tool that converts handwritten notes into a shoppable list, to a store mode that pins list items on a map of an actual location.

Target didn’t break out the full size of its AI investment, and a big question for companies implementing AI is whether the capital required to deploy it will generate a positive return on investment.

Vemana emphasized that Target views the tech as essential for its growth plan.

“It’s not just doing AI for the sake of doing AI,” he said. “We are foundationally strengthening so that we have the right kind of AI applied in the right places.”

• As we were working on the list this year’s list of “future unicorns”, startups kept dropping off.
• The hottest AI startups are raising new rounds every few months.
• Another reason more companies are breaking out quickly is that AI’s accuracy continues to improve.

The AI gold rush has gotten so frenzied that startups are outgrowing the unicorn label in real time.

While we were reporting this year’s list of future billion-dollar companies, some of them raised fresh funding and vaulted past the cutoff almost overnight.

Let me explain: Ever since 2023, we have worked with TRAC, a San Francisco-based early-stage venture firm, to identify 30 startups that its AI algorithm predicts will someday be unicorns.

There is always a lag between the time TRAC gives us the list and when we publish because we have to do our own reporting on the startups. In past years, that was not a problem, since startups typically raised new rounds of capital no more than once a year.

But these are not typical times, with the hottest AI startups raising new rounds every few months.

“Competition to invest in the ‘hot’ companies is as fierce as we’ve seen in decades,” said Fred Campbell, TRAC’s managing partner. “TRAC is seeing investor demand exceed round sizes by 10X, meaning for every $1 the company wants to raise, investors are offering $10.”

As we were working on the list this year, startups kept dropping off because they raised new capital, putting them over TRAC’s $250 million threshold for being a “future unicorn.” So here are the startups that “graduated” for our rankings:

• Builder.io, which is developing a content management system platform for composable commerce, closed a new round late last year, valuing it at $1.85 billion, according to PitchBook.
• Profound, an AI-driven marketing platform, reached a $1 billion valuation last month after raising $96 million in Series C funding.
• Braintrust, an AI observability and evaluation startup, raised $80 million in Series B funding at an $800 million valuation last month.
• Novig, a peer-to-peer sports prediction platform, reached a $500 million valuation following a $75 million Series B funding round announced last month.

Another reason more companies are breaking out quickly is that TRAC’s AI predictive accuracy continues to improve.

“It is easier today for our AI to identify future unicorns than ever before,” said Campbell.

But it’s also easier for everyone else to identify those unicorns. When TRAC first shared its list of “future unicorns” with us in 2023, using AI to identify startups was more of a novelty. Now it’s much more commonplace, meaning more VCs are chasing the same companies.

“It is harder than ever to secure allocation in funding rounds of the fastest-growing future unicorns,” Campbell said.

There is also the question of whether the term “unicorn” has lost its significance in an age when the hottest frontier lab startups are valued at $1 billion or more right out of the gate, long before ever releasing a product.

Unicorns are supposed to be rare, but there are now 1,694 of them, according to Crunchbase data.

For his part, Campbell still believes unicorns are a unique enough breed.

“With some 20,000 to 25,000 new tech companies funded globally, only about 200 will become unicorns,” Campbell said. “These are still very rare companies that will garner the lion’s share of the market value-creation.”

• Tech industries are losing their strength.
• One economist said tech job losses outpaced the past two recessions.
• Still, there is weakness in other areas of the job market.

It’s a tech bloodbath in the job market.

Friday’s shockingly weak jobs report showed a loss of 92,000 jobs in February across the broader economy, far below the expected gain of 55,000 jobs. After the release, economist Joseph Politano posted on X that the tech sector has had an especially rough couple of years.

“For a while, you could at least say we’re not gaining jobs the way we used to, but we’re not losing them. Everything’s kind of stagnant,” Politano told Business Insider. “That has, over the last year, completely changed, where it’s losing jobs again at one of the most rapid rates of the last 20 years.”

Tech job losses now outpace past downturns in 2008 and 2020, per Politano. Historically, Politano said, the US would usually be adding around 100,000 to 300,000 jobs in tech annually; even when there have been some pullbacks, there’s generally a quick rebound. But not this time.

Already, Politano said, this moment is clearly and significantly worse for the sector than the 2020 recession, and slightly worse than 2008. He thinks the most apt comparison is to the dot-com bust, although today’s situation still isn’t quite as dire.

“The fact that the only thing that you can compare it to is the worst tech job recession of all time is pretty bad,” Politano said. “The length is really important here. It’s been three years of job losses. It took only about four years for recovery to start from the dot-com bust, for tech to start rehiring at a semi-normal rate again. The fact that we’re now three years into this and it’s actually getting worse is a really big deal.”

Of course, as Cory Stahle, an economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab, notes, it’s not just tech that’s down in the dumps. Manufacturing, which has been cooling for the last couple of years, saw employment fall, as did the government sector. Healthcare, which had been propping up the job market, lost jobs in February, exacerbated by a roughly monthlong Kaiser Permanente strike. “Everything was looking pretty weak by different industries,” Stahle said.

ZipRecruiter economist Nicole Bachaud said February’s losses in tech-related sectors were similar to recent trends. “When we look at information continue to see a decline, and then the professional and business services, a little bit soft, but I wouldn’t say that was necessarily an out-of-place movement for that industry,” Bachaud said. “There’s been a lot of headlines looking at layoffs in tech or big changes at certain employers in tech, but overall, the layoff rate has been very low and stable.”

New college grads who leaned into STEM and other people seeking their first jobs could be especially hard hit by the tech hiring downturn.

“We’ve seen a lot about recent graduates struggling to find jobs,” Stahle said. “You really feel for those people who started studying computer science four or five years ago and were told that, ‘Hey, this is a surefire way to get in the labor market, make a good salary,’ and now we’re seeing just a continuation of this trend of fewer and fewer hires being made in the tech sector,” Stahle said.

The latest job numbers also don’t yet reflect the sweeping layoffs from Block, which excised nearly half its workforce last week. In his announcement outlining the cuts, CEO Jack Dorsey cited AI as a reason, saying that “the intelligence tools we’re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working.” Some laid-off Block employees were skeptical about AI claims; many told Business Insider that they had already been using AI at work, and didn’t believe it could replace them outright.

Politano said that, in his view, AI is likely behind at least some of the tech labor market’s losses.

“How much of it you want to ascribe is really hard to tell, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that computer system design is one of the industries that’s losing the most jobs,” Politano said. And, while AI firms are hiring, they’re bringing on far fewer employees than Big Tech behemoths. The types of jobs lost, and the timing of those losses, point, for Politano, to at least some impact from AI.

“We clearly haven’t seen the end of this right now,” Politano said of the future of the tech sector. “I expect that it will be this dribble of bad news for the near term going forward, but I just think that there’s no positive evidence that we’re breaking out of this post-2022 cycle that tech has been stuck in. Until you see that kind of evidence, I think there’s very little chance of a reversal.”

• Big-name funds such as Citadel, ExodusPoint, and more notched gains last month.
• It was another big month for Asia-based funds, including $6 billion Dymon Asia.
• Hedge funds were largely positive last month despite the S&P 500 index recording a loss in February.

Ken Griffin’s Citadel performed across the board in February.

The firm’s five strategies that feed into its flagship Wellington fund — fundamental equity, quant, commodities, fixed income and macro, and credit and convertibles — were all up last month, a person close to the Miami-based manager told Business Insider.

The fund was up 1.9% on the month, bringing its 2026 gains to 2.9%.

The firm, which managed $66 billion at the start of February, notched gains of 1.5% in February in its tactical trading fund, which blends the firm’s fundamental stockpickers with its computer-run equity portfolios.

Steve Cohen’s Point72 is up 4.5% on the year after returning 1.7% over the month. Its peer Millennium is now up 2% on the year after a 0.6% gain in February.

It was another banner month for Asia-based multistrategy funds. $6 billion Dymon Asia made nearly 5% in February, bringing its 2026 gains to more than 10%, while Pinpoint Asset Management is up 6.6% for the year in its flagship fund.

The stock market was down on the month, as the S&P 500 index gave back some of the gains it had notched in January. The broad sell-off in software stocks, driven by AI releases, hurt blue-chip companies like Salesforce.

There were a few multistrategy managers that ended the month down. Balyasny lost 0.4% on the month, though is still positive for the year. Walleye had its second straight down month in February, and is now down 1.4% in 2026. Jain Global lost money again in February and is down 2.2% on the year.

This month has already been volatile thanks to the strikes against Iran by the US and Israel on Saturday. Oil prices have surged, and stocks tumbled on Monday.

Firms mentioned in the story and the table below declined to comment.

This story was originally published on March 2 at 10:22 a.m. New figures have been added to the table below as they have been learned.

• The average price for a gallon of regular gas in the US rose to $3.32 on Friday, according to AAA.
• That’s an 11.4% rise — and the highest retail price of President Trump’s second term.
• Brent crude prices, the global benchmark for oil, rose to $91 a barrel on Friday.

Gas prices continued their ascent on Friday as the escalating conflict with Iran sends shockwaves through global energy markets.

The national average price for a gallon of regular gasoline climbed to $3.32 on Friday, according to AAA — that’s an 11.4% increase from last week’s price and the highest level since August 2024.

The jump follows a surge in crude oil prices after the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iranian targets last Saturday, prompting retaliatory attacks from Tehran.

Brent crude, the global benchmark, traded above $91 a barrel Friday morning, its highest level since mid-2024, according to GasBuddy.

US pump prices could continue to climb. BloombergNEF estimates that about half of the eventual increase in retail gasoline prices typically shows up within 10 to 13 days, with roughly 90% reflected within about 21 days.

The firm added that if crude rises by $10 a barrel amid escalating tensions, US gas prices could climb by roughly 30 to 40 cents per gallon in the short term.

Oil supply chains have been particularly sensitive to threats around the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway along Iran’s southern coast that handles roughly one-fifth of global oil consumption.

Iran said it attacked a tanker passing through the waterway on Thursday.

Any disruption there could quickly drive oil prices higher — and those moves would show up at the pump within weeks.

Iran has also targeted regional energy infrastructure, including facilities tied to Qatar’s massive liquefied natural gas exports.

President Donald Trump downplayed the retail price increase when asked by Reuters about rising fuel costs this week, saying he does not “have any concern about it.”

“They’ll drop very rapidly when this is over, and if they rise, they rise, but this is far more important than having gasoline prices go up a little bit,” he said.

He has said that the US Navy will escort tankers passing through the Strait.

Retail analysts warn that the impact of higher energy prices could extend beyond drivers. Higher fuel costs raise shipping and distribution expenses for businesses and can weigh on consumer spending.

“As oil prices rise, gas prices follow,” Carol Spieckerman, an independent retail analyst, told Business Insider. “And with the administration promising lower prices and consumers laser-focused on the pump, this metric has been given arguably more political and psychological energy than any other economic variable.”

She added that the impact will stretch far beyond the gas station. Higher fuel costs can push up travel, delivery, and retail prices — including goods made with petroleum-based materials.

“The ripple effects of fuel prices are far-reaching and underestimated,” she said. “It’s a compounding effect that touches nearly every corner of retail.”

• This post originally appeared in the Business Insider Today newsletter.
• You can sign up for Business Insider’s daily newsletter here.

Paramount is setting the stage.

David Ellison has turned Paramount from an aging legacy media brand into arguably the biggest threat to streaming juggernaut Netflix in less than a year.

But his work is far from done. In fact, it’s just beginning.

BI’s James Faris, who has been all over Paramount’s rise to power, has a great breakdown of Ellison’s ongoing transformation at Paramount. The moves come as Paramount prepares for the arrival — pending regulatory approval — of its biggest prize: Warner Bros. Discovery.

If anyone is up for the job, it’s Ellison. You don’t get turned down multiple times only to ultimately prevail unless you’re really passionate about something. (Having a father who has an ungodly amount of cash doesn’t hurt either.)

Speaking of cash, that’s another unique part of the deal BI’s Peter Kafka has extensively covered.

When Paramount first started bidding for WBD, it said it was partnering with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth funds. Now that it’s won, it won’t say if they’re still involved. A key Paramount backer suggested that if the Gulf money is still involved, it would be good for the deal.

Meanwhile, to the losers go some spoils.

Netflix might have missed out on WBD — although, was it really that upset? — but it didn’t walk away empty-handed. The streamer received $2.8 billion for its trouble, which is a hell of a runner-up prize.

To put that in context, Netflix’s reported net income last quarter was just over $2.4 billion.

What will it do with that cash? Netflix loves spending money on content, shelling out roughly $17 billion in 2025, according to its 10-K.

That $2.8 billion is basically found money. Why not have some fun with it? BI Today’s newsletter team has got some ideas:

Professional darts: “Drive to Survive” was a massive success for Netflix. Its spiritual successors on golf and tennis haven’t moved the needle the same way. Luckily, I have the solution: professional darts. Before you laugh, watch this 90-second clip and tell me you’re not hooked. (I’ve even got a name for you: “Nine-darter.”)

Here’s the kicker: It’s another way into live sports! Netflix did a lot of the leg work growing F1’s popularity in the US but didn’t reap the benefits. (Thanks a lot, Apple.) This time it can double up with a series and streaming rights, and at a much lower buy-in.

Love Is Blind … New York: Netflix’s most successful reality series needs to come to the country’s best city. (Yea, I said it.) Historically, NYC is a tough place to shoot reality shows because of the cost. Now that it’s got more cash, it’s worth shelling out to nab NYC’s one-of-a-kind population. (Credit to Amanda Yen for the idea.)

Mindhunter, Season 3: David Fincher’s highly acclaimed thriller got the axe back in 2023 because it cost too much to make without gaining mass appeal. Now feels like the perfect time to bring it back since Netflix’s new biggest rival is about to get hold of the king of prestige TV, HBO. (This one comes from Grace Lett.)

It’s jobs Friday, and we’re about to learn if the labor market’s “deep freeze” continued to thaw in February.

Economists expect the US added 55,000 jobs and the unemployment rate held steady at at a fairly low 4.3%. Last month’s report showed a surprisingly strong job gain in January, but revisions to last year’s data meant 2025 as a whole saw the weakest growth outside a recession in over 20 years.

We’ll be watching to see if the job market keeps heating up, or if January’s strength was just a blip.

Check here for updates as we gear up for the report at 8:30 ET, when we’ll break down all the details you need to know.

• Claude is now atop the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.
• Interest in Anthropic has exploded since its CEO, Dario Amodei, defied the Pentagon.
• Download estimates show just how quickly the conversation changed.

OpenAI is paying a price for its rushed deal with the Pentagon.

On Saturday, Anthropic’s Claude dethroned ChatGPT to take the top spot in the US Apple App Store. Data obtained by Business Insider shows just how suddenly the tide turned in the fight for app downloads.

Data from Appfigures, an app intelligence firm, showed that Claude surpassed ChatGPT in the US for the first time on Saturday. Claude’s US downloads were up 240% month-over-month in February, Appfigures estimated, to 1.1 million more than the previous month.

Claude is now the No. 1 free iPhone app in five markets: the US, Canada, Germany, Ireland, and Luxembourg. An Anthropic spokesperson previously told Business Insider that as recently as a month ago, Claude didn’t even rank in the top 40 of the US Apple App Store.

Anthropic’s Mike Krieger said on Tuesday that “more than a million people are now signing up for Claude every day.”

“To everyone choosing to make @claudeai part of how they work and think: welcome,” Krieger wrote on X.

OpenAI takes a hit

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has acknowledged that OpenAI’s deal with the Pentagon was “rushed.” On Monday evening, he publicly released an internal message to employees in which he said that OpenAI had reopened the deal to obtain stronger protections.

Altman has also conceded that the deal was bad “optics,” given that it occurred just hours after Anthropic was essentially blacklisted from the US government for not acquiescing to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s demands.

“One thing I think I did wrong: we shouldn’t have rushed to get this out on Friday,” Altman wrote in the memo. “The issues are super complex, and demand clear communication. We were genuinely trying to de-escalate things and avoid a much worse outcome, but I think it just looked opportunistic and sloppy.”

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said that talks with the Pentagon fell apart because the DOD insisted on unfettered access to AI models. Anthropic wanted safeguards to ensure that its AI wasn’t misused in the deployment of fully autonomous weapons or to allow for mass surveillance of American citizens.

In response to Amodei’s refusal to yield, Hegseth said he intended to formally designate Anthropic as a supply chain risk, a label that the Defense secretary said would ban the AI startup not just from working with the government but also from doing business with any defense contractor.

Amodei said that his company would fight such an action in court. In the meantime, Hegseth’s potential actions could take a bite out of Anthropic’s business with defense contractors and could scare away other companies weary of doing business with a firm on the outs with the Trump administration.

Despite the negative headlines, ChatGPT remains far and away the worldwide leader for AI chatbots.

The same day OpenAI announced its Pentagon deal, the company touted that ChatGPT had more than 900 million weekly active users. In comparison, Google disclosed during its most recent earnings on February 4 that Gemini had 750 million monthly active users.

According to Appfigures, as of the end of February, ChatGPT has been downloaded an estimated 8.7 million times in the US so far in 2026. In comparison, Claude has been downloaded an estimated 2.1 million times.

Near the end of 2025, Altman declared a “code red” to marshal resources to ChatGPT amid concerns that Gemini’s latest update had surpassed ChatGPT’s capabilities.

It remains to be seen whether this current blunder will prove harder to bounce back from.

Appfigures’ estimates are based on firms’ use of trained AI models that turn observed trends in the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store into estimated downloads. The estimates do not include re-installs or downloads across multiple devices by a single user account.

• The software-apocalypse is hitting private credit, putting the biggest players on defense.
• Following concerns over Blue Owl’s software exposure, other leaders are talking up their portfolios.
• Execs like Marc Rowan and Jon Gray defended their portfolios against software risk this week.

Months of concern over the private credit industry finally coalesced this year into its first real reputational crisis.

Blue Owl, a buzzy private investor specializing in loans to the software industry, has seen its stock crater following growing redemption requests across its non-traded private credit funds and market jitters over the impact of AI disruption on software companies.

In the fourth quarter of 2025, redemption requests across the industry were up nearly 3 times from the quarter before at 4.5% of fund net asset value, according to Fitch Ratings. Blue Owl’s tech-focused fund had by far the most redemption requests of the non-traded funds tracked by Fitch, at 15.4%, and has become the avatar of private credit’s exposure to the “software-apocalypse.”

With market watchers concerned that generative AI will make many software-as-a-service companies obsolete, the general angst about private credit over the past few months has now found a target in software loans.

During its February earnings call, Blue Owl’s CFO Alan Kirshenbaum looked to assuage concerns by stating that software loans make up only 8% of the firm’s total assets under management.

And this week, at the Bloomberg Invest conference and on CNBC, other private credit bosses had the chance to assuage fears that they were in too deep on software bets. They didn’t mention Blue Owl by name (though interviewers mentioned them to some, like Apollo’s Marc Rowan and Ares’s Michael Arougheti), but they were doing their best to explain why software loans weren’t a risk to their funds.

Here’s what top private credit players said about their software exposure.

Apollo

The headline of Apollo CEO Marc Rowan’s talk at Tuesday’s conference was that he expects a “shakeout” in the industry that will separate the best investors from the rest. One of the main factors that may decide this shakeout is exposure to software, but Rowan chided those who seemed to suddenly realize this.

“Lo and behold, we think that AI might impact software,” Rowan said. “Is that news? Did we just discover that two weeks ago?”

He pointed to the nearly 70% decline in software stock, and made it clear that it is riskier to invest in software equity than in senior lending to software companies. But he also made it clear that software is only a “fraction of assets” that Apollo has lent.

He said software accounts for 30% of the leveraged lending market — roughly in line with its share of the leveraged buyout market. This overrepresentation means software is “subject to attack.”

“If 30% of your portfolio is in one industry and that one industry is being impacted by technology, you have not been a good risk manager,” Rowan said.

On the firm’s February earnings call, president Jim Zelter explained that the firm’s overall exposure to software is less than 2% of total assets under management.

Blackstone

A filing late Monday night revealed that Blackstone’s non-traded private credit vehicle BCRED received a record 7.9% redemptions, which the firm paid out over its typical 5% gate on redemptions.

The next morning, as some of his competitors spoke to Bloomberg, Blackstone’s president Jon Gray sat down with CNBC at the New York Stock Exchange to walk through the firm’s response to private credit concerns.

On software, Gray noted that while some software companies might struggle, many software companies also function as “systems of record” and “infrastructure,” and it will be “very difficult to rip them out.”

Generative AI surely makes performance “vulnerable” for software companies, but he said BCRED’s software portfolio saw double-digit cash-flow growth last year. Similarly, Blue Owl’s software-focused fund continued to perform well even as investors ran for the exits.

Gray expects disruption in software, but said the firm’s software loans were made at “just 37% loan-to-value” — that is, they loan on average 37% of the total equity value of a business — with large amounts of equity that should provide a cushion for their portfolio in case anything goes wrong.

Marathon

Bruce Richards, the CEO of credit investor Marathon Asset Management, which was acquired by CVC Capital Partners in January, recently predicted that the software industry will see a default rate of 15% in the next few years. He compared this coming wave of software defaults in the wake of generative AI to the wave of defaults in the energy industry following the success of fracking in the mid-2010s.

Richards said that many in the industry are “rearranging the furniture right now,” claiming that their software bets are actually “travel and leisure” or “hospitality” bets because they support people in those industries.

“Everyone’s trying to re-rate or recategorize what their exposure is to say, ‘I don’t have that much software exposure,'” Richards said.

He said that 23% of the direct-lending loan marketplace is software, with some managers having even larger exposures.

“Why do you have 23% in that one industry’s sector when only 1% of private companies are software companies in this country?” Richards said, noting his firm only had 1% exposure to software.

Instead, Marathon is focused on HALO assets: Hard Assets, Low Obsolence. Marathon specializes in asset-based lending, where loans are secured to real assets like aircraft, engineers, or cranes, and he said these sorts of loans provide safety through both their collateral and the unlikelihood that they’ll be replaced by technology.

HPS

In 2021 and 2022, software was “pretty highly priced,” said Scott Kapnick, CEO of HPS Investment Partners. Earlier in the decade, many private credit firms were deploying large amounts of investor capital.

“People were trying to grow their businesses, and they now may have some of those loans that they have to make sure are going to be come due,” Kapnick said. “And if they struggle, then those firms are going to struggle.”

At the time, firms wanted “to lean in,” and “to grow,” Kapnick said, but the key was making sure not to be overexposed to risk.

“I think most of the big managers are very good at managing risk,” he said. “And the scaled players are going to continue to benefit from this period.”

HPS now has plenty of scale as it was purchased by BlackRock, the largest asset manager in the world, in 2025.

KKR

Other industry bosses also stressed the importance of not spending too much when the market is hot. KKR co-CEO Scott Nuttall said that his firm made that mistake in 2006 and 2007 and has since committed to linear deployment, or investing a steady amount of a fund every year, whether the market is hot or cold.

“Don’t overdeploy, don’t underdeploy,” Nuttall said. “You’ve got to focus on portfolio construction, and critically, you’ve got to be diversified.”

Nuttall compared this to firms that “put a lot of money to work in 2021” when asset prices were high, and tech was a hot asset class.

The risk of overdeployment is owning overpriced assets in tanking asset classes, and Nuttall agreed that this cycle will lead to changes in the industry. “There’s some firms that will not be around,” Nuttall said. “There’s some firms that will do the apology tour and the apology fund. So the next fund will be 0.3 times the size of the last fund, but their investors will decide to give them another chance.”

Ares

Ares CEO Michael Arougheti, whose firm has a wide range of software bets, touted the importance of diversification, which hedges its portfolio.

“So, if software disrupts a sector of our portfolio, then our digital infrastructure and data center development business benefits,” Arougheti said. “If software disrupts the portfolio, then our renewable energy business benefits. “

“Those that are more diversified will survive, consolidate, and probably grow disproportionately,” Arougheti said. Blue Owl is also a major investor in data centers through its private equity funds. But those who are too focused on one asset class may face trouble.

“Inevitably, if you are concentrated, whether it’s AI or we saw it with the energy shakeout five-six years ago, there are going to be winners and losers,” Arougheti said.

• Tech giants like Palantir and Citadel have relocated to Miami.
• Miami’s tech workforce surged during the pandemic and maintained stability despite hiring slowdowns.
• Silicon Valley and Miami have now formed a two-way network, sending tech workers in both directions.

For years, Miami has been cast as Silicon Valley’s pandemic-era escape hatch — a sunny refuge for tech billionaires and crypto founders fleeing California.

New data, however, suggests the story is more complicated. Rather than a one-way exodus, the relationship between the two hubs has settled into a steady, two-way exchange of talent and capital.

The pipeline between them first began to gain traction during the pandemic, and the number of tech workers in Miami overall has continued to grow through 2025.

Palantir, which was based in Palo Alto before moving to Denver in 2020, relocated its headquarters to Miami in February. Citadel relocated its global headquarters to Miami in 2022, calling the city “a destination of choice for the global financial industry.” Tech leaders like Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin are also snapping up real estate there.

Business Insider gathered data from Revelio, PitchBook, and LinkedIn to analyze the links between Silicon Valley (including the San Francisco and San Jose metropolitan areas) and Miami. Here’s what we found.

Over the years, Silicon Valley and Miami have established a tech network that goes both ways. While the number of workers moving from Miami to Silicon Valley is smaller, it has remained consistent. So, rather than a one-way migration, it is an ongoing exchange between the two regions.

Revelio’s findings are based on aggregated publicly available profiles and postings, which allow it to track individual employment histories and job postings over time.

Major companies began expanding their footprint in Miami during the height of the tech boom between 2021 and 2022. Small and midsize firms also account for a meaningful portion of overall tech employment, however, suggesting Miami’s tech ecosystem isn’t driven solely by a handful of headline-grabbing corporate relocations, but by a wider range of companies operating in the region.

Even as layoffs mounted and hiring cooled between 2023 and 2024, the overall head count continued to grow. This stability suggests that firms of all sizes are holding onto their Miami operations rather than pulling back when things slow down.

According to LinkedIn hiring data, the overall labor market took a turn for the worse in 2023, and Miami was no exception. Hiring in the area was down 20% from the prior year. In 2024, however, that decrease in hiring slowed to about 10%.

Hiring in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale area began to stabilize in 2025, and it posted a positive year-over-year increase in October of last year. It was the first time since mid-2022, LinkedIn found.

San Francisco remains king in terms of both the number of venture capital deals over the last six years and their values, according to PitchBook data. Miami follows a similar pattern to the workforce head count. Seed funding deals in Miami peaked in 2021 before gradually falling.

The findings suggest that Miami and Silicon Valley may not be equals in the tech industry, but both are now hubs in their own right.

• David Ellison has shaken up Hollywood since becoming CEO of Paramount Skydance.
• Paramount employees and TV viewers will see big changes as Ellison looks to build a streaming powerhouse and buy WBD.
• Paramount has already made moves behind the scenes, like reorganizing teams and hiring key execs.

David Ellison is tackling the mountain-sized challenge of transforming Paramount Skydance from a shrinking legacy media company into a Hollywood powerhouse.

The Paramount CEO is starting to unveil his long-awaited game plan: catch up to Netflix’s tech, assemble a crew of top-tier executives, and rethink its news business. That goal — of creating a “next-generation” media company, in Ellison’s words — is all before the planned mega-merger with Warner Bros. Discovery.

These steps show how the aspiring media mogul, who took charge of Paramount in August thanks to his tech billionaire father Larry Ellison, is remaking the 114-year-old company. Paramount’s portfolio includes classic brands like CBS, Showtime, and MTV, and it has pledged to ramp up movie production to 30 films per year if its WBD deal goes through.

“I think he is, directionally, spot-on,” said media analyst Rich Greenfield of Lightshed Partners. “They need a lot more content, and they need a much better underlying technology.”

Make it more like TikTok, Netflix, and YouTube

Ellison is out to prove he can beat Netflix at its own game — not just in a bidding war.

That’s why Paramount is bolstering its streaming tech, which six staffers told Business Insider is inferior to industry leader Netflix’s in both features and user experience. Ellison said in a memo he’s focused on changing that by “prioritizing investments in advanced technology.”

Paramount has said the combined subscriber base of its paid streamers and WBD’s would be just under 200 million, compared with Netflix’s 325 million.

“If you want to be successful, you try to copy what the successful people are doing,” said Joe Bonner, a media analyst at Argus Research.

While Ellison didn’t share more details, Business Insider has uncovered some yet-to-be announced features and others that are being workshopped.

Paramount executives are planning a move into short-form video on its flagship streamer to boost engagement by building habits.

“Nobody wakes up in the morning and goes, ‘Oh, let me go see what’s on Paramount+’ the way they check out what’s on YouTube or what’s on Netflix,” Greenfield said.

Paramount+ users could soon flip through TikTok-style vertical clips of “Top Gun: Maverick” or “SpongeBob SquarePants” on the streamer’s mobile app.

Paramount+ product design head Dan Reich emailed product chief Dane Glasgow in mid-January, saying that his team was trying to “jump-start efforts to get a million clips” into its coming short-form platform “as quickly as possible.”

Netflix previously stumbled in short-form video, but is trying again. Disney also plans to add AI-generated short clips from users to its namesake streamer after a deal with OpenAI.

Another first-quarter priority for Paramount in streaming is its sports multiview feature. Paramount debuted this feature last fall for UEFA soccer matches. A streaming tech staffer said a potential expansion could let people view multiple angles of a live event, such as a UFC match, simultaneously. While Netflix has live events, it doesn’t have a multiview feature.

Paramount is also brainstorming streaming features like interactive shopping and user-generated content, which are the backbone of YouTube and TikTok, Business Insider reported. Netflix introduced shows with interactive storytelling as early as 2017, but has since scaled back. And while Netflix has added podcasts, it doesn’t have user-generated content.

Reorganizing to be a ‘tech-forward media company’

As Paramount prepares to jazz up its streamer, it’s also working to become more like a tech company.

Paramount is merging the technical pieces of Paramount+ and Pluto TV, its free streamer. This process, known internally as “convergence,” could help Paramount become more efficient. The company also plans to put Paramount+ and WBD’s HBO Max into a single offering, assuming the acquisition closes.

As Paramount+ and Pluto TV come together, Ellison’s company is joining key technical teams across the streamers, Business Insider reported. The reorganization will support “AI enablement and automated testing,” according to a memo sent last week to staffers affected by the move.

Ellison has also put an emphasis on analytics by expanding the role of the data and insights team led by EVP Jason Kim.

This decision is central to “David’s vision of trying to transform ourselves” into “the most tech-forward media company in this space,” said Domenic DiMeglio, Paramount’s head of streaming data, insights, and marketing.

Ellison execs are in, the old guard is out

When a new CEO takes over, leadership changes are rarely confined to the very top.

The same is true at Paramount. After taking the helm in early August, Ellison brought on former Netflix original content exec Cindy Holland to oversee the streaming business and, in October, picked polarizing editor Bari Weiss to lead CBS News.

Paramount also scored a personnel win by poaching Danielle Carney from Amazon’s video and live sports sales team to lead its US ad sales group. It’s also bringing on Chris Brady of Tribeca Enterprises as an EVP of its ads business. Both will report to revenue chief Jay Askinasi, who joined Paramount from Roku in November.

There have been high-profile departures at Paramount in recent months as well. Chris Simon, an EVP of agency partnerships who spent over three decades at Paramount, is stepping down, Business Insider reported last month, though he hasn’t yet left the company.

Paramount’s streaming product and tech, Vibol Hou, announced his departure via Slack weeks earlier, Business Insider reported.

A battle over Ellison’s influence

While Ellison reorganizes and assembles a team to take Paramount to the pinnacle of Hollywood, the road ahead remains steep. Paramount will take on $79 billion of debt to finance the WBD purchase, putting pressure on the company to quickly perform for shareholders.

Ellison is also reshaping Paramount’s news business, which may soon include WBD’s CNN, and has faced criticism over how his political alliances could influence the company.

The 43-year-old CEO said on CNBC that he wants CBS News to be in the “truth business” and the “trust business” by serving the “70%” of people who are politically center-left or center-right.

Some analysts aren’t sure Paramount can carve out that niche.

“Does that mean: make CNN less liberal? I don’t know. That’s a very fuzzy concept to me,” Bonner said.

As Ellison puts his thumbprint on the news, some wonder who’s influencing him. Ellison has built rapport with President Donald Trump, who called the Paramount CEO “great.” He attended Trump’s State of the Union speech with Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, who then posted a photo with the Paramount CEO.

And Weiss, the anti-establishment leader Ellison appointed to shake up CBS News, has faced staff questions about how her political views could impact the news operation. Weiss said she wasn’t “a mouthpiece for anybody” when defending her choice to delay a “60 Minutes” story critical of the Trump administration.

Another potential influence is Middle Eastern wealth funds, which Paramount won’t confirm or deny are helping back its bid for WBD. Critics worry that even if Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi don’t have direct governance rights at Paramount, they could still try to informally sway Paramount management if they are investors.

“We do expect to syndicate with strategic domestic and foreign investors,” said Gerry Cardinale, a leading Paramount investor of RedBird Capital, said on a podcast while sidestepping the question of potential Middle Eastern backers. “But at the end of the day, that alchemy shouldn’t matter, because it’ll be done in the right way.”

Have a tip or Paramount-related story idea? Contact this reporter via email at jfaris@businessinsider.com or Signal at @jamesfaris.01. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here’s our guide to sharing information securely.

• A version of this story is in the BI Tech Memo newsletter this week.
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Anthropic‘s feud with the Department of Defense is more than a contract dispute. It’s a preview of a looming power struggle between elected governments and increasingly powerful AI companies.

CEO Dario Amodei refused to let the Pentagon use Anthropic’s AI for “any lawful purpose,” worrying it could enable domestic surveillance or autonomous weapons. That stance could have barred certain military uses even if the government deemed them legal, according to Jessica Tillipman, a government contracts expert at George Washington Law School.

This is an example of a potential future in which AI CEOs, not democratically elected leaders, decide what’s acceptable.

“It does not sound crazy to a Silicon Valley executive that maybe they could be in charge instead of you,” AI alignment researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky warned politicians during the dispute. “If they actually could control superintelligence, they’d discard you like used toilet paper.”

Here’s the concern: In a democracy, voters can remove an elected official who makes bad decisions. But if a CEO makes a harmful choice, especially one that boosts revenue or profit, the public has little recourse. Shareholders, not voters, determine whether CEOs keep their jobs.

Whatever Amodei or other AI leaders say, corporations exist to generate returns. Investors pour billions into Anthropic, expecting enormous future profits. Lofty rhetoric about safety and ethics may be sincere, but it also helps win customers and recruit talent. As former product manager Aakash Gupta quipped, “Dario is a better marketer than people give him credit for.”

Anthropic’s own decisions reflect these tensions. In late February, it scrapped a prior commitment to pause scaling or delay deploying models if safety measures lagged behind capabilities — a striking shift for a company whose CEO frequently warns about runaway AI risks.

Amodei also reversed course on taking Middle Eastern investment when the company needed a massive funding round. And this year, Bloomberg reported that Anthropic applied to compete for a $100 million Pentagon prize to design autonomous drone swarm technology.

The pattern isn’t unique. When Google acquired DeepMind, cofounder Demis Hassabis insisted its AI couldn’t be used for military purposes. Google agreed and the deal closed. But by early 2025, Google updated its AI Principles, removing a pledge against weapons and surveillance uses.

Early AI startup Clarifai followed a similar arc, according to former employee Michal Wolski: “We had the same stance at Clarifai in 2014, then it was time to pay back all the money that we raised.”

The result of this inevitable backsliding: In July, Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI each signed Defense Department contracts worth up to $200 million. So, if you’ve been using Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, or Grok as your chatbot, you’ve already been supporting AI companies that help the US wage war.

Tech blogger Ben Thompson argues the right answer is new laws and accountable oversight — not cheering for unelected executives to decide how AI should be used. That’s “the road to an even more despotic future,” he wrote this week.

Democracy is messy. But it’s preferable to outsourcing the levers of power to CEOs whose primary duty is to shareholders — and whose tools may soon be the most consequential ever built.

Anthropic spokespeople didn’t respond to a request for comment on Wednesday morning.

Sign up for BI’s Tech Memo newsletter here. Reach out to me via email at abarr@businessinsider.com.

• Economist John A. List said AI is exposing who truly understands their own work.
• Overreliance on AI answers is increasing the value of deep expertise and judgment, he said.
• Claude’s recent outages showed how quickly some professionals have become dependent on AI tools.

AI might make our work sound smarter, but what happens when we are actually asked to explain it?

Writing on X on Wednesday, economist John A. List said that while he was initially worried that AI might make critical thinkers — and therefore economists — less valuable, his “fears are now assuaged.”

Having spent the past six months working with nonprofits, corporations, and government agencies, he has watched professionals present AI-generated material that sounded polished and persuasive.

List, a Kenneth C. Griffin Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago and chief economist at Walmart, said the key problem is that they didn’t fully understand what they were presenting.

“The words sound right,” he wrote. “But when someone pushes back just a little bit, the sand castle crumbles.”

Human expertise matters more than ever

List said he observed that AI often produces outputs that are either “very wrong” or “nearly right.”

Spotting the difference requires the same critical thinking skills that created the underlying knowledge in the first place, he said.

Being able to defend a conclusion under scrutiny also requires a deep understanding. “It is quite difficult to defend what you didn’t build,” he wrote.

That dynamic, he now believes, strengthens the case for human expertise. The people who can distinguish “nearly right” from “right” are more valuable than ever, he added.

“Creating knowledge still matters,” he said. “Maybe now more than ever.”

Overreliance on AI

AI researchers and some tech CEOs have warned about the risks of overreliance on AI, citing, among other things, co-dependency with large language models and a gradual loss of work skills and critical thinking over time.

Software developers have had a taste of it when Anthropic’s Claude AI models suffered several outages this week.

Some told Business Insider the disruptions laid bare how reliant they had become on AI tools.

“I never realized how people (including myself) have become so dependent on AI in such a short time until the Claude outage happened,” Sathika Hettiarachchi, an IT student and software developer, posted on X on Tuesday.

• Microsoft says Anthropic’s products will remain available to its customers, except for the Defense Department.
• Its lawyers have “studied” the supply chain risk designation, a Microsoft spokesperson said.
• Microsoft’s statement comes as the Pentagon’s Anthropic designation raises questions across Big Tech.

Microsoft said Anthropic’s AI tools aren’t going anywhere on its platforms despite the Pentagon blacklisting the startup.

The Pentagon on Thursday formally told Anthropic that “the company and its products are deemed a supply chain risk, effective immediately.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said the designation effectively bars companies with defense contracts from doing business with Anthropic.

Anthropic has said it plans to challenge the decision in court.

The designation follows a dispute between the AI startup and the Pentagon over how its Claude models could be used. Anthropic has said it will not allow its technology to be deployed for mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons.

A Microsoft spokesperson told Business Insider on Thursday that the company’s “lawyers have studied the designation and have concluded that Anthropic products, including Claude, can remain available to our customers.”

Claude will still be available to customers through platforms such as M365, GitHub, and Microsoft’s AI Foundry, except for the Department of War, the spokesperson said in a statement.

“We can continue to work with Anthropic on non-defense related projects,” it added.

Microsoft has deepened its ties with Anthropic in recent months. In November, the companies said that Anthropic would spend $30 billion on Microsoft’s Azure cloud services, while Microsoft agreed to invest up to $5 billion in the startup.

Microsoft also said in September that it was integrating Anthropic’s models into Microsoft 365 Copilot alongside systems from OpenAI.

The Anthropic-Pentagon saga

In a statement published on Thursday evening, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said the company is in talks with the Defense Department even as it is preparing for court.

“I would like to reiterate that we had been having productive conversations with the Department of War over the last several days, both about ways we could serve the Department that adhere to our two narrow exceptions, and ways for us to ensure a smooth transition if that is not possible,” Amodei wrote.

However, Emil Michael, a Department of War official, said in a post on X following Amodei’s statement that negotiations are off the table.

“I want to end all speculation: there is no active @DeptofWar negotiation with @AnthropicAI,” Michael wrote.

Amodei also offered an apology in his statement after The Information reported that he had privately blasted the White House in a memo to staff after talks with the Pentagon fell apart.

In the memo, Amodei wrote that the administration disliked his company because he had not offered “dictator-style praise to Trump.”

“Anthropic has much more in common with the Department of War than we have differences,” Amodei said on Thursday.

• Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei confirmed that the Pentagon has effectively blacklisted the AI startup.
• Amodei said Anthropic has had “productive conversations” with the Defense Department.
• He also apologized for a private memo in which he reportedly blasted the Trump administration.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei isn’t walking away from the table with the Pentagon, even as his company could sue the Defense Department.

“I would like to reiterate that we had been having productive conversations with the Department of War over the last several days, both about ways we could serve the Department that adhere to our two narrow exceptions, and ways for us to ensure a smooth transition if that is not possible,” Amodei wrote in a lengthy statement published on Thursday night.

Amodei’s statement came after the Pentagon confirmed that it formally notified Anthropic that “the company and its products are deemed a supply chain risk, effective immediately.” It means that Anthropic is effectively blacklisted after Amodei and the company refused to acquiesce to the department’s demands.

For all of the talk of reconciliation, Amodei said Anthropic is prepared to sue the Pentagon over the designation. In particular, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said that the effective blacklisting means that any company that has defense contracts cannot do business with Anthropic.

“The language used by the Department of War in the letter (even supposing it was legally sound) matches our statement on Friday that the vast majority of our customers are unaffected by a supply chain risk designation,” Amodei wrote of the letter the Pentagon sent Anthropic.

Microsoft, which offers Anthropic models to its customers, said it will continue to work with the AI startup

“Our lawyers have studied the designation and have concluded that Anthropic products, including Claude, can remain available to our customers — other than the Department of War — through platforms such as M365, GitHub, and Microsoft’s AI Foundry and that we can continue to work with Anthropic on non-defense related projects,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement to Business Insider.

The fight with the Pentagon has sparked interest in Anthropic, making Claude the top free app in major US app stores. Still, the standoff carries risks for the AI startup given its focus on enterprise business.

Amodei said that Anthropic continues to disagree with the Pentagon’s position on the sweeping nature of the ban.

“With respect to our customers, it plainly applies only to the use of Claude by customers as a direct part of contracts with the Department of War, not all use of Claude by customers who have such contracts,” he wrote.

Amodei also offered a public apology after The Information reported that he wrote harshly critical comments about the White House in a private memo to staff after talks with the Pentagon fell apart on Friday. In the memo, Amodei wrote that the administration didn’t like his company because he hadn’t “given dictator-style praise to Trump.”

“It was a difficult day for the company, and I apologize for the tone of the post. It does not reflect my careful or considered views,” Amodei wrote on Thursday. “It was also written six days ago, and is an out-of-date assessment of the current situation.”

Claude has shot up in popularity since Friday, but Amodei’s statement makes clear that the AI company wants to de-escalate the situation.

“Anthropic has much more in common with the Department of War than we have differences,” he wrote.

• Costco CEO Ron Vachris said the company is committed to returning tariff refund value to members.
• The company is one of hundreds suing the US government for refunds of Trump’s IEEPA tariffs.
• “We always want to be the first to lower prices and the last to raise them,” Vachris said.

Costco CEO Ron Vachris said the company is committed to returning tariff refund value to members.

“Regarding tariff refunds, it is not yet clear what the process will be, what refunds, if any, will be received, and when this will happen,” Vachris said during the wholesale clubs’ quarterly earnings call on Thursday.

“When legal challenges have recovered charges passed on in some form to our members, our commitment will be to find the best way to return this value to our members through lower prices and better values,” he added.

Costco is one of hundreds of companies suing the US government for refunds of Trump’s IEEPA tariffs, which were struck down by the Supreme Court last month.

Vachris said the company has also taken several steps to manage the impact of tariffs on its pricing, including shifting countries of origin for certain items, consolidating global purchases, and leaning into its own Kirkland Signature brand.

Those steps will give the company an advantage as the replacement global tariffs take over from the overturned IEEPA rules, he said. “We believe our expertise in buying and our limited SKU-count model puts us in a position to manage this as well as anyone.”

The timing and layering of different tariff rates throughout the year have also made it difficult to track the exact impact on specific items, Vachris said, but the company has lowered prices on items like textiles, bedding, and cookware as some tariffs have decreased.

“At Costco, we always want to be the first to lower prices and the last to raise them,” he said.

• Uber and Lyft fares rose nearly 10% on average in 2025, a new report found.
• A majority of riders said they’re cutting back on their use of the apps as a result, Gridwise found.
• The ride-hailing companies also increased the share they take of each fare, according to the report.

Catching a ride on Uber or Lyft got more expensive last year, and some riders are cutting back as a result, new data and a survey show.

The prices that customers paid on these apps rose 9.6% in 2025, according to an annual report on gig mobility from data analytics company Gridwise. The report analyzed information about 1 billion tasks over the past year on apps for ride-hailing, delivery, and other kinds of gig work.

It found that the average ride price rose to $23.66 at the end of 2025, up from $21.58 in December 2024.

Over the same period, a majority of ride-hailing customers surveyed — 60.4% — told Gridwise that they’ve reduced their usage of the apps due to price. That’s a jump of 16.6 percentage points over 2024.

The company conducted two surveys, one in December 2024 and the other in January 2026. Each asked 1,000 ride-hailing and delivery customers about their app usage.

The belt-tightening hasn’t translated into financial trouble for Uber and Lyft. They have been able to keep growing — and even turn a profit — by expanding their businesses to new markets. Uber has said that it’s growing its ride-hailing and delivery operations in less-dense suburbs, for instance.

“People are stating that they are sensitive to prices, but we’re seeing growth in the industry overall,” Ryan Green, CEO of Gridwise, said in an interview.

For years, many consumers have been cutting back their use of ride-hailing apps and other app-based services, such as Airbnb, which grew out of Silicon Valley and built customer bases with loss-inducing discounts — colloquially known as the “millennial life subsidy.”

How fast ride-hailing prices increased depended on which app riders used. On average, Lyft priced its rides about 14% below Uber’s, according to Gridwise’s data.

The gig-work drivers behind those rides saw their earnings rise, though not nearly as fast as fares: Gridwise found that gross driver pay increased by 3.6% per trip and 4.1% per hour.

Ride-hailing customers also took more trips using premium services, such as black-car rides and XL, which pairs riders with SUVs and other large cars, Gridwise found. Those kinds of trips tend to cost more than standard Uber and Lyft rides.

The companies also took a bigger share of each fare on average in 2025. Average platform fees per trip rose about 33% in 2025, Gridwise found.

An Uber spokesperson said that Gridwise’s report “relies on a very small fraction of drivers and delivery workers, and doesn’t accurately reflect the facts.” In January, Uber said that while “prices have gone up significantly over the last few years,” the portion going to Uber has remained largely flat.

Lyft did not respond to requests for comment on Gridwise’s findings.

That’s good news for Uber and Lyft’s bottom line, Green said.

“At the end of the day, it’s telling us that these companies are becoming much more profitable on a per-trip basis,” he said.

Do you work for Uber, Lyft, or another ride-hailing service? Contact this reporter at abitter@businessinsider.com or via encrypted messaging app Signal at 808-854-4501. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here’s our guide to sharing information securely.

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The credit might be private, but the problems are becoming pretty public.

A once-wonky corner of Wall Street that’s exploded in recent years is facing increased scrutiny.

But what even is private credit? Why are people nervous? And, most importantly, why should you care?

Let’s break it down:

People are freaking out about private credit. What gives? PE giant Blackstone saw a bunch of withdrawals from its main private-credit fund for retail investors. The redemptions (7.9% of shares, totalling $1.7 billion) actually exceeded the fund’s quarterly limit of 5%. Blackstone still honored it, but not before asking its executives to kick in some of their own money to help the fund.

Ok, but what is private credit? (I totally know, but I’m asking for a friend.) It’s when investors loan money directly to businesses without involving traditional lenders. While it has existed for decades, private credit’s breakthrough came after banks had to pull back on lending following the financial crisis.

If that description is too simple, check out Apollo’s 125-page slide deck about private credit that was published just in time for Christmas. (Personally, I’d just take coal.)

So, Blackstone had a bad quarter in private credit. Now everyone’s nervous. It’s not just Blackstone. Blue Owl, another major player, also recently froze withdrawals from a private-credit fund. Now its stock is down more than 32% this year, and people are reportedly shorting the stock like crazy.

For critics, it’s confirmation of what they’ve been warning about: private credit is a bubble waiting to pop.

Private credit is bad and dangerous. Got it. Whoa, let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Private credit still plays an important role. It’s an alternative for businesses that might need money fast or on more flexible terms than banks can offer.

But when a space quickly explodes — private credit’s grown to roughly $3 trillion — there are bound to be people who get in over their heads. Even Apollo’s Marc Rowan, a private credit evangelist, acknowledged that a “shakeout” is coming.

This all sounds like Wall Street mumbo jumbo. Why should I even care? Because Wall Street wants you to invest in these types of assets. In search of new capital, firms have launched private-credit funds for a broader audience.

It’s part of a bigger trend of giving everyday investors access to private markets previously reserved for institutional investors and the ultrawealthy.

Bottom line: Is private credit bad or good? It’s not as simple as that. The lack of transparency around private credit is both a feature and a bug. It offers borrowers confidentiality while also raising concerns about unseen risks.

Add in the fact that less-sophisticated investors are being pitched such a complex product, and panic can quickly snowball.

Honestly, I’m just happy to be talking about a market risk that doesn’t involve AI. Well … about that.

Dude. I know.

• Target will open its 2,000th store in March in a suburb of Raleigh, North Carolina.
• The 148,000 square-foot location is the first of 30 openings planned for this year.
• The company is doubling down on physical retail as it looks to reverse a trend of declining sales.

Fresh on the heels of unveiling its new growth strategy, Target is set to cross a key retail milestone.

The company said Thursday it will open its 2,000th store later this month in Fuquay-Varina, a suburb of Raleigh, North Carolina.

“Every time we open a new Target store, we’re planting roots in that community,” chief stores officer Adrienne Costanzo said in a statement.

The 148,000 square-foot location is the first of 30 new Target stores planned for this year, and the company has a goal of 300 new locations by 2035.

By comparison, Walmart currently has more than 4,600 stores and over 600 Sam’s Club warehouses in the US. Costco has 634 US locations and another 290 internationally.

In addition to new stores, Target says it will renovate some 130 existing locations this year as part of a $5 billion capital budget that is $1 billion larger than last year.

Physical stores have always been central to Target’s retail strategy, and CEO Michael Fiddelke is doubling down on improving the shopping experience in hopes of reversing a trend of declining sales.

Target says the newest batch of stores will feature several hallmarks of Fiddelke’s turnaround strategy, including a bigger emphasis on groceries, curated experiences, and digital order fulfillment.

Also opening in March will be new Target stores in Bakersfield and Delano, California; Springfield, Missouri; Jersey City and West Orange, New Jersey; and Dallas.

“Even more neighborhoods will get the full Target experience: trend-forward style and value, technology that makes the trip effortless, and awesome teams who deliver easy, inspiring, and friendly moments,” Costanzo said.

• Taproot Management, run by David Lin and ex-Two Sigma exec Jason Beverage, has lost money since launching.
• The firm aims to deliver multistrategy-like returns without the high costs that come with a large staff.
• Kevin Merritt, the firm’s director of research, is also leaving the fund, Business Insider learned.

Taproot Management is hoping to bring a new investing model to the $5.2 trillion hedge fund industry. So far, though, the young firm and its innovative structure haven’t made money.

The manager, which received $250 million in backing from massive Canadian pension CPPIB, launched in the third quarter of last year and lost roughly 1% in its first six months of trading, two people close to Taproot told Business Insider. The firm has also lost money through the first two months of 2026, though the exact amount of the drawdown is unclear.

Taproot is run by founder David Lin, previously of Tamridge and Glenview Capital, and by Jason Beverage, its chief investment officer, a former executive at quant giant Two Sigma. They manage the alpha capture fund with the aim of recreating the steady returns of multistrategy managers like Citadel and Millennium without the high costs that come with dozens of human portfolio managers.

The computer-driven fund has battled a tough quant environment since launch; July was described as a part of “a long, slow bleed” for quant funds, and the start of 2026 saw managers like Renaissance Technologies and Engineers Gate lose money.

The fund has also lost its onetime director of research, Kevin Merritt, who was also a partner at the firm. Merritt’s LinkedIn states he began his garden leave in March. He joined the firm before it began trading last July and previously worked at Wedbush and the now-shuttered Aptigon stockpicking unit at Citadel. His responsibilities have been subsumed by Ted Orenstein, a former investor for several big-name funds, including SAC, Millennium, and, most recently, Walleye, who joined Taproot after launch as head of equities.

The manager and Merritt declined to comment.

At Taproot, experienced investment analysts feed their investment ideas into the firm’s internal platform, where an algorithm ultimately makes investment decisions. Hiring analysts instead of PMs helps keep the fund’s costs down.

It’s similar in many ways to the central books run by large funds, which invest the best ideas from their PMs, as well as to the original alpha-capture fund, Marshall Wace’s well-known TOPS strategy. TOPS, however, is created by taking in external investment ideas and research from sources such as sell-side analysts, not by internal investment professionals.

Multistrategy managers have become increasingly attractive to large institutional investors like pensions and sovereign wealth funds because of their reputation for strong returns regardless of the market environment. But the industry’s war for talent has driven up costs for end investors, creating demand for a cheaper, multistrategy-like offering.

Doug Haynes, Point72’s former president, set out to create something similar to Taproot in 2024, but Norias Research, the launch, never got off the ground. Meanwhile, David Stemerman’s Centerbook Partners now runs more than $1 billion and relies on a network of external managers for its investment ideas.

• Major trade groups in the US are trying to hasten tariff refunds to small businesses.
• They argue that the refunds are “existential” for small businesses and startups.
• The Supreme Court ruled in March that Trump’s tariffs were illegally imposed.

US trade groups are pressing President Donald Trump and his administration to quickly pay tariff refunds to small businesses.

In a joint press release, the Consumer Technology Association and the US Chamber of Commerce said they had filed a brief on Wednesday in V.O.S. Selections, Inc. v. Trump, a lawsuit by small businesses seeking refunds from Trump’s sweeping tariffs.

“The brief argues that an efficient, orderly process to deliver refunds is in the best interest of all parties — the Administration, the courts, and American businesses,” the press release wrote.

“On behalf of the hundreds of thousands of businesses, especially small businesses, that are now owed refunds, the Chamber and CTA are asking the court to establish an efficient, orderly process to deliver refunds en masse,” Neil Bradley, the Chamber’s executive vice president,  said in the release.

He added that the trade organizations were concerned that other parties might try to benefit from the refund process, and “the last thing our system needs is for the trial bar to be profiting off refunds owed to small businesses.”

“While this matters for every American company, refunds are existential for the many smaller businesses and startups who shouldered the tariff burden,” Ed Brzytwa, CTA’s vice president of international affairs, said in the release.

The trade groups’ filing comes after the Supreme Court ruled, in a 6-3 decision in February, that Trump’s tariffs were illegal and that his justification for invoking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act was invalid.

And on Wednesday, Judge Richard K. Eaton of the US Court of International Trade ruled that US businesses that were subjected to tariffs are “entitled to the benefit” of the Supreme Court ruling.

Even before Eaton’s ruling, companies had started demanding refunds. Major companies like Costco, Toyota, BYD, and FedEx filed lawsuits against the administration, seeking billions of dollars in tariff duties since they were imposed last April.

Representatives for the Trump administration did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• Morgan Stanley is reducing 3% of its global workforce, Business Insider has confirmed.
• The firm is reducing roles in all three corporate business lines.
• Key drivers of the cut include performance reviews, location, and business priorities.

Morgan Stanley is reducing its global workforce by 3%, Business Insider has confirmed.

The reductions are expected to impact some 2,500 positions out of the roughly 83,000 the firm reported at the end of 2025. The Wall Street Journal first reported Morgan Stanley’s cuts on Wednesday afternoon. A person familiar with the situation confirmed the cuts to Business Insider, saying they are expected to occur throughout the early part of March.

The exercise is global in nature, spanning the firm’s three primary business units: Institutional Securities, Wealth Management, and Investment Management. The rationale for the reduction is a combination of shifting business priorities, a revised global location strategy, and individual performance reviews, the person added, saying that the action is set to affect both front-office, revenue-generating roles and back-office support positions.

Notably, the person said that, while the firm’s respected wealth management division is affected, the cuts in that business line are focused on “home office” corporate roles. Financial advisors in field offices are not affected by this round of layoffs, the person continued.

The move follows a similar round of cuts last spring, when the bank reportedly trimmed approximately 2,000 roles. However, the current reductions come at a more optimistic moment for the firm’s bottom line. In its most recent earnings report, Morgan Stanley posted record full-year 2025 revenues of $70.6 billion, with investment banking revenues surging 47% in the final quarter of the year.

The layoffs come as the broader financial industry prepares for an anticipated windfall in corporate dealmaking, and some rivals are touting how they’re bulking up — not pulling back — on head count to meet the moment. Still, while Morgan Stanley is reducing head count in specific areas, the person with knowledge of the bank’s thinking said, it’s still planning for long-term growth and intends to add resources in some sectors while trimming in others.

• A group of tech leaders signed the “Ratepayer Protection Pledge” at the White House on Wednesday.
• Under the pledge, tech companies will cover a greater share of the energy costs for data centers.
• It’s a bid to prevent rising electricity bills for regular consumers.

Data centers have been driving up electric bills. Now, some tech companies are working to change that.

At a White House event with President Donald Trump on Wednesday, representatives from several major tech firms signed the “Ratepayer Protection Pledge.”

“They’re going to be making their own electricity,” Trump said of the tech companies. “They’re not going to be taking from the grid.”

Tech leaders in the room included Google President Ruth Porat, Microsoft President Brad Smith, Meta President Dina Powell McCormick, Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman, Oracle CEO Clay Magouyrk, OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap, and Gwynne Shotwell, the President of SpaceX, which is in the midst of a merger with xAI.

According to Trump, the pledge includes five commitments, including:

• Providing or paying for all power generation and electricity needed for their AI projects, including building new power stations;
• Covering the costs of upgrading existing power delivery infrastructure;
• Negotiating separate rate structures with utilities;
• Providing workforce development and jobs in local communities;
• Using their infrastructure to contribute backup power to local grids.

Trump originally previewed the plan during his State of the Union address last week.

“We’re telling the major tech companies that they have the obligation to provide for their own power needs,” Trump said at the time.

As tech companies have poured hundreds of billions of dollars into AI infrastructure, massive data centers have popped up in communities across the country.

While that new construction has brought jobs and other economic opportunities, it’s also led to higher electric bills in many instances.

“They need some PR help, because people think that if a data center goes in, their electricity prices are going to go up,” Trump said at the event.

Some companies have already started building their own energy-generating facilities at data centers, and companies like Microsoft have already announced steps to reduce consumer electric bills.

During the event, leaders from some of the companies detailed ways in which they were seeking to comply with the pledge.

Shotwell said that xAI was committing to developing 1.2 gigawatts of power at the company’s supercomputer site near Memphis, Tennessee, and that the facility would provide enough backup energy to power the city of Memphis. She also said that xAI would build “state-of-the-art water recycling plants.”

“Ultimately, this is not a negotiation where one side wins and one side loses,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said at the event. “We have the same interests.”

Jill Tauber, Vice President of Litigation for Climate and Energy, at EarthJustice, asserted that more needed to be done to address “increasing costs and pollution for communities across the country” caused by data centers.

“More than a pledge, we urgently need strong policies and protections to ensure that data centers pay their way, disclose and mitigate their impacts, and are powered by clean energy,” Tauber said.

• Amazon shed employees in its robotics division this week.
• Overall, the company has eliminated more than 57,000 corporate roles since 2022.
• CEO Andy Jassy is trying to reset Amazon’s corporate culture and reduce bureaucracy.

Amazon cut jobs inside its robotics division this week, the latest reductions in a sweeping cost-cutting campaign.

In a message to employees on Tuesday, seen by Business Insider, Amazon Robotics VP Scott Dresser described the changes as “difficult but necessary.” He stressed that robotics remains a “strategic priority” even as the company restructures and pares back certain efforts.

It’s unclear how many employees were affected by Tuesday’s cuts. However, the decision underscores that Amazon is still trimming its ranks, even after slashing more than 57,000 corporate roles since late 2022, including rounds of layoffs in October and January.

In parallel, Amazon has been winding down underperforming initiatives, recently closing its Fresh and Go grocery chains after years of experimentation.

An Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider that the company eliminated a “relatively small number of robotics roles” this week. Amazon continues to “hire and invest in strategic areas,” the spokesperson added.

“We regularly review our organizations to make sure teams are best set up to innovate and deliver for our customers,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “We don’t make these decisions lightly, and we’re committed to supporting employees whose roles are affected with severance pay, health insurance benefits, and job placement support.”

Amazon’s vast fulfillment network relies on thousands of robots to shuttle goods across warehouses. But the team recently pulled back on Blue Jay, a warehouse robot project that launched just a few months ago, and is shifting toward a new robotics system, Business Insider previously reported.

After January’s broader layoffs by Amazon, which eliminated 16,000 corporate roles, HR chief Beth Galetti said the company was not aiming to establish “a new rhythm” of sweeping job reductions every few months, though she did not rule out further cuts.

As of the end of last year, Amazon employed about 1.58 million people worldwide, the bulk of them in warehouse and logistics positions. Roughly 350,000 of those workers are in corporate and technology roles.

Amazon has been shrinking its workforce since a pandemic-era hiring spree that dramatically expanded headcount to meet surging demand for e-commerce and cloud services.

CEO Andy Jassy has pushed to strip out layers of management and reshape Amazon’s culture to function more like the “world’s largest startup.” He has set internal goals to flatten the organization and introduced a “no bureaucracy” email alias to crowdsource ideas for operating more efficiently.

Even as it trims staff, Amazon is ramping up spending. The company has projected that capital expenditures could reach $200 billion in 2026, fueled by aggressive investments in AI data centers.

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• Warner Bros. Discovery has agreed to sell itself to Paramount Skydance instead of Netflix.
• The media mega-merger still needs the thumbs up from regulators in the US and Europe.
• Business Insider’s James Faris answered questions about the Paramount-WBD deal.

Paramount Skydance outbid Netflix for Warner Bros. Discovery, but the Hollywood-shaking agreement isn’t a done deal.

WBD had planned to sell its studio and streaming assets to Netflix. Paramount wouldn’t give up its pursuit of WBD, including its cable networks, however. After 10 offers, WBD’s board finally said Paramount’s latest bid was better, and Netflix decided to bow out.

Still, Paramount and its CEO, David Ellison, need regulatory approval in the US and abroad, which WBD CEO David Zaslav told employees could take six to 18 months, Business Insider reported.

In the meantime, everyone from actors to zealous fans of TV and movies has questions about the deal. Business Insider set out to answer them by hosting an Ask Me Anything Q&A session on the r/MediaMergers subreddit.

Below are some of the top questions, along with Business Insider senior reporter James Faris’ answers, based on reporting, company statements, and informed analysis. The Reddit Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.

What are the biggest risks to this deal collapsing? Also, what are the chances it will spill into next year before closing (if it does)?

The biggest risk to the Paramount-WBD deal now is regulatory. David Ellison and his father, Larry, the billionaire Oracle cofounder helping backstop the $110 billion deal, certainly aren’t backing out. And neither are WBD shareholders, since they’d lose a lot of value if they didn’t take this deal with Netflix out of the picture.

As far as the timing, WBD’s Zaslav told staffers during a town hall last Friday that the Paramount-WBD deal approval process could last six to 18 months.

Paramount has agreed to pay a so-called “ticking fee” of $0.25 per share, or about $650 million, every quarter that its deal doesn’t get regulatory approval, starting on September 30.

Is this deal going to be held up in court?

While many analysts and insiders expect the US regulatory process for this deal to be relatively painless, Paramount may face harder challenges at the state level and abroad, including in Europe.

Even if regulators don’t block the Paramount-Warner deal, they could slow it down, costing the Ellisons time and money.

What is the biggest financial risk that the Ellisons are taking on?

The biggest risk here is that the combined Paramount-WBD doesn’t grow earnings fast enough and gets crushed by the massive debt load it’s taking on. (This was also an issue faced by WBD.)

Paramount-Warner will have tens of billions in debt it must pay down, in part by cutting costs, as WBD did. However, growing earnings is also crucial, and it’s very difficult to “cut to growth,” so that’s a challenge ahead of Ellison.

Was it ever an option for Warner Bros. to remain independent after the potential split with Discovery? Alternatively, was there an attempt to sell Discovery to Paramount while Warner Bros. maintained its independence?

No, there was never a realistic plan for Warner Bros. to be independent, since it controls the highly coveted studio and HBO assets that Paramount, Netflix, and Comcast were fighting over.

WBD’s cable networks would have become their own company if Netflix had won the bidding war, since the streaming giant only wanted the studio and streaming side.

Paramount, on the other hand, wanted to buy all of WBD before it broke itself apart.

WBD was formed when Discovery CEO David Zaslav believed that joining forces with Warner Bros. would create a media powerhouse. He took on a ton of debt and promised investors billions of dollars in cost cuts and earnings growth.

WBD’s revenue declined instead of growing, and its stock sank. Zaslav then tried a different strategy by formulating a plan to split off the company’s declining cable TV assets.

As a public company, WBD had to sell itself to the bidder the board believed would deliver the highest value to shareholders. WBD was worth about $10 per share before all the split-and-sale rumors began. So when someone eventually offers to buy the company at $31 per share, the board essentially has to sell.

What are they going to name the new company? Warner Skydance ParaBros? Mount Discovery sounds like a mouthful.

Ellison hasn’t said yet, but there are four names between the two companies: Paramount, Skydance, Warner (Bros.), and Discovery.

If I were Ellison, I’d call the new company “Paramount Warner.” I get the sense they want to make Paramount a household name, and Warner is what many call the WBD assets anyway.

And if Ellison wants to keep the Skydance name alive, the official company name could be: “Paramount Warner, A Skydance Corporation.”

Do you think the studio is viable? Or will it be sold off again in a few years?

Paramount has said that it’s planning to keep Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. Studios brands separate, with an ambitious goal of producing a combined 30 movies a year.

As to whether there will be another sale in a few years, that will likely depend on whether Paramount can successfully grow earnings while paying down the debt load it’s taking on.

That’s no easy task — just ask WBD.

Netflix has been the clear winner of the streaming wars. Does this deal change its strategy at all?

Netflix is also widely seen as a winner in this deal since it’s collecting a $2.8 billion breakup fee, while driving up the WBD purchase price for an emerging rival.

Netflix could invest that money — and the tens of billions it was planning to put into Warner Bros. — into original and licensed content.

While Paramount-WBD tries to play catch-up in the fight for engagement, Netflix is looking to extend its lead over other paid streamers. Netflix also wants to close the gap with YouTube and take attention from free streamers and social media apps like TikTok and Instagram.

And if in a few years the Paramount-WBD deal doesn’t work out, Netflix could potentially swoop in and buy assets.

Do you think Zaslav and other WB officials are annoyed that Netflix bowed out? It seemed like they wanted Netflix, but Ellison finally raised his bid.

Before WBD floated its split plan last December, the stock was trading around $10 per share. Paramount has agreed to pay more than 3x that amount.

So while the purchase price could have gone even higher if Netflix decided to bid again, WBD execs can’t complain about the hundreds of millions of dollars they’re set to rake in.

Both studios have a lot of movies that are in development. What are the risks to those movies? Are TV shows more at risk compared to movies?

In the near term, not much, since this deal won’t close anytime soon.

The bigger question is whether Paramount-WBD will spend as much on content as company leaders have said they would.

What’s going to happen to the studio lots? Will they work from both or consolidate to one campus?

Ellison highlighted the combined “real estate footprint” as one of the five main areas of cost savings in the WBD deal, so offices will definitely get consolidated.

As for the lots, that’s still an open question. If one studio lot goes up for sale, would Netflix be a buyer?

What kind of involvement does Saudi Arabia have? Will there be any concerns about the content side?

My colleague Peter Kafka has been asking that question. Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, and Qatar were financial backers in earlier versions of Paramount’s bid, but Paramount won’t say whether they’re still involved.

• Pricey US stocks are long overdue for a painful correction, Michael Burry wrote on his Substack.
• He warned that a return to historical valuations would require the S&P 500 to be cut in half.
• The “Big Short” investor said the index-fund and buyback booms have supported stocks but may falter.

US stocks could suffer a devastating crash as the forces propping them up falter, Michael Burry has warned.

The investor of “The Big Short” fame, who reinvented himself as a newsletter writer late last year, sounded the alarm on a historically expensive market in a Substack post on Tuesday.

Burry, one of the few people to predict and profit from the collapse of the mid-2000s housing bubble, laid out why stocks are overdue for a painful correction.

He noted that as bull runs lose steam and bear markets set in, valuation multiples have always returned to historical averages. Yet that hasn’t happened for a record 34 years now, he continued.

Using the S&P 500’s level at the start of this year, he calculated it would have to crash 32% to around 4,700 points for its Shiller cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings (CAPE) ratio to fall from 40 to its average level of 27 since 1990.

The benchmark would have to collapse by 52% to about 3,300 points to return to its long-term average of 19, he estimated.

Burry said declines of that scale “might be expected from an extreme disappointment of exuberant speculation on a capital asset buildout,” referring to Big Tech companies spending eye-watering sums on data centers to power an AI revolution.

The market stool could lose its legs

Burry explained why he believes stocks have resisted a reversion to the mean for so long.

He pointed to the boom in passive investing via index funds, partly fueled by baby boomers swapping bonds for stocks in recent decades.

He underscored that market-cap-weighted indexes like the S&P drive capital to the most valuable companies, helping them to become even more valuable.

He also nodded to companies’ stock buybacks shoring up their market capitalizations, and authorities intervening to curb any major sell-offs.

Burry said those forces have interacted with other trends, such as the rise in high-frequency trading and pod shops, to make markets less liquid and more vulnerable, which exacerbated the COVID-19 and Liberation Day downturns.

“I believe stock market crashes will continue this trend: becoming more severe, more correlated, and, ultimately, more consequential and of greater length,” he added.

Burry cautioned that stocks could lose some of their support. He pointed out that Big Tech companies have shifted from ramping up stock buybacks to borrowing cash for their data-center buildouts.

Moreover, baby boomers are poised to pull money out of stocks en masse over the next few years as required minimum distributions from their retirement accounts kick in at age 73.

The reversal of those drivers is one thing, but that occurring in a historically expensive market that is “structurally becoming more fragile, more prone to correlation and cross-asset contagion is another,” Burry wrote.

Throw in rising geopolitical risks, and tech giants shifting from throwing off cash to pouring it into data centers, and that’s a recipe for trouble, Burry said.

The trigger for a crash might not be “much of anything,” Burry wrote, suggesting it could be disillusionment with “VC unicorns,” tech titans’ free cash flow “disappearing,” or simply “because it is time.”

“My point is that the next one is likely to be even more violent than Liberation Day,” he wrote, adding that the “gloom might stick” at some point and prevent a swift recovery.

• Several restaurant chains have revealed plans to close locations in 2026.
• Wendy’s will close up to 350 US restaurants in the first six months of the year.
• Pizza Hut intends to shutter 250 US locations in the first half of the year.

Some fast-food and fast-casual chains across the US are shrinking their footprints, with several planning to scale back locations in 2026.

Restaurant chains, including Wendy’s, Papa John’s, and Pizza Hut, have announced plans to close locations in 2026.

The planned closures come amid a challenging few years for restaurant chains, driven by factors such as inflation, rising labor costs, and changing customer preferences. Some brands have leaned on value meals and innovations in an attempt to bring more customers in the door.

“What’s really worked within quick service hasn’t been value, as much,” TD Cowen analyst Andrew Charles previously told Business Insider. “Value is important, but you look at when McDonald’s, Burger King, etc, have done well — it’s really when they have great menu innovation or great marketing that they really see customers respond.”

Several restaurant chains have announced plans to close locations, while others have suddenly shuttered locations since the start of the year. Here’s what to know.

Wendy’s plans to close up to 350 US restaurants in the first six months of the year.

Wendy’s, founded in Columbus, Ohio, in 1969, is best-known for its square beef patties and signature Frosty dessert, as well as fan-favorite menu items such as the Baconator, Dave’s Single, Spicy Chicken Sandwich, and chicken nuggets.

In February, Wendy’s said it intends to close roughly 5% to 6% of its US footprint — about 298 to 358 restaurants — in the first half of the year as it grapples with sliding sales and profits.

Interim CEO Ken Cook said the brand’s focus was now “to strengthen our foundation and position Wendy’s for long-term success.”

The Associated Press reported that Wendy’s shuttered 28 restaurants in the fourth quarter of 2025, leaving it with 5,969 locations across the US at the end of the year.

Company data shows systemwide US sales dropped 5.2% in 2025, while same-store sales declined 5.6% compared with the previous year.

However, Wendy’s international sales are growing, with systemwide sales up 8.1% and same-restaurant sales up 1.3% year over year.

Pizza Hut intends to shutter 250 US locations in the first half of the year.

Pizza Hut, founded in 1958 by brothers Dan and Frank Carney in Wichita, Kansas, and best-known for its pan pizza, has more than 6,000 locations in the US.

In a February earnings call, its parent company, Yum! Brands, said Pizza Hut intends to shutter 250 US locations in the first half of the year.

Yum! Brands announced late last year that it was exploring a potential sale of the chain, after reporting a 1% decline in same-store sales during the third quarter, the eighth consecutive quarterly drop.

“The Pizza Hut team has been working hard to address business and category challenges,” Chris Turner, chief executive of Yum! Brands said in November. “However, Pizza Hut’s performance indicates the need to take additional action to help the brand realize its full value, which may be better executed outside Yum! Brands.”

A list of locations was not shared, but the closures will impact “underperforming” locations, Yum! Brands said. The chain has faced tough competition from other chains, especially with the rise of value meals.

Internationally, it is faring better, with same-store sales increasing by 1% last year.

Jack in the Box plans to close up to 100 locations this year.

Jack in the Box — the fast-food chain that’s been flipping burgers since 1951 — has built a following at its more than 2,100 locations with a menu that includes curly fries, tacos, chicken sandwiches, and milkshakes. But even this drive-thru staple has hit some bumps in the road.

In 2025, the company rolled out its “Jack on Track” turnaround plan to boost performance and strengthen its finances. Part of this was selling off Del Taco for $119 million, which was completed in December.

Jack in the Box finished Q1 of the fiscal year 2026 with 2,128 restaurants. By the end of June, the brand expects 50 to 100 closures and around 20 openings, QSR Magazine reported in February.

Customers online have had mixed reviews about the food quality, while others lamented the disappearance of their go-to lunch spots.

Same-store sales across its restaurants dropped 6.7 percent in Q1 year over year, the company reported, according to QSR Magazine.

The goal this year is to focus on innovation, customer service, cosmetic updates, and fewer, stronger limited-time offers.

“2026 is about laying the foundation for sustainable long-term growth, which requires doing a lot of hard work right now,” CEO Lance Tucker told QSR, adding, “We are beginning to see early results that reinforce that we are on the right path.”

Papa John’s plans to close approximately 200 stores in 2026.

Papa John’s announced in a February 26 earnings call that it plans to close about 200 restaurants in 2026 as part of a broader effort to shut down 300 underperforming locations by the end of 2027.

The closures will primarily affect franchise-owned stores that are more than 10 years old and do not indicate long-term profitability, Ravi Thanawala, Papa Johns’ CFO, said on the call.

CEO Todd Penegor said, “We are taking action to better align corporate and field resources with our transformation priorities and optimize spans and layers in our organizations.”

Papa John’s was founded in 1984 by John Schnatter in Jeffersonville, Indiana, when he began selling pizzas out of a converted broom closet in his father’s tavern. The brand quickly grew into one of the largest pizza chains in the world, known for its “Better Ingredients. Better Pizza.” slogan.

Red Robin has abruptly closed some restaurants nationwide.

Some Red Robin locations in Illinois, California, and New Jersey abruptly closed this year, The Independent reported.

The company, which has nearly 500 locations across the United States, said in February 2025 that it intended to shutter roughly 70 underperforming restaurants as part of a plan to pay down debt, USA Today reported.

Later in the year, executives shared during an earnings call that turnaround efforts at several locations had been more successful than expected, reducing the need for as many closures.

“Building on this momentum, Red Robin delivered strong financial results in its third quarter of 2025, including beating expectations of comparable restaurant revenue, restaurant level profitability, and traffic,” the company said in a January statement. “Red Robin expects to report results for fourth quarter and full year 2025 in its first quarter of 2026.”

Red Robin did not respond to Business Insider’s request for comment on the recent closures.

Red Robin was founded in 1969 in Seattle, Washington, when local restaurateur Gerry Kingen expanded and renamed a neighborhood tavern that had originally opened in the 1940s.

The company grew into a national casual-dining chain known for its gourmet burgers, its Bottomless Steak Fries, onion rings, and thick, hand-spun milkshakes.

Some Denny’s have also closed without advance notice.

Denny’s, which operates more than 1,650 locations globally and is recognized for comfort-food staples, confirmed in January that it had completed its plan to close 150 restaurants by the end of 2025.

Since the start of 2026, there have been reports of restaurants closing without advance notice, including locations in Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo, Michigan, as well as Midland, Texas, per Mashed.

Denny’s did not respond to Business Insider’s request for comment on the recent closures. It has not said if there will be others this year.

It comes amid broader corporate shifts at the company. In January, $620 million acquisition by TriArtisan Capital, Yadav Enterprises, and Treville Capital was completed. The company reported that CEO Kelli Valade would leave in February.

Denny’s was founded in 1953 in Lakewood, California, by Harold Butler and Richard Jezak, originally operating under the name Danny’s Donuts before evolving into a full-service coffee shop and eventually rebranding as Denny’s.

Noodles & Company expects to close between 30 and 35 locations in 2026.

Fast Company reported Noodles & Company plans to shutter more restaurants as part of a broader effort to shore up its finances.

In a January announcement, the fast-casual chain said it expects to close between 30 and 35 locations in 2026 to improve profitability and strengthen its overall performance.

By the end of 2025, the brand operated 340 company-owned restaurants and 83 franchised locations. The company had already downsized its footprint the previous year, closing 42 restaurants, including 33 corporate locations and nine franchise units.

“Decisions like this are made thoughtfully and with a long-term view of the business,” CEO and President Joe Christina said, adding that fourth-quarter results showed stronger performance when resources were focused on higher-opportunity restaurants. He said the moves are designed to bolster the brand’s financial position and support long-term, profitable growth.

Noodles & Company was founded in 1995 by Aaron Kennedy in Denver, Colorado. The chain is known for its diverse menu that spans flavors from around the world, including Wisconsin Mac & Cheese, Pad Thai, Japanese Pan Noodles, and Pasta Fresca. In addition to noodle bowls, the restaurant offers soups, salads, and shareable sides, positioning itself as a quick-service spot for comfort food with an international twist.

• The VC firm TRAC developed a model that uses AI to predict which startups are likely to become unicorns.
• Unicorns are startups valued at more than $1 billion.
• TRAC says startups on the list have a 1-in-5 chance of becoming unicorns.

For decades, venture capital has run on instinct as a relationship-driven business built on gut calls and insider access to Silicon Valley’s hottest startups. Now, in the middle of the AI boom, one firm is trying to turn startup investing into a data science.

San Francisco-based TRAC has used a proprietary AI model to generate a fresh list of early-stage startups it predicts are most likely to become unicorns, or companies valued at more than a billion dollars. And two companies from its last list have already exploded into $11 billion juggernauts.

In 2023, TRAC first revealed 30 of the startups its model identified exclusively with Business Insider and also pulled back the curtain on its methodology.

The list included two relatively unknown companies at the time that are now among the hottest startups in venture: Harvey, a legal tech startup, and Kalshi, a prediction market, both valued at $11 billion.

TRAC’s model, which the firm calls “Moneyball for venture capital,” is based on over 30 sources of both public and private data. The model starts by identifying the many startups unlikely to succeed rather than picking winners.

“We don’t look for needles in the haystack,” explained Joe Aaron, TRAC’s cofounder and managing partner. “We remove the haystack.”

TRAC has found that a company’s founders do not predict success. Instead, its algorithm prioritizes 286 top investors.

“These extraordinary investors make a profit on two-thirds of their positions and one in five of their investments returns over 10X,” Aaron explained.

Less than 2% of all startups attract these elite investors, so that eliminates over 98% of all startups from TRAC’s formula.

How accurate is the algorithm? Venture investing is typically judged after a decade or more, so it is too soon to know for sure.

The firm says the companies it identifies have a one-in-five probability of becoming a unicorn. Advances in AI make this year’s list more accurate than ever, but that is not necessarily good news for investors.

“It is easier today for our AI to identify future unicorns than ever before,” said Fred Campbell, TRAC’s managing partner. “Conversely, it is harder than ever to secure allocation in funding rounds of the fastest-growing future unicorns.”

That is because so many VCs are chasing the hottest companies. The hard part is not identifying the companies, but getting founders to accept a check.

“Competition to invest in the ‘hot’ companies is as fierce as we’ve seen in decades,” Campbell said. “TRAC is seeing investor demand exceed round sizes by 10X, meaning for every $1 the company wants to raise, investors are offering $10.”

Companies are raising so quickly that, in the weeks Business Insider was working on the list, five companies fell off because they raised new funding at valuations above $1 billion.

Before any more startups graduate, here is the updated list of 30 companies in 2026, identified by TRAC’s model, in alphabetical order.

Allara

What it does: A Virtual care platform for women’s health, covered by insurance

When it was founded: 2020

Last post-money valuation: $145 million, according to Pitchbook

Total raised: $46.99 million, according to Pitchbook

Founder and CEO: Rachel Blank

Select investors: Index Ventures, GV, Vanterra, Maggie Sellers

Anara

What it does: Helps researchers find, understand, and produce scientific content faster by deeply integrating AI into every part of the research workflow.

When it was founded: 2023

Last post-money valuation: $70 million

Total raised: $13 million

Founder: Naveed Janmohamed

Select investors: Pioneer Fund, Rebel Fund, Y Combinator, Preston-Werner Ventures

Blueprint

What it does: AI Operating System for Mental Health Clinicians

When it was founded: 2019

Last post-money valuation: Undisclosed

Total raised: $32 million

Founder and CEO: Danny Freed

Select investors: Lightbank, Bonfire Ventures, Ensemble VC, LGVP

Browser Use

What it does: Enables AI agents to interact with websites. Leading open source library and infrastructure for intelligent browser automation.

When it was founded: 2024

Total raised: $17 million

Last post money valuation: Undisclosed

Cofounder and CEO: Magnus Muller

Select investors: Y Combinator, Felicis Ventures, A Capital, Nexus Venture Partners

Created By Humans

What it does: Develops an artificial intelligence-based rights licensing platform that connects human creators with AI companies.

When it was founded: 2024

Last post money valuation: Undisclosed

Total raised: $12 million

Cofounder and CEO: Trip Adler

Select investors: Floodgate, Giant Ventures, Daft Capital, Garry Tan

Crosby

What it does: A hybrid law firm that uses AI and human lawyers to review and negotiate business contracts.

When it was founded: 2024

Last post-money valuation: not disclosed

Total raised: $25.8 million, according to the company

Founders: Ryan Daniels and John Sarihan

Select investors: Sequoia Capital, Bain Capital Ventures, and Index Ventures

Draftwise

What it does: Develops a knowledge management and intelligence platform that assists clients with technology and compliance needs.

When it was founded: 2020

Last post money valuation: Undisclosed

Total raised: $25 million, according to Pitchbook

Cofounder and CEO: James Ding

Select investors: Index Ventures, Y Combinator, Soma Capital

Extropic

What it does: Develops thermodynamic computing hardware that it says is radically more energy efficient than GPUs.

When it was founded: 2022

Last post-money valuation: $50 million, according to PitchBook

Total raised: $14 million, according to PitchBook

Cofounder and CEO: Guillaume Verdon-Akzam

Select investors: E1 Ventures, Kindred Ventures, Valor Equity Partners, Weekend Fund

Exabits AI

What it does: Develops decentralized infrastructure for artificial intelligence facilities.

When it was founded: 2021

Total raised: $15 million, according to Pitchbook

Last post-money valuation: $150 million, according to Pitchbook

Cofounder and CEO: Hoansoo Lee

Notable investors: Google Accelerator, Harvard Innovation Launch Lab, Hack VC

Eyebot

What it does: Makes self-serve kiosks that run a vision test and generate a doctor-verified glasses prescription in about 90 seconds

When it was founded: 2021

Last post-money valuation: $100 million, according to the company

Total raised: $28 million, according to the company

Cofounder and CEO: Matthias Hofmann

Select investors: AlleyCorp, Baukunst, General Catalyst, National Science Foundation, Village Global

Fathom

What it does: Builds AI that turns clinicians’ notes into the standardized billing and reimbursement codes insurers require, cutting down the paperwork that slows down payments

When it was founded: 2015

Last post-money valuation: $45 million, according to PitchBook

Total raised: $61 million, according to the company

Cofounder and CEO: Andrew Lockhart

Select investors: Alkeon Capital, Cedars-Sinai, Founders Fund, Lightspeed Venture Partners

Getlabs

What it does: Sends a trained professional to your home or office to draw your blood and bring it to a lab for testing, so you don’t have to go to a clinic

When it was founded: 2018

Last post-money valuation: $68 million, according to PitchBook

Total raised: $40 million, according to PitchBook

CEO: Claire Hough

Select investors: Emerson Collective, Minderoo Foundation, Tusk Venture Partners, Anne Wojcicki

Glass Imaging

What it does: Uses AI to make camera images sharper and cleaner by correcting flaws from the camera’s lens and sensor, so devices like phones and drones can produce much higher-quality images

When it was founded: 2019

Last post-money valuation: $100 million, according to PitchBook

Total raised: $31 million, according to PitchBook

Cofounder and CEO: Ziv Attar

Select investors: Abstract Ventures, Future Ventures, GV, Insight Partners

Kick

What it does: Uses AI to automatically keep a small business’s books up to date, tracking income and expenses and producing tax-ready financial reports

When it was founded: 2021

Last post-money valuation: $90 million in 2024; Kick declined to share its latest valuation

Total raised: $20 million, according to the company

Founder and CEO: Conrad Wadowski

Select investors: Felicis, General Catalyst, GV OpenAI Startup Fund

Knowunity

What it does: Develops interactive learning software to help students with their everyday school life.

When it was founded: 2019

Total raised: $53 million, according to Pitchbook

Last post money valuation: Undisclosed

Cofounder and CEO: Benedict Kurz

Select investors: Combination VC, EduCapital, Redalpine, XAnge

Lightyear

What it does: Software that automates how companies buy and manage their telecom services.

When it was founded: 2019

Last post-money valuation: $335 million, according to Pitchbook

Total raised: $65 million, according to the company

Founders: Dennis Thankachan and Ryan Shrack

Select investors: Altos Ventures, Amplo, Susa Ventures, Mark Cuban

Mem0

What it does: Builds a memory layer to help AI become more personalized and useful over time.

When it was founded: 2023

Last post-money valuation: not disclosed

Total raised: $23.9 million, according to the company.

Founders: Taranjeet Singh and Deshraj Yadav

Select investors: Basis Set Ventures, Peak XV Partners, Y Combinator, Kindred Ventures, and Dharmesh Shah

Moment

What it does: Builds software for large financial institutions that helps them manage portfolios and execute trades more efficiently.

When it was founded: 2022

Last post-money valuation: $56 million, according to the company

Total raised: $308 million, according to Pitchbook

Founders: Dylan Parker, Ammer Soliman, and Dean Hathout

Select investors: Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Index Ventures

Paladin Drones

What it does: Send autonomous drones to 911 calls in order to assist first responders.

When it was founded: 2018

Last post-money valuation: not disclosed

Total raised: Roughly $15 million, according to the company.

Founder: Divyaditya Shrivastava

Select investors: Y Combinator, Khosla Ventures, and Toyota Ventures

Patlytics

What it does: Patlytics builds AI software that helps companies and law firms draft, analyze, and manage patents much faster by automating complex legal work.

When it was founded: January 2024

Last post-money valuation: not disclosed

Total raised: $25.6M

CEO: Paul Lee

Founders: Paul Lee, Arthur Jen

Select investors: Next47 (Siemens), Gradient Ventures (Google), 8VC, Alumni Ventures, Liquid 2 Ventures, Myriad Venture Partners

Polymath Robotics

What it does: Polymath Robotics builds software, so heavy-duty vehicles in industries like mining and farming can drive themselves safely.

When it was founded: 2021

Last post-money valuation: Undisclosed

Total raised: Undisclosed

Founders: Stefan Seltz-Axmacher (CEO), Ilia Baranov (CTO)

Select investors: TRAC.vc, Thursday Ventures, Y Combinator, SOMA Ventures

Rocketlane

What it does: A tool that helps companies run client projects smoothly by keeping all the tasks, updates, and paperwork in one place and automating the busywork.

When it was founded: 2020

Last post-money valuation: not disclosed

Total raised: $45 million

Founders: Deepak Bala, Srikrishnan Ganesan, Vignesh Girishankar

Select investors: 8VC, Nexus Venture Partners, Z47

Scanbase

What it does: Uses computer vision and AI to interpret medical imaging results for at-home tests.

When it was founded: 2022

Last valuation: $288 million

Total raised: $2.5M

Founders: Jeffrey Lange, Steve Roger

Select investors: Y Combinator, TRAC, Liquid 2, Rebel Partners, Meridian Ventures

Starcloud

What it does: Builds data centers in space in order to address the AI energy bottleneck.

When it was founded: 2024

Last post-money valuation: $40 million last priced round, according to Pitchbook

Total raised: $34 million, according to Pitchbook

Founders: Philip Johnston, Ezra Feilden, Adi Oltean

Select investors: NFX, In-Q-Tel, Y Combinator, Caffeinated Capital, Plug & Play

TaxGPT

What it does: an AI-powered assistant for tax professionals and accountants.

When it was founded: 2023

Last post-money valuation: $100 million

Total raised: $6.25 million, according to the company

Founders: Kashif Ali, Isabella Ali

Select investors: YCombinator, Launch, Jason Calcanics, Magusta Capital, Rebel Fund, Trac Unicorn Fund, Principle Venture Partners.

Terzo AI

What it does: Terzo AI turns contracts, invoices and POs into financial intelligence.

When it was founded: 2020

Last post-money valuation: undisclosed

Total raised: $40 million

Co/founder and CEO: Brandon Card

Select investors: Great Oaks Ventures, Align Ventures, Engage Ventures, PIF

TinyFish

What it does: TinyFish’s AI-powered agents search the web for business context and come back with actionable intelligence for companies.

When it was founded: 2024

Last post-money valuation: undisclosed

Total raised: $47 million

Cofounder and CEO: Sudheer Nair

Select investors: Iconiq Capital, MongoDB Ventures, Sandberg Bernthal Venture Partners

Turion Space

What it does: Builds spacecraft to track objects in orbit and clean up space debris.

When it was founded: 2020

Last post-money valuation: $55 million, according to Pitchbook

Total raised: $37.54 million, according to Pitchbook

Founders: Ryan Westerdahl, Tyler Pierce, and Patryk Wiatr

Select investors: Y Combinator, United States Space Force, and DG Daiwa Ventures

Vector

What it does: helps marketers with contact-level targeting and shows customers who are seeing their ads.

When it was founded: 2022

Last post-money valuation: $100 million, according to the company

Total raised: $18 million

Co-founder and CEO: Joshua Perk

Select investors: SignalFire, Y Combinator

Zed

What it does: Zed provides a code editor for software developers.

When it was founded: 2021

Last post-money valuation: $153 million, according to Pitchbook

Total raised: $45.4 million, according to Pitchbook

Cofounder and CEO: Nathan Sobo

Select investors: Sequoia Capital, Redpoint Ventures

• AI is transforming marketing, from data analytics to producing ad campaigns.
• We asked Business Insider’s 2026 Rising Stars of Brand Marketing how they are using the tech.
• They also shared their advice for entry-level marketers.

Marketers have been quick to embrace the era of artificial intelligence.

A recent Gartner study of 402 senior marketers from North America and Europe found that 65% of CMOs think AI will dramatically change their roles over the next two years.

We asked Business Insider’s 2026 Rising Stars of Brand Marketing honorees how they use AI in their day-to-day work — and which tools they rely on most.

These marketing professionals are using tools like Midjourney and Microsoft’s Copilot to pressure-test creative ideas, spin up visuals and narratives for presentations, and eliminate busywork, creating more space for marketing strategy.

We also asked them to share their advice for early-career marketers who are navigating this period of technological disruption.

The following has been edited for length and clarity.

Building an AI stack to mirror day-to-day work

Benny Gee, creative director, Edmunds

I see AI as an accelerator at the start of the creative process. It helps me explore more directions quickly, but the real work is deciding which ideas are worth pursuing and pushing them into something that’s clear, useful, and actually feels like Edmunds.

To support that, I’ve built a small AI stack that mirrors how I work day-to-day: Perplexity for deep research, Claude as a pressure-tester to push back and find holes in my thinking, and tools like Nano Banana and Higgsfield for quick visual exploration, from rough comps to pushing static ideas into motion.

We’re in uncharted territory in terms of how marketing work gets made and who gets hired to do it. The tools are changing fast, the job market is tight, and it’s led to a flood of work that’s fast and cheap — and often forgettable.

What makes me optimistic is that this rewards people who care about craft. Tools have lowered the cost of producing content, but they’ve made judgment and taste more important than ever. The marketers who stand out know what’s worth making, why it matters, and who it’s for.

Using image-generator tools to spin up concepts

Jasmine Sharpe, director and head of creative, Grubhub

Tools like Gemini‘s image generator and Midjourney have been invaluable for my team — whether it’s quick ideation to spark concepts, creating visuals for pitch decks, or developing imagery that elevates the creative.

On days focused more on strategy, project, or team planning, or brief development, I lean on the “old faithful” Gemini or ChatGPT to help formalize key inputs, making ideas clearer and more concise.

For up-and-coming marketers and creatives, I would encourage embracing adversity and putting yourself in challenging, even uncomfortable, situations early. You’ll get it wrong at times, but those experiences sharpen your skills, build resilience, and give you the confidence to take smart risks.

Additionally, don’t be afraid to explore different work environments or subject areas early in your career — this will broaden your portfolio, develop your 360° thinking, and prepare you to lead with impact later on.

Using AI as a ‘thought partner’

Fiona Green, head of communications at Amazon Community Operations

In my day-to-day work, I use AI as a strategic thought partner to pressure-test ideas, sharpen messaging, and surface insights that help ensure our campaigns better resonate.

While AI handles parts of execution, uniquely human skills are becoming more valuable, especially creativity, judgment, and a deep understanding of human behavior. Marketing has always been about understanding what motivates people and translating that into stories and experiences that resonate. That doesn’t go away in the age of AI. It becomes even more important.

For those entering the field, I’d encourage them to build fluency with AI tools while also investing in the humanities by studying behavior, culture, and storytelling. The marketers who will rise are the ones who can pair technical capability with critical thinking, empathy, and a clear point of view.

Sprucing up presentation decks

Natacha McLeod, senior manager, creative, The Coca-Cola Company

AI has become a critical part of my day-to-day work, supporting everything from staying on top of priorities and capturing meeting notes to ensuring briefs stay aligned to business objectives. I also use it to generate visuals for decks and help analyze complex data more efficiently.

Microsoft Copilot is my go-to tool because it integrates seamlessly into my workflow, though I actively explore other platforms to stay current as capabilities evolve.

Marketing is undergoing significant disruption, but that is exactly what makes this an exciting time. There is a real opportunity to lean into creativity and passion while using tools like AI to amplify natural skills rather than replace them. At its core, marketing still comes down to understanding what motivates consumers and how brands earn a meaningful place in their lives.

Pressure-testing creative ideas

Mohib Iqtidar, global marketing director, NYX Cosmetics

AI is a creative accelerator, but in beauty, humanity remains the differentiator.

I use GPT tools to synthesize research and unlock insights that would traditionally take hours or days. I also rely on Creaitech and OMI to visualize creative territories and prototype packaging.

AI has fundamentally changed the speed of exploration. We can research, synthesize, visualize, and pressure-test ideas faster than ever, freeing more time for strategic and creative depth.

But beauty marketing is emotional, cultural, sensorial, and deeply human. I used AI to expand creative possibilities, but never to replace real people or real experience.

As marketing becomes increasingly powered by technology, the greatest competitive advantage will remain profoundly human: the ability to understand people and move culture forward.

Anyone can learn the mechanics of marketing. What truly differentiates you is your point of view, your compassion, and how deeply you understand others.

Recording and summarizing meetings

Mia Vandermeer, content and brand marketing manager, Tennr

Recording and summarizing meeting notes has been the most effective use of AI for me. It allows me to stay present and jot down key ideas in brainstorms without missing any of the details.

Other than that, I’m somewhat of a Luddite because we have a company policy that prohibits the use of AI for writing. Clarity comes from writing, and outsourcing the act of writing is outsourcing the work of thinking. There’s value in spending the extra time to write well and clearly, and in crafting original, distinctive ideas that actually get people to think in a different way.

Storytelling is an industry-agnostic need that isn’t going away, especially in the AI slop era we’re experiencing. Companies and brands need storytellers who convey their value, resonate with their audiences, and separate them from everyone else.

Cutting through admin to stay focused on the strategic work that matters

Bita Jedo, influencer marketing manager, EMEA, Disney+

I use Microsoft Copilot to bring efficiencies to my day‑to‑day work, through refining influencer briefs, streamlining longer writing tasks, and quickly summarizing emails and documents.

It helps me cut through administrative work so I can stay focused on the strategic and creative decisions that matter most to our campaigns.

My advice to young people starting out is to seek out as much breadth of experience as you can, even in short bursts.

Careers aren’t linear anymore, and that’s a good thing. There’s also a world of opportunity and side hustles available online, which can help you find what you enjoy and build a more versatile background, as you never know where your career might take you.

Using tools like Gemini to translate numbers into clearer narratives

Celeste Roque, director of social media, Tubi

I use AI to remove friction from work that doesn’t require human instinct.

That matters because I want my team to spend their time where it actually moves the needle: studying our community, understanding what’s resonating in culture, and being creative.

On the practical side, I use Gemini heavily for reporting. It helps chart and analyze performance data so I can translate numbers into clearer narratives for leadership and show the impact social is driving.

My advice to a future generation of up-and-coming marketers is to learn to articulate why something works. If you think a piece of content will resonate, be able to break down why: what tension it taps into, who it’s speaking to, and why the timing makes sense. Instinct will get you in the room, but explaining the instinct is what builds trust.

Working with an internal AI stack composed of multiple models

Rachel Ferrigno, associate director of content marketing and SEO, Zoetis

I use AI primarily as a strategic accelerator rather than a content replacement tool. In day-to-day work, it helps with first-pass content edits and supports workflow efficiency — drafting outlines, helping with creative briefs, and identifying content refresh opportunities.

I’ve been lucky enough to be part of two generative-AI pilot projects at Zoetis, where I’ve learned and assessed multiple tools and refined my prompt-generating skills. My tools of the trade are our internal GenAI capability. Unlike stand-alone tools like ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot, our internal GenAI platform brings together multiple AI models — such as OpenAI, Claude, and Mistral — in one place for easier use.

My advice for the future generation of marketers would be to find a balance between being a generalist and a specialist. I suggest finding a niche within marketing you love and then having a few secondary specialties on top of that.

For example, if you’re a content marketing pro, I would suggest leaning into generative AI, search engine optimization, and storytelling as your sub-specialties.

• The US and Israel’s strikes on Iran are changing the face of air travel.
• Flight bookings in Europe are surging while those to the Middle East are collapsing, Ryanair’s CEO said.
• He doesn’t expect the conflict to last into the summer because Trump “has a short attention span.”

The CEO of Europe’s biggest airline has said that more people are looking to vacation in the continent since the US strikes on Iran.

“We’ve seen, certainly, there’s a big collapse in bookings to the Middle East, and a big surge in bookings on short-haul airlines within Europe, ” Michael O’Leary, the CEO of Ryanair, said at a press conference on Monday.

In particular, he added, the focus was on the Easter vacation period.

“The Gulf states will suffer damage to their tourism product,” O’Leary said.

Ryanair only operates single-aisle Boeing 737 airplanes, almost solely to and from European cities. It has some destinations in Morocco, and one in Jordan.

Although O’Leary doesn’t expect there to be “any fundamental change or impact” on booking trends into the start of summer.

The typically outspoken airline boss added that he believes the war will be over relatively soon. He doesn’t think Iran can maintain their retaliatory strikes, and that President Donald Trump “has a short attention span, so he would want it to be over reasonably quickly or he’ll get bored.”

Meanwhile, he added, the Irish budget airline can benefit because, like other carriers, it hedges against oil prices — plus more people are turning to short-haul bookings.

Some 300,000 British people and 20,000 Irish citizens are in the Middle East, according to the countries’ governments.

The UK said it has organised a charter flight departing from Muscat, Oman, early on Thursday to help repatriate citizens in the region.

More than 13,000 flights in and out of the region have been canceled since Saturday, affecting more than 1 million passengers, according to data from Cirium, an aviation analytics firm.

• Dude Perfect hired its first content chief to lead its push into new shows, formats, and talent.
• The YouTube troupe is prepping programming for young kids after adding content aimed at older fans.
• It’s also been scouting new talent to reduce its reliance on its namesake founders.

Dude Perfect has hired its first chief content officer, Kevin Sabbe, as the group looks to turn YouTube fame into an expansive entertainment empire.

Texas-based Dude Perfect, founded in 2009 by five college roommates, initially rose to prominence with sports stunt videos. It is one of the few creator-led companies to receive significant outside funding, raising $100 million in early 2024 from Highmount Capital.

Outside its core YouTube channel, where it has 62 million subscribers, Dude Perfect has moved into live events, including a 22-city Squad Games tour this year, a book series, sports gear, and complementary programming. It’s partway through building an entertainment destination and production facility at its Frisco base, and announced plans to open a theme park.

Dude Perfect’s playbook is increasingly popular among superstar creators. Dude Perfect, like other creators including MrBeast and Steven Bartlett, have referenced Disney, with its famed flywheel — where characters and stories fuel other businesses — as a model they aspire to.

As CCO, Sabbe will lead the charge to develop new shows, formats, and talent. Sabbe’s career has spanned digital media, TV, and film, including positions at Tim McGraw’s Down Home, Defy Media, Maker Studios, Fox, and Warner Bros. Entertainment. He’ll work with Andrew Yaffe, the CEO of Dude Perfect.

Yaffe said he personally spoke with upward of 50 people for the role, and that Sabbe brought the “perfect blend” of creator and traditional media experience.

“Everything he’s done over the last however many years of his career is just instrumental in where we want to get to as a company,” said Yaffe, a former NBA exec who joined the company in 2024.

Sabbe’s hire underscores both the opportunity and the challenge that YouTube-born creators face.

There’s a recognition that they have the potential to become the next generation of entertainment companies. Hollywood giants have signed deals with YouTubers like MrBeast and Ms. Rachel to stay relevant with younger viewers. Sabbe’s hire also shows that creators often need people with traditional entertainment experience to help them build businesses beyond social media.

Along with Sabbe, Yaffe has built out the company’s leadership through hiring a CFO, a head of commercial partnerships, a head of legal and business affairs, a head of human resources, and a chief product officer. The company has more than 60 employees.

Dude Perfect is trying to expand beyond the 6 to 14 age range

Dude Perfect’s audience sweet spot is people ages six to 14. Its leaders want to expand their audience and talent pool. Like many independent creators, Dude Perfect is thinking about how to build a company that transcends its founders — Garrett Hilbert, Tyler Toney, Cody Jones, Coby Cotton, and Cory Cotton.

Dude Perfect is aiming at older audiences through an outdoor channel and the sports podcast “Almost Athletes,” with returning fans in mind. On the other end of the spectrum, execs revealed they’re developing new programming for younger fans, which Sabbe loosely described as “Dude Perfect Junior.”

“Our content is incredibly family-oriented,” Yaffe said. “Are there opportunities for preschool-age content?” He also sees an increasing opportunity to reach sports fans ages 14 to 34.

Branching into those areas is also a way to attract new talent, Sabbe said. “Almost Athletes,” for example, is cohosted by Kevin Sparkman, who joined the company in 2020.

“Our podcast, it’s hosted or co-hosted by someone who’s not one of the five Dudes,” Sabbe said. “The interns are not one of the five Dudes. When we get into a toddler space, that will not be the five Dudes. So, for us, that’s really important.”

There’s no guarantee creators can extend their appeal to new audiences, though. Dude Perfect Outdoors is three episodes in, with each averaging 836,000 views. Its gaming vertical has been around longer, and its view counts have varied widely, though.

The company sees room for the Dudes themselves to continue to grow, as well.

YouTube remains the company’s core business, but it’s also rolling out new books and selling merchandise and sporting goods, such as footballs. Its 2025 Hero Tour, a 20-city live arena tour that combined competition and comedy, drew around 200,000 people in total last summer and averaged more than $50 per ticket.

Yaffe revealed that Dude Perfect is also eyeing following some of its creator brethren — including MrBeast and Emma Chamberlain — into the food and beverage space this summer.

“For a long time, content was the biggest wedge of the pie,” Yaffe said. “You’ll see products and experiences continue to grow. Content will continue to grow as well, but on a percentage basis, products and experiences will grow even faster.”

• Leaner hedge funds are on the rise, fueled by SMA capital, better tech, and outsourcing operations.
• IIP Services is one startup helping portfolio managers streamline operations for quick market entry.
• The firm provides a ready-to-use platform but also helps PMs navigate the due diligence gauntlet.

A new wave of leaner, faster hedge-fund launches is on the rise.

Driven by an influx of capital from the separately managed account boom — and by technology that used to be available only to the biggest investment firms — entrepreneurial portfolio managers are launching with just a couple of employees, or in some cases all by themselves, and outsourcing the rest.

Service providers are scrambling to grab their piece of the growing SMA pie, advising managers and supplying the tech and operational plumbing that many PMs are navigating for the first time.

One such example is IIP Services, which launched in 2024 to focus on the expanding market of SMA allocators and managers.

The pitch to managers, according to partner Semi Gogliormella, is straightforward: They can outsource much of the non-investment business — operations, compliance, vendor management, and institutional-grade systems — and focus their early days on investing and raising capital.

Some of IIP’s manager clients have launched with hundreds of millions in capital and little to no staff outside the founders.

Gogliormella, who has held senior operations and compliance roles at firms including WorldQuant and Boulder Hill, said a combination of SMA demand and improved technology has significantly shortened launch timelines. In some cases, he said, managers can be up and running with new SMA capital within weeks of signing an investment management agreement, though he cautioned that this is not the norm.

“Onboarding and going live gets truncated significantly,” Gogliormella said.

The plug-and-play back office

Demand for the tools that make lean launches possible is rising alongside the SMA boom. SS&C, a major software and services provider to hedge funds, told Business Insider the number of clients using its cloud-based investment platform for emerging managers — Eze Eclipse — has risen more than 25% since 2024, including 70 new clients in 2025. The company attributed some of the acceleration to firms streamlining operations to support SMAs.

For emerging managers, that shift is redefining what “small” can look like. Instead of staffing up to meet institutional expectations, they can increasingly rent pieces — or all — of the operating stack: order and execution management systems, portfolio management tools, cybersecurity services, compliance support, and even help managing relationships with prime and execution brokers.

IIP’s model is to act as an aggregator and operator for the parts of a hedge fund that don’t generate alpha. Gogliormella said IIP aims to save managers and allocators money and time by purchasing institutional-grade software at wholesale prices and integrating it into a cohesive, ready-to-use system.

It also negotiates preferred rates with outsourced vendors across functions like trading support, legal, compliance, and IT.

The founders of Brabus Capital, a London-based systematic manager that uses IIP, recently told Business Insider that the outsourced setup let their firm operate at a scale on day one that would typically take a year to a year and a half to recreate from scratch.

For PMs, it’s akin to hiring a general contractor to manage the build of a new home rather than going to Home Depot and buying à la carte, Gogliormella said — without the sticker shock of budget overruns.

The firm’s client base includes more than a dozen managers and many allocators, Gogliormella said.

“We’re trying to help them build the business at a fraction of the cost,” Gogliormella said, as well as accelerate their speed to market and increase operational efficiency. Managers pay fees based on the complexity of their operation.

Spending potentially millions on middle- and back-office hires is a hurdle for smaller launches, but “allocators have become more accepting of the outsourced model,” Gogliormella said, a shift he noticed around 2020.

That flexibility hasn’t changed the non-negotiables. Allocators may be more comfortable with outsourced operations than they were a decade ago, but they’re not lowering the bar on controls, credibility, or diligence.

Shepherding would-be managers through the due diligence ringer, including allocators and brokers, is part of IIP’s hands-on approach. Even when capital comes via an SMA rather than a commingled fund, due diligence can include detailed reviews of cybersecurity, incident-response procedures, and physical security and access controls.

In other words, the infrastructure may be easier to rent than it used to be, but the scrutiny hasn’t gone away.

• The new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models are notably more expensive than previous generations.
• Apple didn’t specify a reason for the increases, but it’s previously talked about the global memory shortage’s impact.
• Apple’s recently announced budget iPhone 17e and iPad Air, however, maintained their lineup’s previous $599 starting price.

Amid the global memory shortage, Apple didn’t raise prices for its latest iPhone and iPad. That’s not the case for its new MacBooks.

After Monday’s reveal of the iPhone 17e and iPad Air, it’s the Mac lineup’s turn for a revamp. The tech giant announced on Tuesday a new MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Studio Display.

Apple introduced the M5 Pro and M5 Max chips that will power two versions of the MacBook Pro, and the MacBook Air will run on an M5 chip.

The MacBooks got a price bump along with the new chips, which offer faster performance, as well as higher storage capacity.

The MacBook Air starts at $1,099 for the 13-inch and $1,299 for the 15-inch version — a $100 price increase for each model.

The M5 Pro MacBook Pro starts at $2,199 for the 14-inch option, up from $1,999. The 16-inch will go from $2,499 to $2,699. For the M5 Max MacBook Pro, the starting price is $3,599, up from $3,199.

While Apple didn’t specify a reason for the price hikes, they arrive as the consumer electronics industry grapples with a global memory shortage as the artificial intelligence race shakes up the supply chain and market for memory chips, which are used in computers and other devices.

In its January earnings call, Apple said it expected the price of memory to continue to increase. However, CEO Tim Cook declined to speculate on whether or not it would lead to increased prices for Apple’s products.

Best Buy CEO Corie Barry addressed the memory shortage earlier on Tuesday during the retailer’s earnings call.

“As you are aware, the significantly increased demand for memory components is driving cost inflation and supply uncertainty, particularly in computing. We are partnering with our vendors to mitigate impacts on the business,” she said. “We are focused on five major themes. One, we are bringing in as much inventory as we can. We are also providing our vendors with a longer forecast horizon to better plan allocations across commercial and consumer segments and collaborate more effectively with memory partners.”

The key features that Apple highlighted in the new MacBook Air are the Liquid Retina display, up to 18 hours of battery life, and a 12 megapixel camera. It comes in four colors: sky blue, midnight, starlight, and silver. For the higher entry price, customers will also get double the amount of starting storage at 512 gigabytes.

Apple said the new MacBook Pro with the M5 Pro chip delivers faster AI image generation, LLM prompt processing, and gaming performance, with the M5 Max building on that speed even more. Apple touts the new chips as game-changers for the MacBook Pro’s AI capabilities. The M5 Pro MacBook Pro starts at one terabyte of storage, up from the previous 512 gigabytes, while the M5 Max model doubled its starting storage to two terabytes.

The Studio Display, which starts at $1,599, and the $3,299 Studio Display XDR boast 5K Retina displays designed for video editing, 3D rendering, and more workflows.

The new computers are available for pre-order starting Wednesday.

• Target reported a 1.7% decline in total sales for its fiscal year.
• The earnings results extend a three-year streak of flat or declining comparable quarterly sales.
• New stores and a recent uptick in transactions could bring the retailer back to growth in 2026.

Target likely can’t wait to close the book on last year as it looks to turn the page and return to growth.

The bullseye retailer on Tuesday reported a 1.7% decline in total sales for the last fiscal year, which ended January 31, with a 1.5% drop for the quarter. That’s including the addition of a batch of new stores and growth in its digital business.

“I’m incredibly proud of how our team navigated through a challenging year in 2025,” CEO Michael Fiddelke said in a statement. “Our team is firmly focused on writing Target’s next chapter of growth.”

Adjusted fourth quarter earnings per share of $2.44 exceeded the Bloomberg analyst consensus of $2.13, but the outlook of less than a percentage point increase in comparable sales and first quarter EPS of $1.30 were less than Wall Street estimates.

While the fourth quarter’s results extend a three-year streak of flat or declining comparable sales, the company said traffic and transactions started to pick back up in December and January, and are on track to deliver net sales growth in every quarter of 2026.

“Target saw a healthy, positive sales increase in February, serving as an important milestone on our path back to growth this year, and reinforcing my confidence in the momentum we’re building and the future we’re creating together,” Fiddelke said.

Analysts said ahead of the earnings release that Fiddelke and his team have their work cut out for them.

“Time is Target’s greatest adversary,” Mizuho analyst David Bellinger said in a weekend note ahead of the release.

“While senior management is taking the necessary steps to re-position the business, others are not standing still,” he added, referring in particular to Walmart, which has been gaining momentum as Target struggles.

“Ultimately, the company needs to show how it can better compete and define its place in the market,” UBS analyst Michael Lasser said in a note leading up to the results.

Fiddelke is set to unveil his larger turnaround strategy Tuesday morning at Target’s headquarters in Minneapolis. One month into his new role, the CEO has said he’s focused on four key priorities: improving the merchandising, elevating the shopping experience, investing in tech, and supporting workers and communities.

The company also said it was seeing strong recent performance in non-merchandise sales, including its Roundel ads business, Target Plus membership, and same-day delivery services.

• Stripe CEO Patrick Collison advocated for on-demand software in the AI era on the “TBPN” podcast.
• Anthropic’s Claude AI update sparked a software stock selloff, impacting SaaS business models.
• Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang dismissed fears of AI replacing traditional software tools industry.

Stripe’s CEO, Patrick Collison, delivered a provocative thesis about the future of software in the age of AI.

Appearing on the “TBPN” podcast last week, Collison told show hosts John Coogan and Jordi Hays that software shouldn’t be mass-produced but created on demand instead.

“Software should be like pizza, and it should be cooked right then and there at the moment of use,” said Collison. “Up until now, the economics of software have been conceived as fixed cost and then infinitely monetized.”

“Once there are inference costs and custom creation involved, it really shifts,” Collison added. “It’s kind of the non-Walrasian software regime.”

Collison’s analogy echoes a broader tension gripping the technology industry on whether AI tools could replace, rather than just augment, traditional software.

That anxiety briefly turned into market reality earlier in February. Releases and updates from Anthropic’s Claude AI, especially enterprise-focused capabilities like Claude Cowork and the automation plugin, triggered a deep selloff in software stocks as investors fretted that AI could automate tasks that once required licensed software or human expertise.

The selloff wiped out billions in market value, with broad software ETFs and enterprise names sliding sharply, as investors interpreted Claude’s expanding abilities as a threat to traditional SaaS business models that count on recurring licensing revenues. The iShares Expanded Tech Software Sector ETF is down nearly 30% since the beginning of 2026 as of March 2. IBM is seeing some of the heaviest losses among software companies, recording its worst slide in 26 years as the stock fell 13% on February 23.

The stock slide aside, not everyone is sold. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang pushed back on the idea that the tool industry is in decline and will be replaced by AI at a recent Cisco AI event.

“You could tell because there’s a whole bunch of software companies whose stock prices are under a lot of pressure because somehow AI is going to replace them,” said Huang. “It is the most illogical thing in the world, and time will prove itself.”

• The rise of separately managed accounts is enabling faster, leaner hedge fund launches.
• SMAs, outsourcing, and improved technology help small hedge funds scale fast.
• Funds can launch with a single employee, like Bayhunt Capital, but credibility remains essential.

A decade ago, a one-person hedge fund firm would’ve sounded far-fetched — science fiction for managers, and a due diligence horror story for allocators.

Back then, institutional investors wanted to see a real back office — finance, operations, compliance — and the expensive technology necessary to run sophisticated risk, trading, and reporting. Even seasoned portfolio managers typically needed a team before big investors would buy in.

But the future is here for portfolio managers, and allocators are seeing dollar signs.

Just ask Ben Williams, who launched Bayhunt Capital in 2024 as the founder, chief investment officer, and sole employee. The firm, based in Marin County, California, focuses on real estate stocks and manages $360 million, including leverage, for allocators through individual investment portfolios, known in the industry as separately managed accounts.

“It’s always been something in the back of my mind that I wanted to do — have my own business,” Williams told Business Insider. Now about a year into live trading, he said he’s on the cusp of onboarding his first employee, an investment analyst.

Even five years ago, Williams couldn’t have imagined some of the industry shifts that made it possible to start a company this way.

Leaner, faster launches like Bayhunt’s are one of the knock-on effects of the booming popularity of separately managed accounts. As allocators increasingly lean into SMAs for the transparency and control they provide, managers have been able to launch with a smaller headcount — and in some cases, without a commingled fund at all. At the same time, cloud-based tech systems and outsourced service providers have made it possible to rent much of the infrastructure that used to require an in-house build.

Hedge funds, which have had a generational run of returns in recent years, are now the clear favorite among investors — and a growing number of portfolio managers like Williams are concluding there’s never been a better time to take the plunge and pursue the dream of running their own fund.

SS&C, a top software and service provider to hedge funds, has seen a marked uptick in adoption of its cloud-based investment platform geared toward emerging managers. The number of clients using the platform, called Eze Eclipse, has grown more than 25% since 2024, with 70 new joiners in 2025, the company told Business Insider, attributing the acceleration in part to firms streamlining operations for SMAs.

A whole cottage industry of service providers is popping up and scrambling to meet the needs of these upstart firms. IIP Services launched in 2024 with a focus on the burgeoning SMA market. With more managers launching at smaller sizes, IIP saw an opportunity to provide a soup-to-nuts product for the non-investment aspects of the business.

Semi Gogliormella, a partner at IIP Services who has held senior operations and compliance roles at firms including WorldQuant and Boulder Hill, says many PMs are realizing that the combined power of the SMA market and improved technology has significantly reduced the time to get a firm off the ground.

He said he has seen managers up and running with new SMA capital within weeks of signing an investment management agreement, though he cautioned that it isn’t the norm.

“Onboarding and going live gets truncated significantly,” Gogliormella said.

The Substack effect, but for portfolio managers

The meteoric growth this decade of multistrategy hedge funds like Citadel, Millennium, and Point72, and the ensuing war for talent, has created more opportunities than ever for portfolio managers to gain experience and a taste of running their own business. A major allure of these firms is that the platform handles operational headaches and red tape, leaving investors to focus on markets, supported by world-class technology and trading systems.

Replicating that experience outside of the confines of a pod shop wasn’t realistic.

Superstars could spin out and raise the capital to build and hire — a lengthy endeavor — but for most managers, a “career change” meant hopping to another multistrat.

It’s not that small, stand-alone money managers didn’t previously exist. It’s that now they can attract institutional capital — and the economics that come with it — and more easily recreate the systems used by large funds, offering a career path many might not otherwise have considered.

It’s not unlike how Substack and its competitors offered better professional tools for writers to self-publish, distribute, and monetize their work.

“A lot of these managers, they’re incubating in these multistrats and have a good pedigrees when they spin out,” said James Griffin, global head of sales for SS&C wealth and investment technology group. “Their expectations are that they’re going to get the same bells and whistles that they’ve had at these big institutions.”

Multistrats have become significant SMA allocators in their own right, and some offer access to their in-house tools and systems as an inducement or in exchange for a fee discount, industry sources said.

But for those without that option — or who are looking for more independence and fewer strings — managers with less than $100 million in capital can rent the same tech stack as some multibillion-dollar pod shops, Griffin said, noting that his firm provides software to some of the industry’s largest funds.

Veteran systematic portfolio managers Matt Gormley and Matt Isherwood began looking to set up their own shop about five years ago, when the SMA rush was starting to take shape. They went in-house at Walleye, leaving two years later to launch Brabus Capital. Like Bayhunt, London-based Brabus started small and exclusively with SMA capital, but it is growing and is in the process of bringing on staff for key investor relations and technology roles.

“One of the challenges for systematic investing is the barriers to entry are high, which is why quants tend to be tied up in multistrats,” Gormley said.

The duo started exploring options to outsource components of the business and realized the landscape had changed significantly since 2020. Abundant SMA capital meant they could start running money faster. They could also rent state-of-the-art technology, compliance and operational infrastructure, cybersecurity, and hire someone to manage relationships with prime and execution brokers.

Like Williams, they signed on with IIP, which aims to save managers time and money getting off the ground by purchasing institutional-grade software — order, execution, and portfolio management systems — at wholesale prices and integrating them into a cohesive, ready-to-use system.

“It’s enabled us to get scale from day one that would typically take 12 to 18 months to build if you were recreating the multistrat setup from scratch,” Gormley said.

You can rent infrastructure; you can’t rent credibility

Don’t let the small headcounts — and the relative ease of getting these firms off the ground — fool you. This isn’t trading from your couch in your pajamas, and cheaper technology doesn’t mean launching a hedge fund is now fair game for anyone.

Experience, talent, and credibility are still prerequisites.

Both Bayhunt and Brabus said their comfort outsourcing non-investment work came from years inside institutional platforms, gaining exposure to the less glamorous but nevertheless critical functions of hedge fund — risk, operations, controls, and due diligence. Williams, who liaised with several risk managers at top-tier multistrats, said that while the technology is cheaper and more available than it was a decade ago, “a person needs to have a considerable amount of experience” to understand the risk math and to have the confidence to strike out alone.

Brabus’ founders put it more bluntly: you can outsource the plumbing, but you can’t outsource knowing whether it’s working — and allocators still aren’t writing meaningful checks without a credible track record and an operation that can survive institutional due diligence.

“Even with high-quality outsourced partners, running a hedge fund business is a big lift if you don’t understand what goes on downstream from your investment process,” Isherwood said.

• Sam Altman and Dario Amodei went viral for refusing to join together in a sign of unity.
• Once colleagues, the two AI CEOs have helped nurse their companies’ rivalry.
• Here’s how OpenAI and Anthropic finally reached this point.

If you want to know one of the biggest rivalries in AI, just ask for a show of hands.

Recently, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei provided an iconic image of their rivalry when they refused to join hands as the rest of the gathered for a moment of unity.

Weeks later, their differences were put into even sharper relief when Anthropic and OpenAI came down on opposite sides of a dispute with the Pentagon.

Here’s a timeline of how Altman and Amodei went from colleagues to becoming the face of AI’s Cold War.

July 2015: Decisions happened over dinner

In July 2015, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Altman, and a group of elite AI researchers all gathered at the swanky Rosewood Hotel in Menlo Park, California.

According to The New York Times, Musk had a falling out with then-Google CEO Larry Page. Weeks later, Musk, Altman, Amodei, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, and others discussed the formation of a new AI lab to ensure Google had a worthy competitor in the AI space. Musk invited Amodei, per tech journalist Alex Kantrowitz.

Their vision became OpenAI, though Amodei initially elected not to join the startup research lab. Roughly a year later, he changed his mind and joined OpenAI as “Team Lead for AI Safety.”

September 2018: Amodei rises up

Amodei quickly moved up the ranks at OpenAI. In September 2018, the startup named him its research director.

Altman, who cofounded OpenAI while still serving as president of Y Combinator, began to devote more time to the startup.

In March 2019, Altman stepped down as YC’s leader. He then became CEO of OpenAI and led the startup’s pivot to a capped for-profit structure.

In November 2019, OpenAI released GPT-2, which Amodei played a major role in developing. A month later, OpenAI named Amodei as its Vice President of Research.

June 2020: OpenAI releases GPT-3

In June 2020, OpenAI began to show just how far the technology had come with the release of GPT-3, considered to be the first highly capable Large Language Model (LLM).

Amodei told The New York Times that the model had “this emergent quality.” Independent researchers told the publication that GPT-3’s capabilities surprised them, even as the model still showed signs of struggle.

To address safety concerns, OpenAI initially controlled access through a private beta.

December 2020: Amodei goes his own way

The release of GPT-3 solidified OpenAI‘s standing, but behind the scenes, tensions were rising.

The rifts began when Amodei successfully lobbied to keep Greg Brockman, an OpenAI cofounder, off the team that developed GPT-3, according to Keach Hagey’s biography of Altman, “The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Future.”

Hagey wrote that Amodei’s stunning power within OpenAI had started to ruffle feathers. Differences continued to escalate over Amodei’s long-held views on safety, Hagey wrote, especially regarding slowing the pace of updates to prevent malicious uses of the AI models.

Amodei told friends that he “felt psychologically abused by Altman,” Hagey wrote. Altman, in turn, was telling colleagues that the tension “was making him hate his job.”

On December 29, 2020, OpenAI made it official. Amodei was leaving, and a “handful” of other colleagues were leaving.

Amodei has since suggested that his vision became incompatible with OpenAI’s direction.

“It is incredibly unproductive to try and argue with someone else’s vision,” Amodei told podcaster Lex Friedman in 2024, when asked why he left OpenAI.

Early 2021: Anthropic is created

With seven other former OpenAI employees, Amodei founded Anthropic in early 2021. The group was extremely close and included Daniela Amodei, Dario’s sister. Daniela Amodei later said the name was chosen to emphasize their company’s focus on humans.

Only one of Anthropic’s initial employees hadn’t worked at OpenAI, according to AI Business.

Despite starting from scratch, Amodei said that by the Summer of 2022, the company’s chatbot, Claude, had finished training. Amodei said he was worried about what the release of a powerful AI could mean. Anthropic held off on a release.

“I suspect it was the right thing to do,” Amodei told Time Magazine in 2024. “But it’s not totally clear-cut.”

Months later, OpenAI released ChatGPT, kicking off the AI race and making Amodei’s former employer a household name.

May 2024: Amodei takes a shot … or did he?

As Anthropic began to establish itself in its own right, Amodei began to use his public appearances to take what were widely viewed as implicit shots at OpenAI.

During an appearance at a Bloomberg event, Amodei noted how Anthropic had kept its leadership intact.

“We have 7 cofounders,” he said, Gizmodo reported. “Three and a half years later, we’re all still at the company.”

While never calling out by name, OpenAI was experiencing upheaval at the time. Months earlier, Andrej Karpathy, an OpenAI cofounder, had left the company. And in November 2023, Altman was briefly pushed out of OpenAI, an effort fellow cofounder Ilya Sutskever assisted. (Sutskever later expressed regret over his role. He formally left OpenAI just days after Amodei’s jab, though there had been months of speculation surrounding Sutskever’s standing.)

December 2025: ‘We don’t have to do any code reds’

By the end of 2025, OpenAI’s lead in the AI race was slipping. When presented with the opportunity, Amodei seized the moment to troll his rival.

Journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin asked Amodei about OpenAI’s decision to declare a “code red” to marshal resources for ChatGPT amid Google’s rising strength.

We have a little bit of a privileged position where we can just keep growing and just keep developing our models, and we don’t have to do any code reds,” Amodei told Sorkin during an appearance at The New York Times’ DealBook summit.

Earlier in their conversation, Amodei appeared to take another swipe at Altman when he talked about some players “who are YOLOing” by making too risky bets on future demand based on their current revenue.

“Who is YOLOing?” Sorkin asked.

“I’m not going to answer that,” Amodei replied.

February 2026: A snarky Super Bowl ad gets a response

Anthropic used the biggest stage available to take its most direct shot yet at OpenAI.

Ahead of the Super Bowl, Anthropic revealed it was spending millions on an advertising campaign to denounce AI chatbot ads. While OpenAI was not named directly, it was clear who the intended target was, given that just months earlier, OpenAI had said it would begin testing ads on ChatGPT.

The ads featured real human actors mimicking the voice of product-pushing AI chatbots when asked questions like how to get a six-pack quickly or how to better connect with your mom.

“First, the good part of the Anthropic ads: they are funny, and I laughed,” Altman wrote in a lengthy post on X.” But I wonder why Anthropic would go for something so clearly dishonest.”

Altman wasn’t done.

“Anthropic serves an expensive product to rich people,” he continued. “We are glad they do that and we are doing that too, but we also feel strongly that we need to bring AI to billions of people who can’t pay for subscriptions.”

Days later, the companies went head-to-head again. This time, with the release of major updates to their coding-focused model within minutes of each other.

February 2026: I (don’t) want to hold your hand

A who’s who of AI and tech elite gathered in India for a major summit on artificial intelligence.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi took the opportunity to orchestrate a classic image of unity: competing CEOs with their hands raised together. (It’s something Modi has done before with other world leaders, and politicians have been doing forever.)

Modi almost got his moment. While Altman held the prime minister’s hand, the OpenAI CEO didn’t grasp Amodei’s hand, who was positioned to his other side. Amodei grasped the hand of the other person next to him, but not Altman’s.

The internet, predictably, had a field day. And the world got a perfect encapsulation of one of AI’s bitter rivalries.

February 2026: Opposite sides of the Pentagon

Anthropic refused to back down in a standoff with the Pentagon. Hours later, OpenAI struck a deal with the Defense Department, an agreement Altman later said was “definitely rushed.”

“If we are right and this does lead to a de-escalation between the DoW and the industry, we will look like geniuses, and a company that took on a lot of pain to do things to help the industry,” Altman wrote on X on February 28 during an AMA on the platform centered around the deal. “If not, we will continue to be characterized as rushed and uncareful.”

Amodei said he and Anthropic remained firm in their “red lines” that any usage agreement must contain safeguards against “the mass domestic surveillance of Americans and fully autonomous weapons.” The Pentagon argued that current laws prevent misuse, but the two sides ultimately couldn’t agree.

Users pressed Altman on how the Trump administration treated Anthropic after talks fell apart. Namely, they asked about Hegseth’s statement that he would formally designate Anthropic as a supply chain risk, potentially banning any business with Pentagon contracts from working with Anthropic.

Altman said the designation was wrong, but added that Anthropic also bore some responsibility, too.

“I think it is an extremely scary precedent and I wish they handled it a different way,” he wrote on X. “I don’t think Anthropic handled it well either, but as the more powerful party, I hold the government more responsible.”

Yes; I think it is an extremely scary precedent and I wish they handled it a different way. I don’t think Anthropic handled it well either, but as the more powerful party, I hold the government more responsible.

I am still hopeful for a much better resolution.

— Sam Altman (@sama) March 1, 2026

The entire episode provided the most direct example yet of how far-reaching the rivalry has become.

• Pittsburgh has historically been known as “the Steel City,” but is trying to rebrand as a tech hub.
• Pittsburgh’s new mayor is personally cold-calling upwards of 20 founders and CEOs every week.
• The city is home to well-known startups, including Gecko Robotics, Abridge, and Skild AI.

Pittsburgh’s new mayor is personally cold-calling upwards of 20 founders and CEOs across the country every week to check in on them, or to convince them to move to his city.

“Some people think it’s a prank call, but for others, it’s like, ‘wow, the mayor of Pittsburgh just called,'” said Corey O’Connor, who estimates he has called around 150 people since taking office in January. “If you’re already here, I ask, ‘How can we help you expand?’ If you’re not here, I ask ‘How do we get you to come to Pittsburgh?”

Pittsburgh has historically been known as “the Steel City” and is home to the Pittsburgh Steelers. O’Connor’s father worked as a steelworker before a long career in city politics. However, as O’Connor is quick to point out, there are no longer any steel mills within city limits, while the area is home to some of the most important startups in the U.S.

After predictions of its waning influence during the Covid era turned out to be wildly off, the Bay Area’s tech scene is now hotter than ever, largely thanks to AI. That has not stopped smaller cities like Miami and Austin from trying to grab VC dollars, especially as the cost of living in California skyrockets. Now, Pittsburgh would like to be the next Miami.

Its startups raised $1.48 billion in 2025, still a fraction of major tech hubs, but the region’s strongest venture capital year since 2019, according to PitchBook.

Standouts include Gecko Robotics, valued at $1.7 billion, which builds wall-climbing robots that inspect critical infrastructure, including power plants and industrial facilities. Abridge, valued at $5.3 billion, uses artificial intelligence to automatically generate medical documentation from doctor-patient conversations. It has emerged as one of the most closely watched AI companies in healthcare.

The most high-profile is Skild AI, which is developing foundation models for robotics, training AI systems that allow machines to operate more autonomously in real-world environments. The company raised $1.4 billion in a deal led by SoftBank Group and Nvidia in January, pushing its valuation to $15 billion, according to PitchBook.

“Our goal is to change the narrative,” O’Connor said, adding he will use every opportunity he can get to tout the city’s tech potential, especially as the spotlight will be on Pittsburgh as it prepares to host the NFL Draft in April.

Deep-seated roots in AI and robotics

The city’s AI and robotics credentials stretch back decades. In the 1960s, Carnegie Mellon professors began groundbreaking research in AI. In 1979, the first robotics institute at a U.S. university was started at CMU.

The challenge is keeping the most talented graduates from bolting to Silicon Valley.

“I’m constantly going to meet kids on campus,” O’Connor said.

Affordability is a key selling point. The median price for a single-family home in Pittsburgh and surrounding Allegheny County is 42.3 percent below the national average.

O’Connor is also trying to streamline the city’s permitting process to make it easier for tech companies to expand.

“We can get you a permit in four to five weeks, so you don’t have to wait through the government bureaucracy,” he said.

In January, Factify, a Tel Aviv-based digital document startup, said it plans to expand its presence in Pittsburgh and use the city as a major hub for customer engagement and operations.

Asked if he has successfully convinced any companies to move to Pittsburgh, O’Connor said not yet, but he is focused on the long game.

“They’re going to at least tell 10 friends that the mayor of Pittsburgh called,” he said. “That creates a buzz about the city.”

• The Dallas Fed analyzed employment and wage trends in AI-exposed industries.
• Wages in those sectors are still rising — especially in roles that reward experience.
• Entry-level workers appear to be facing a tougher hiring market.

Artificial intelligence hasn’t yet triggered the broad job losses many feared — at least not for experienced workers.

That’s the takeaway from a new analysis by J. Scott Davis, an assistant vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, who examined employment and wage trends in industries most exposed to artificial intelligence.

Davis argues the data tell a more nuanced story — one that’s challenging the traditional career ladder, and helping older employees earn a bit more.

Since ChatGPT’s debut in late 2022, overall US employment has risen about 2.5%, according to Davis’ analysis, which uses an AI exposure index developed by researchers and published in the Strategic Management Journal. At the same time, employment in the sectors most exposed to AI has slipped by roughly 1%.

Wages tell a different story. The average weekly pay nationwide has climbed 7.5% since fall 2022. And across the most AI-exposed industries, wages have grown faster, up 8.5%.

If AI were simply replacing workers, both employment and wages would likely be falling, Davis wrote.

Instead, Davis points to a divide between “codified” knowledge — the kind learned from textbooks and in university courses — and “tacit” knowledge gained from hands-on work experience.

“Returns on job experience are increasing in AI-exposed occupations,” Davis wrote. “Young workers with primarily codifiable knowledge and limited experience will likely face challenging job markets.”

Using Bureau of Labor Statistics data, his analysis found that the occupations most exposed to AI tend to offer larger pay premiums for experienced workers.

In roles with less hands-on experience, AI exposure is associated with weaker wage growth, he wrote.

Workers under 25 in AI-exposed industries have also experienced employment declines, according to Davis’ analysis.

“There appears to be less cause for concern about widespread job displacement for older, experienced workers,” he wrote.

A less dire picture… so far

The findings offer a counterpoint to the more apocalyptic predictions about AI’s impact on the labor market.

Last week, Citrini Research published a memo, written from the hypothetical perspective in 2028, that theorized how AI could crush the US jobs market and trigger a broad-based market collapse.

“What if our AI bullishness continues to be right…and what if that’s actually bearish?” the memo asked.

Top executives inside the AI companies are worried about jobs, too.

Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, the company that runs Claude, warned that AI could eliminate 50% of entry-level office jobs. OpenAI’s head of product, Olivier Godement, said the life sciences, customer service, and computer engineering industries were all about to get automated. And Boris Cherny, the creator of Claude Code, said that he doesn’t believe the job title “software engineer” will exist next year.

For now, at least, the Dallas Fed paints a different picture of today’s jobs market. It points to less mass displacement and market ruptures — and more power for employees who already have their foot in the door.

• US-Israel strikes on Iran threaten the Strait of Hormuz and global oil flows.
• A prolonged closure could fill storage tanks and force Gulf producers to stop pumping oil.
• Surging crude may lift US shale while stoking inflation and economic pressure at home.

Oil traders are bracing for disruptions to the Strait of Hormuz after the US and Israel struck Iranian targets over the weekend, putting at risk the waterway that carries about one-fifth of the world’s oil.

A longer disruption would shift the risk onshore, because storage tanks across the Gulf can only be filled for only so long.

If the conflict drags on and export routes remain blocked, producers could be forced to halt production as storage fills up, Daan Struyven, the head of oil research at Goldman Sachs, said on Goldman Sachs’ “Exchanges” podcast published Monday. This could send prices sharply higher.

“If the Strait of Hormuz is closed for a very long time, you cannot draw inventories forever, and the market may have to rebalance by incentivizing prices to such high levels that you generate demand destruction,” Struyven added.

Oil prices are already sharply higher this year on the back of heightened geopolitical risks.

International benchmark Brent and US West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures are 3% and 2.4% higher at around $80 and $73 per barrel, respectively, in early trade on Tuesday. Both grades are up about 30% this year.

The Middle East accounts for about one-third of the world’s seaborne crude.

“Gulf producers do have storage capacity, pipelines, and tanker alternatives, but these are not unlimited,” wrote Chris Weston, the head of research at Pepperstone, in a Tuesday note.

“With the Strait of Hormuz temporarily constrained, the longer the disruption persists, the greater the risk that additional facilities and infrastructure across the Gulf region may be forced offline,” Weston added.

JPMorgan analysts have also warned that if the strait is effectively closed for more than 25 days, storage constraints could push major Middle East producers to suspend output altogether.

‘A supply shock of historic proportions.’

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Monday that the Strait of Hormuz is closed and they will attack any ship trying to cross the waterway.

Major lines are rerouting or suspending services and adding war-risk fees, while some marine insurers have canceled war-risk cover for vessels operating in and around Iranian waters.

Apart from oil, Qatar’s state-owned energy company has halted liquefied natural gas production after reported damage to facilities, underscoring how quickly disruptions can spill beyond crude into wider energy markets.

The macro consequences could be severe, wrote analysts at ING on Monday, as even a partial disruption to the Hormuz would produce “a supply shock of historic proportions.”

However, because the US is a major oil producer, higher oil prices benefit shale producers and improve the domestic energy industry.

Still, inflation could tick up for American consumers, so “that balance is politically awkward to explain and economically insufficient to compensate for the broader damage,” wrote ING analysts.

• Amazon’s Middle East data centers were hit by drone strikes amid US-Iran tensions.
• Some sites faced fire, flooding, and major structural damage.
• Amazon said the situation “remains unpredictable.”

Amazon said three of its data centers in the Middle East were damaged by drone strikes due to the US-Iran conflict in the region.

Two facilities in the United Arab Emirates sustained direct hits, while a third facility in Bahrain was damaged by a drone strike “in close proximity,” the company said in an update on its AWS cloud service dashboard on Monday afternoon.

“These strikes have caused structural damage, disrupted power delivery to our infrastructure, and in some cases required fire suppression activities that resulted in additional water damage. We are working closely with local authorities and prioritizing the safety of our personnel throughout our recovery efforts,” the company added in the update.

The infrastructure issues disrupted several AWS services, including the EC2 compute, S3 cloud storage, and the DynamoDB database offering, according to Amazon’s update.

“The ongoing conflict in the region means that the broader operating environment in the Middle East remains unpredictable,” Amazon said.

“We expect recovery to be prolonged given the nature of the physical damage involved,” the company added. “We recommend that customers with workloads running in the Middle East consider taking action now to backup data and potentially migrate your workloads to alternate AWS Regions.”

In its latest update on Monday evening, Amazon said it has made “incremental progress” in recovering the DynamoDB and S3 control planes, which are its foundational services.

“We still estimate that the recovery time is at least a day before we are able to fully restore power and connectivity,” Amazon added.

The disruptions are happening as Iran responds to US military activity in the country by firing missiles at other countries in the region. Earlier on Monday, Business Insider reported that Amazon’s e-commerce business halted deliveries in Abu Dhabi due to the escalating tensions.

Cloud impact

An internal document reviewed by Business Insider offers more detail on the cloud fallout, revealing that Amazon evacuated staff and shut down access to at least one of the data centers after they experienced structural damage and flooding stemming from the attacks in recent days.

One of the sites suffered a “direct impact” and suffered “major structural damage,” the document stated.

Flooding compounded the disruption. Water levels inside the facility initially reached 3 to 4 centimeters, or over an inch, before receding to less than 1 centimeter, the document showed.

The damage knocked 14 EC2 cloud server racks offline, along with five other “production” racks. Racks are the structures inside data centers that hold computer servers and other cloud-computing gear. EC2 refers to AWS’s core cloud-computing service.

Cooling systems at the facility were also impaired. Air handling systems used to regulate temperature went offline due to power outages, and some suffered mechanical failures. Thirty cameras were monitoring the conditions, the document explained.

The data center is known as DXB62, likely referring to an AWS facility in Dubai, which has a major airport known as DXB.

A second AWS data center, called DXB61, shut down on Sunday after “indirect impact,” the document also stated. A small fire was extinguished, and no entry was allowed to the site without government approval. A third site, DXB60, experienced a WiFi outage, but the impact appeared localized, the document added.

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• Amazon halts e-commerce operations in Abu Dhabi amid Middle East instability.
• Amazon employees in Saudi Arabia and Jordan are advised to stay indoors due to regional tension.
• Third-party sellers face disruptions as Amazon’s Abu Dhabi closure affects logistics channels.

Amazon closed its fulfillment center operations in Abu Dhabi and suspended deliveries across the region, as the company responds to escalating instability that is rippling across its Middle East network.

The e-commerce giant shared the updates in an internal memo this week, which was seen by Business Insider. As a result, customers in the region are experiencing delivery and return delays, the memo said.

Amazon employees in Saudi Arabia and Jordan have been instructed to remain indoors, the memo added. Many Amazon employees across the region are transitioning to work from home this week, while all business travel to Israel and Lebanon has been blocked.

No employee safety issues have been reported so far, the memo said.

Amazon’s spokesperson wasn’t immediately available for comment.

The disruption highlights how quickly geopolitical tensions can strain global supply chains. Amazon has spent years expanding its logistics footprint in the Middle East, after acquiring Souq.com for roughly $600 million in 2017. The UAE anchors that network, which also includes Amazon marketplaces in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey.

The shutdown in Abu Dhabi is expected to reduce network capacity across Amazon’s Middle Eastern businesses, according to the memo. The company has placed additional operational support on standby as it manages disruptions and monitors the situation.

The impact extends well beyond Amazon’s own warehouses. Nearly 300,000 third-party sellers in the region are facing shipment delays and potential order cancellations as logistics channels tighten, according to the memo. Many of these sellers rely on Amazon’s fulfillment and cross-border shipping infrastructure to move goods between Gulf countries.

Amazon did not specify how long deliveries in Abu Dhabi would remain suspended.

The US-Iran conflict in the region has also caused a power outage at one of Amazon’s data centers, the company announced on Sunday. Amazon said it could take at least a day to repair the damage.

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• In December, Paramount’s Larry and David Ellison said they had partners to help them buy WBD: Three Gulf states.
• At the time, Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, and Qatar were going to chip in a collective $24 billion into the deal.
• Are those countries part of the new deal Paramount struck with WBD last week? We don’t know yet.

A few months ago, Larry and David Ellison’s Paramount said it had lined up big backers for its bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery: three Middle Eastern countries, which would contribute a total of $24 billion to help buy the media conglomerate.

Now, Paramount has won the rights to WBD, after Netflix walked away. Are those three Gulf states going to help finance Paramount’s new deal?

Paramount won’t say.

In government filings and on an investor call Monday, Paramount reiterated that the Ellisons and private-equity firm RedBird Capital Partners have pledged $47 billion toward the roughly $81 billion Paramount will pay to buy out WBD shareholders. The rest will be financed with debt.

But Paramount doesn’t say how much the Ellisons and RedBird intend to cough up themselves, and how much will come from other investors. A company rep pointed to the merger agreement, which lets them sell pieces of that $47 billion equity commitment — but doesn’t identify who those investors might be.

What we do know: In early December, Paramount had told WBD it intended to raise $24 billion via state-controlled funds from three countries: Saudi Arabia, which would contribute $12 billion, and Abu Dhabi and Qatar, which would kick in $7 billion each. And Paramount later said those countries would not ask for board seats or voting rights alongside their equity stakes.

So it’s entirely possible that those three countries’ funds will be in this deal, too. I’ve asked fund reps for comment; I’ve also asked Warner Bros. Discovery, which had previously flagged potential regulatory issues involving foreign investors in Paramount’s deal.

The notion of other countries owning a piece of a powerful American-run media giant, which has multiple news operations, streamers, and movie studios, seems like the kind of thing you might hear politicians, regulators, and even normal Americans talking about. Particularly given the participation of Saudi Arabia, whose government killed a Washington Post journalist in 2018, per US intelligence.

It may also explain why Paramount has never emphasized the idea of foreign investment in any of its press releases or public presentations about the deal. Or why Paramount once shot down a story saying it was rounding up Gulf investment.

But outside of a few complaints from the likes of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the notion that Middle Eastern nations might own a meaningful stake in an important US company doesn’t seem to have registered as an issue, for now.

One reason is that Gulf state money is increasingly everywhere, including in big US companies. The Saudis, for instance, are set to be the primary owner of video game giant Electronic Arts once that deal closes this year. Abu Dhabi’s MGX fund now owns 15% of U.S. TikTok‘s operations.

And Donald Trump has made doing business in the Middle East a big part of his second-term focus: Last year, he brought a who’s who of American CEOs to a business summit in Saudi Arabia and later hosted Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the White House.

So it’s very possible Gulf state money will end up in a giant American media company, too. It would be nice to know for sure.

• Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Ro Khanna unveiled a billionaire wealth tax proposal on Monday.
• Under the plan, America’s roughly 1,000 billionaires would see a 5% tax on their wealth.
• Some of that money would pay for $3,000 checks for people in households making less than $150,000.

Bernie Sanders has a plan to tax the wealthiest people in America — and use it to send checks to Americans.

The Vermont senator, along with Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California, unveiled a bill on Monday that would enact a 5% annual wealth tax on America’s billionaires, which Sanders’s office estimates to be 938 people.

The legislation would raise $4.4 trillion over 10 years, according to an economic analysis by two economics professors at the University of California at Berkeley.

So what do Sanders and Khanna want to do with all of that money?

The flashiest proposal is a one-time, $3,000 direct payment to each American in households making $150,000 annually or less — meaning $12,000 for a family of four.

Beyond that, the duo also says they would use the revenue to:

• Fund recently expired ACA tax credits and reverse cuts to Medicaid made by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act;

• Expand Medicare to cover dental, vision, and hearing for seniors;
• Build, rehabilitate, and preserve over seven million affordable homes;
• Ensure families don’t spend more than 7% of their income on childcare;
• Establish a $60,000 minimum annual salary for public school teachers;
• Expand Medicaid home health care for seniors and people with disabilities;

In a press release, Sanders’s office specifically said that Elon Musk — the world’s richest man — would owe $42 billion in taxes in the first year.

The proposal is unlikely to become law, particularly given GOP control of Congress.

But it’s a proposal that could influence the course of Democratic politics over the next several years, particularly as the party looks to the 2028 presidential election.

While Sanders has indicated he won’t run for president again, Khanna may.

The wealth tax proposal also comes amid a debate over a proposed billionaire wealth tax in Khanna’s home state of California, which led to several billionaires relocating to other states.

• Paramount made two big hires as it builds its ad business under CEO David Ellison.
• Paramount, fresh from winning Warner Bros. Discovery, is bringing on Amazon vet Danielle Carney.
• Read the memo from Paramount’s revenue chief on the hires.

Paramount Skydance has poached a top ad exec from Amazon to lead its US ad sales efforts.

Danielle Carney spent more than four years at Amazon, most recently as head of video and live sports sales, helping the ecommerce giant expand its live sports business with its 2021 exclusive NFL deal. Before Amazon, she spent more than a decade at Disney, most of it in ad sales for ESPN.

Jay Askinasi, Paramount’s chief revenue officer, cited Carney’s experience in entertainment, sports, and technology in her hire.

“As we accelerate toward a streaming-centric future, Danielle’s deep expertise across entertainment, sports and technology is invaluable,” Askinasi wrote in a memo that was obtained by Business Insider. “She will play a critical role in connecting our most valuable assets with brand marketers and agency partners, helping deliver a seamless, client-first experience across the Paramount ecosystem.

Askinasi also named Tribeca Enterprises’ Chris Brady as EVP of Paramount Media Labs, a new role he said was aimed at developing brand integrations and other partnerships.

It’s the latest shake-up to Paramount’s ads leadership under Askinasi, who was appointed in October. Chris Simon, a Paramount EVP of agency partnerships, stepped down in February, while fellow Paramount vet John Halley stepped down in late 2025 as advertising president.

Paramount is fresh off winning the bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery after a drawn-out fight with Netflix.

Here’s the full memo from Paramount’s revenue chief:

All,

As we prepare for the upcoming Upfront season, we continue evolving both our team structure and our go-to-market strategy. Streaming sits at the center of that evolution, and we are elevating the client experience through a unified offering that brings the very best of One Paramount to life for our advertising partners and consumers.

This is a pivotal moment for our business — and an opportunity to build something truly differentiated together.

At this defining inflection point, I’m excited to announce the next important step in that journey as we welcome two outstanding leaders to our team.

Danielle Carney will join Paramount Advertising as Head of U.S. Sales, beginning March 9. Danielle comes to us from Amazon, where she served as Head of Video and Live Sports Sales, and previously spent more than 15 years in ad sales leadership roles at The Walt Disney Company. As we accelerate toward a streaming-centric future, Danielle’s deep expertise across entertainment, sports and technology is invaluable. She will play a critical role in connecting our most valuable assets with brand marketers and agency partners, helping deliver a seamless, client-first experience across the Paramount ecosystem.

Karen Phillips, Ryan Briganti and Karim Mawji will continue leading their respective portfolios and best-in-class teams, reporting to Danielle moving forward.

I’m also pleased to welcome Chris Brady, who will join Paramount Advertising as Executive Vice President, Paramount Media Labs, also beginning March 9. Chris comes to us from Tribeca Enterprises, where he served as President and Global Chief Commercial Officer, overseeing revenue, sponsorship, distribution and growth strategies. Prior to Tribeca, he held several leadership roles at WarnerMedia, most recently leading Brand Partnerships and Innovation.

In this newly created role, Chris will provide commercial leadership for Paramount Media Labs, our reimagined and expanded brand storytelling team, designed to unlock opportunities to connect brands with audiences through native, culturally relevant experiences. He will work in close partnership with Paramount Media Labs CMO Dario Spina to spearhead IP-centric innovation across brand integrations, creative partnerships and content-driven commercial strategies.

Both Danielle and Chris will report directly to me.

Their additions mark an exciting moment for Paramount Advertising as we continue building momentum across the organization. Over the past several months, we’ve taken meaningful steps to simplify our structure, strengthen collaboration and sharpen our go-to-market approach, including:

• Unifying our HoldCo partnerships, programmatic and advanced advertising sales teams into a single organization under Karen Phillips’ leadership to better serve our agency partners;
• Investing further in programmatic sales capabilities and enablement, recognizing the growing importance of data-driven and automated buying across the marketplace;
• Launching the Global Ad Marketing & Intelligence group, a centralized strategic go-to-market function led by Lydia Daly;
• Aligning our Creative+ sales team within Karim Mawji’s Global Client Partnership organization to reinforce a more client-centric model;
• Driving strong sales and engagement through the successful launch of UFC on Paramount+, alongside a record-setting NFL season, further establishing sports as a cornerstone of our sales strategy.

Each of these steps reflects a shared commitment to working differently — breaking down silos, moving faster together, and delivering a more connected experience for our clients and partners.

As we bring together the power of Hollywood storytelling with the speed, innovation and mindset of Silicon Valley, our focus now turns to translating that ambition into consistent execution. The opportunity ahead is significant, and what will define our success is how we show up for one another — as one team — in market.

Thank you for the focus, urgency and collaboration you bring every day. The momentum we’re seeing across Paramount Advertising is real, and it’s being built by all of you. Together, we are creating something special as we head into the Upfront and beyond.

Please join me in welcoming Danielle and Chris to the team.

Jay

• Anthropic is promoting how easy it is to switch from other AI companies.
• The move comes amid exploding interest in Claude after Anthropic’s standoff with the Pentagon.
• Claude is now No. 1 on the Apple App Store, blazing past competitors ChatGPT and Gemini.

Anthropic wants you to use Claude, even as President Donald Trump moves to kick the company out of Washington.

Now, Claud says it’s easier to move their history from a rival competitor into Claude. While Anthropic initially offered users the ability to import their data in October, the updated interface is “significantly improved,” a spokesperson for Anthropic told Business Insider.

All they have to do now is copy and paste a pre-written prompt into another chatbot.

“Switch to Claude without starting over,” the new dedicated landing page reads, adding that the process can be done in under a minute.

“You’ve spent months teaching another AI how you work,” the page reads. “That context shouldn’t disappear because you want to try something new. Claude can import what matters, so your first conversation feels like your hundredth.”

The overhaul shows how Anthropic is making aggressive efforts to promote itself amid an explosion of outside interest, after its CEO, Dario Amodei, refused to back down amid a standoff with the Pentagon.

Claude is now the most downloaded free app in Apple’s App Store, above OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini.

On Friday, Amodei said that the AI startup could not reach an agreement with the Pentagon based on two exceptions that Anthropic insisted on, which he said would limit the use of its AI models for deployment in fully autonomous weapons and for mass surveillance of American citizens.

Hours later, OpenAI struck a deal with the Pentagon to deploy its AI models, which sparked a backlash among some users.

In response, Trump blasted Anthropic, calling it “woke,” and pushed to prevent its use across all federal agencies. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who moved to formally designate Anthropic as a supply-chain risk, said the Defense Department would not back down.

“America’s warfighters will never be held hostage by the ideological whims of Big Tech,” Hegseth wrote on X on Friday. “This decision is final.”

Anthropic has called the supply-chain risk designation “unprecedented,” particularly since Hegseth has suggested that it would mean anyone doing business with the Pentagon could not work with Anthropic. The AI startup has said Hegseth doesn’t have the power to impose such a wide ban.

“No amount of intimidation or punishment from the Department of War will change our position on mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons,” the company said in a statement. “We will challenge any supply chain risk designation in court.”

• Greg Abel paid tribute to Warren Buffett by touting four of the investor’s best stock picks.
• Berkshire’s new CEO highlighted Apple, American Express, Coca-Cola, and Moody’s in his first shareholder letter.
• Those stakes are worth anywhere from 10 to 50 times more than what Buffett paid for them.

Warren Buffett‘s successor is making sure the legendary investor gets the credit he deserves.

Greg Abel, who took over as Berkshire Hathaway’s CEO at the start of this year, highlighted four of Buffett’s most successful stock picks in his first shareholder letter on Saturday.

Abel included a table that lists Apple, American Express, Coca-Cola, and Moody’s, along with Berkshire’s ownership percentage of each company.

For each position, it shows how much it cost Berkshire, what it’s worth now, and what it paid to Berkshire in dividends last year:

The first entry is Berkshire’s Apple stake, which Buffett built between 2016 and 2018 and grew into his company’s most valuable stock holding by far.

While Berkshire has offloaded most of the position in the past couple of years, it still owned 1.6% of the iPhone maker at the end of 2025.

Berkshire paid about $6.3 billion for those remaining shares a little over a decade ago; they were worth $62 billion at December’s close, making the stock a ten-bagger for Buffett.

“Tim Cook has made Berkshire a lot more than I have made Berkshire,” Buffett quipped about Apple’s CEO during last year’s shareholder meeting.

American Express and Coca-Cola are the second and third entries in the table. Buffett finished building those stakes in the mid-1990s and hasn’t touched them since.

Berkshire’s 22.1% piece of the credit-card giant cost it $1.3 billion. The position was worth just over $56 billion at the end of December, meaning Buffett made nearly 45 times his money on paper.

The 9.3% stake in the soda titan also cost $1.3 billion, and was worth $28 billion at December’s close — a roughly 21-fold increase.

Buffett touted both wagers in his 2022 letter, holding them up as examples of how long-term, concentrated investing can generate huge returns.

“Over time, it takes just a few winners to work wonders,” he wrote. “And, yes, it helps to start early and live into your 90s as well.”

The fourth and final entry is Moody’s, which Buffett invested in back in 2001. Berkshire’s nearly 14% stake in the credit ratings agency cost it $248 million and was worth nearly $13 billion at the end of 2025, representing a 51-fold gain.

Together, the four holdings were worth 17 times what they cost Berkshire at December’s close. They yielded a combined $1.7 billion of dividends last year, or about 18% of what Buffett paid in total for them. That means Berkshire would only have to collect that dollar figure in dividends for six years to make back the full cost of the positions and more.

“This is both a tribute to, and a documentation of, Warren Buffett’s stock picking ability over time through year-end 2025,” David Kass, a longtime Berkshire blogger and finance professor at the University of Maryland, told Business Insider about the table.

For many years, Buffett published a similar ranking of Berkshire’s 15 largest stock holdings, but it hasn’t featured in the past three annual reports.

Along with reviving the list, Abel included a comparison of Berkshire’s stock performance vs the S&P 500. It showed that Buffett oversaw a 6,100,000% return over six decades, compared to the index’s roughly 46,000% return, including dividends, over the same timeframe. Berkshire’s compounded annual gain was 19.7%, or nearly double the benchmark’s 10.5%.

By highlighting Buffett’s track record as an investor and four of his most lucrative stock picks, Abel has shown why he believes his old boss is a “very hard act to follow.”

• Paramount Skydance just reshaped the leadership structure of a key streaming team.
• A Paramount streaming VP unveiled the arrangement hours before the company won the WBD bidding war.
• This decision is part of the Paramount+ and Pluto TV unification, ahead of a planned joining with HBO Max.

Paramount Skydance’s plan to beat Netflix isn’t just about buying Warner Bros. Discovery.

CEO David Ellison is making moves behind the scenes to help the 114-year-old Paramount operate more like a tech company.

Paramount is changing the internal structure of key engineering groups for its streaming services, with the goal of improving user experience and facilitating “AI enablement and automated testing,” according to an internal memo viewed by Business Insider.

Victor Marinelli, the VP of engineering at Paramount+, told software engineers and product design staffers on Thursday afternoon that the company is combining the Paramount+ Global Quality Engineering team and the Software Test Engineering unit for Pluto TV, its free streamer.

This organizational shuffle comes as the company prepares to put Paramount+ and Pluto TV on a unified tech platform for the first time — a process known internally as “convergence.” The convergence operation is one of Paramount’s top streaming priorities in the first quarter, Business Insider previously reported. Paramount also told investors on Monday morning that it’s planning to combine its namesake streamer and HBO Max if its WBD acquisition goes through.

“We are evolving our operating model to strengthen accountability, deepen technical specialization, and ensure we are positioned for long term success,” Marinelli said in his memo to streaming staffers.

Paramount’s unified Global Quality Engineering team will have “five core pillars,” each led by a current director or senior director:

• Client Experience, Playback and Front End Quality
• Backend Services and Platform Quality
• Readiness & Release (R&R) and Production Quality
• Data Quality, Analytics
• QE Innovation

Bringing together technical teams for Paramount+ and Pluto TV will help the streamers “support increasingly complex launches,” such as tech stack convergence, live events like UFC matches, and “emerging product initiatives,” Marinelli wrote.

While Marinelli didn’t go into detail about new product features, Paramount+ is planning to add short-form video and is also brainstorming ways to bring shoppable features and user-generated content to its flagship streaming service, Business Insider previously reported.

A software engineer briefed on the changes to the GQE team said that the move is about making the team more efficient while better using AI.

Six Paramount employees told Business Insider that the company’s tech is still behind that of streaming leaders like Netflix.

Jason Kim, Paramount’s EVP of data and insights, told staffers in late January that streaming tech was at “the very top of Dave’s priority list of things that he has to solve,” in reference to Ellison.

“For us to make this all work, we need to transform Paramount+ in a way that’s going to really be able to compete,” Kim said in a meeting, a recording of which was obtained by Business Insider.

A Paramount spokesperson declined to comment.

Read the memo outlining the changes below, with team leaders’ current titles added by Business Insider in square brackets:

Hi everyone,

I’m excited to share an important update about the future structure of Global Quality Engineering (GQE). As we continue to scale to meet the ongoing needs of the business and support increasingly complex launches including convergence, UFC, live events, new platform expansions, and emerging product initiatives, we are evolving our operating model to strengthen accountability, deepen technical specialization, and ensure we are positioned for long term success.

Over the past year, the scope of GQE has grown significantly across client, backend, platform, data, and emerging technologies. To support that growth and to create a clearer, more scalable foundation, we are introducing a new leadership structure built around five core pillars of quality engineering.

These pillars represent the capabilities that will carry our organization forward, and each will be led by a dedicated senior leader. Furthermore, they are not intended to create silos, but to strengthen clarity of ownership while enabling even deeper cross team collaboration across the entire GQE organization.

Organizational Pillars of GQE

1. Client Experience, Playback and Front End Quality

Leader: Susmita Mamidenna [senior director of software test engineering]

Responsible for all client platforms, playback and VPT, live events quality, A/B testing, accessibility, content launches, and client automated testing development and performance.

2. Backend Services and Platform Quality

Leader: Sachin Jaiswal [senior director of quality assurance engineering]

Covering CMS and MAM, APIs, transcoding, Ad Tech, Enterprise Platform and backend performance/service reliability.

3. Readiness & Release (R&R) and Production Quality

Leader: Karami Lenhardt [senior director of software quality assurance engineering]

Centralized owners of downstream regression (Apple & Android) and production monitoring, ensuring consistent readiness for convergence, UFC, and other major releases. We continue to invest in the R&R process and plan on expanding it to Pluto post-MVP, as well as onboarding additional platforms starting with Roku.

4. Data Quality, Analytics

Leader: Michael Jones [director of release & tools enablement engineering]

Owning ETL pipeline testing, analytics validation, data quality, DTE tooling and automated testing, and collaboration with MOPS and data partners.

5. QE Innovation

Leader: Max McCreery [director of software quality engineering]

Driving our automated testing framework strategy (TAF), AI tooling and governance, automated test development and maintenance, QE tooling integrations, test environments and cross GQE innovation initiatives.

Why This Change and Why Now

As our products scale and new business lines accelerate, the expectations placed on GQE continue to grow. This structure positions us to:

• Build specialized centers of excellence in the most critical areas of the platform
• Scale consistently across regions and product lines
• Strengthen test strategies, technical ownership and accountability
• Improve cross team alignment and responsiveness
• Support AI enablement and automated testing at every layer including client, backend, platform, and data
• Ensure quality remains a foundational, strategic advantage as the business evolves

This structure positions GQE to meet the moment and to lead confidently as the platform continues to grow.

Transition Period and Delivery Commitments

We will be entering a transition period over the coming months as leadership responsibilities and workflows align to the five pillar model.

It is important to note that there will be no disruption in support for convergence, UFC, live events, or other ongoing launches. We will be deliberate, coordinated, and collaborative to ensure continuity of execution and to avoid introducing any delivery risk.

Looking Ahead

This is an exciting moment for GQE. The combination of Pluto STE and P+ GQE under a unified GQE structure reflects not only where we are today but where we need to go as the platform and our business ambitions expand. I am proud of what this organization continues to deliver and confident in the impact this evolution will unlock for the teams, for the product, and for the business.

Thank you all for your continued partnership, resilience, and excellence. If you have questions, please feel free to reach out directly.

Please join me in congratulating our pillar leads!

Thank you,

Victor

• Apple’s latest version of its budget iPhone is here.
• The iPhone 17e maintains the $599 starting price as the previous lower-cost model.
• It also has MagSafe charging and an improved camera system.

The memory shortage is squeezing smartphone margins, but Apple is maintaining its $599 starting price on its budget iPhone.

The tech giant announced the iPhone 17e on Monday, adding new features including MagSafe charging. The new entry-level iPhone, which is available in black, white, and soft pink, comes with the durable Ceramic Shield 2 front cover that its fellow iPhone 17 family has.

On the backside, it sports a 48-megapixel fusion camera capable of portraits 4K videos, which Apple said is like owning two cameras in one.

Story developing…

• Intuit said its AI investments generated almost $90 million in efficiencies in the first half of 2025.
• AI use cases include task automation and matching customers with tax professionals.
• An Intuit executive said the company is also investing in physical stores as part of its 2026 strategy.

Intuit began its AI journey in 2019 when Sasan Goodarzi became CEO. A couple of months into the job, he said his biggest challenge was transforming Intuit from a cloud-based parent company of TurboTax and QuickBooks into an artificial intelligence enterprise.

To bring AI features to both Intuit’s workforce and customers, Intuit relied on the expertise of C-suite leaders like Chief AI Officer Ashok Srivastava and Chief Technology Officer Alex Balazs, who were hired in 2017 and 1999, respectively. In 2009, Intuit also hired Mark Notarainni, the executive vice president and general manager of Intuit’s consumer group, who spoke to Business Insider for this story. All three executives were among a small group of senior leaders who collaborated to set the vision and strategy to leverage AI to make tax filing less stressful, according to an Intuit spokesperson.

At the heart of Intuit’s AI endeavors is a data trove from 100 million business and individual customers and a proprietary generative AI operating system used to build and run AI-based apps. While Intuit doesn’t publicly disclose how much it invests in AI, the company said its investments have generated nearly $90 million in annualized efficiencies in the first half of 2025.

Ahead of this tax season, TurboTax is expanding a concept it tested last year: a return to the physical world. The company is opening nearly 600 offices and 20 TurboTax-branded storefronts in 2026, merging its AI and machine learning capabilities with human expertise.

If you rewind a decade, you can see how the seeds for this move were first planted.

The tech

In January 2016, TurboTax unveiled SmartLook, which allowed users to get virtual assistance from credentialed tax experts. Revenue for that service, which has evolved over the past decade and is now called TurboTax Live, is still growing: In the fiscal first quarter that ended October 31, 2025, it gained 51% more revenue year over year, according to earnings reports.

Many of Intuit’s leaders have long tenures, with Balazs, Goodarzi, Notarainni, and Srivastava collectively spending nearly 67 years at the business software giant. Throughout that time, they’ve spearheaded key product launches, like the company’s Virtual Expert Platform, which debuted in November 2022. It uses AI to understand financial and tax documents and answer customers’ questions. When human advice is needed, the platform matches the user with a tax specialist.

In November 2024, the company launched a generative AI-powered financial assistant called Intuit Assist, which can read tax documents uploaded to QuickBooks and display an automated checklist sidebar that reminds customers of any additional forms they may need. Intuit, which processes $105 billion in tax refunds annually on its platform, said this approach automates 93% of its forms.

Though nearly all Americans file their taxes electronically, increased customer use of TurboTax Live — which grew 17% in 2024 and 47% in 2025 — led Intuit to consider a greater emphasis on human-led tax services. Notarainni said the company is now placing a bigger bet on brick-and-mortar.

During the 2025 spring tax season, TurboTax piloted 200 expert offices in major metropolitan areas across the country, as well as 20 temporary storefronts in Southern California.

“What we learned during 2025 is there was a large percentage of customers that wanted to meet with us in person,” Notarainni said, adding that for some customers, an in-person meeting is necessary to establish trust. He cited in-house research showing that customers searching online for help are five times more likely to book an appointment with a professional expert if they are within a 50-mile radius than those who don’t have access to a local tax professional.

Much like Apple didn’t replicate Best Buy when it opened its own retail stores, TurboTax wasn’t keen to mirror rival H&R Block, which has a massive retail footprint of about 12,000 locations globally. “They reimagined the entire retail experience,” Notarainni said of the iPhone maker. “We wanted to do that for taxes and personal finance.”

In July, following the launch of the 2025 storefront pilot, Srivastava was appointed Intuit’s chief AI officer.

The outcome

TurboTax recently opened a flagship store in New York City’s SoHo neighborhood. There are now 20 TurboTax stores, with more to come in major cities like Chicago, Dallas, and Phoenix.

At these locations, all of the tax experts’ digital work is conducted on smartphones or tablets, and you won’t see a computer atop a single desk, Notarainni said. “It’s very warm and inviting,” he told Business Insider. “Let our experts focus on you as a customer, not looking into a screen.”

Tax filers can come into the store with forms started at home or drop them off to a tax expert, and then either remain in the store to complete the filing or leave and track an expert’s progress through a mobile app. An Intuit spokesperson told Business Insider that more of its expert offices and TurboTax stores will open throughout the current tax season, which runs through April 15.

In addition to streamlining massive company processes and shoring up resources for new strategic investments, Intuit’s AI investments have changed workflows for its tax associates like Geanna Foreman.

Prior to using AI, Foreman said she would quickly jot down notes during client calls. During the busy tax season, client calls would be back-to-back nearly every day and cause Foreman’s work to pile up, she said.

Now, she uses AI-enabled note-taking and post-call summarization tools. “I went from having to make a lot of changes to the notes to now just reviewing them, and they look good, with maybe one or two changes,” Foreman said.

• On Monday, QatarEnergy said it ceased production at one of its energy facilities.
• Production was paused “due to military attacks” on some of the company’s operating facilities, QatarEnergy said.
• Natural gas prices jumped on Monday, as did other energy commodities, including crude oil.

Qatar’s state-owned energy company has halted production of liquefied natural gas, LNG, after Iranian drone attacks damaged one of its production plants.

“Due to military attacks on QatarEnergy’s operating facilities in Ras Laffan Industrial City and Mesaieed Industrial City in the State of Qatar, QatarEnergy has ceased production of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and associated products,” QatarEnergy said in a statement on its website.

Natural gas prices surged on Monday, with prices up more than 6%, mirroring similar rises in other energy commodities. Brent crude oil, the international benchmark, was up 8% on the day.

Iran launched missile strikes targeting at least six countries in retaliation for the Saturday morning attack by the US and Israel.

This is a developing story.

• Amazon invests $50 billion in OpenAI, boosting its position in the AI industry.
• The OpenAI partnership enhances AWS’s Bedrock services.
• Amazon’s Trainium chips gain momentum as OpenAI makes large commitment.

Amazon is making its boldest AI move yet.

The company agreed to invest $50 billion in OpenAI as part of the startup’s record $110 billion fundraising round, which values the ChatGPT maker at $840 billion.

The multi-year partnership includes:

• $15 billion will be invested upfront, with another $35 billion to follow in the coming months once “certain conditions” are met.
• Co-creation of new AI system architecture powered by OpenAI models and available on Amazon Bedrock. It enables developers to retain memory and context over time and deploy more advanced AI applications.
• Amazon Web Services will become the exclusive third-party cloud distribution provider for OpenAI’s Frontier, a platform for managing AI agents at scale.
• OpenAI expands its existing AWS cloud agreement by $100 billion over 8 years and commits to using 2 gigawatts of AWS Trainium chips, including future generations of the AI chip.
• OpenAI will help build customized AI models for Amazon’s consumer business.

Beyond the eye-popping valuation, the deal cements Amazon Web Services as a core infrastructure partner to OpenAI and positions the cloud giant squarely in the middle of the escalating AI arms race.

Here are the 3 biggest takeaways.

1. AWS closes the AI perception gap and counters Microsoft and Google

For much of the past 3 years, Microsoft has been seen as an early winner in generative AI, thanks to its deep partnership with OpenAI. Google, meanwhile, has leaned on its in-house Gemini models and AI research strength to gain new cloud business and AI users.

Amazon has been perceived as a step behind by some analysts and investors.

Friday’s deal potentially changes that narrative.

“It’s an important strategic move that keeps them in the AI race,” DA Davidson analyst Gil Luria told Business Insider.

Combined with its multibillion-dollar investment in Anthropic, Amazon now holds meaningful partnerships with the top two independent AI labs, creating a counterweight to Google and reducing reliance on any single model provider, Luria said.

BNP analysts noted that Microsoft investors will be closely watching the extent to which OpenAI continues to partner with Amazon.

By becoming the exclusive third-party infrastructure provider for OpenAI’s Frontier platform, AWS is now positioned as a core backbone for enterprise AI and autonomous agent development. While Microsoft retains certain API exclusivity for OpenAI models, AWS’s Frontier deal gives it a meaningful foothold in OpenAI’s most advanced offerings.

Gartner analyst Jason Wong called the move a “major coup” for AWS, noting significant customer interest in Frontier.

“OpenAI gives them a lot of market traction with enterprises to build their agentic solutions on AWS,” Wong told Business Insider.

2. A potential threat to Anthropic and a major boost for Bedrock

Amazon’s deepening relationship with OpenAI inevitably raises questions about Anthropic, the AI startup behind Claude in which Amazon has already invested heavily. Anthropic remains a key AWS partner, but the new OpenAI partnership introduces competitive tension.

Amazon’s Bedrock, which offers access to other AI models, stands to benefit significantly. Adding OpenAI models to Bedrock through Friday’s deal will give developers more options and could make AWS a more compelling one-stop shop for enterprise AI.

Jefferies analyst Brent Thill framed the move as an expansion of choice. He told Business Insider that developers will be excited to have OpenAI Frontier available to build more advanced applications. For OpenAI, access to the world’s largest cloud provider by market share unlocks massive enterprise distribution, he added.

The move could complicate Amazon’s relationship with Anthropic. Bedrock has been a major distribution channel for Anthropic’s models, but adding OpenAI’s lineup may dilute that advantage and redirect some enterprise AI workloads.

3. A stamp of approval for Trainium, Amazon’s custom silicon bet

Another consequential element of the partnership is hardware.

As part of the deal, OpenAI has committed to deploy 2 gigawatts of Trainium, Amazon’s in-house AI chip. For years, AWS has invested heavily in custom silicon to differentiate from rivals and reduce its dependence on Nvidia.

Financial firm William Blair said the commitment serves as “another big vote of confidence” for Amazon’s custom chip strategy, noting Anthropic is also a heavy Trainium user. More Trainium deployment also drives deeper integration between OpenAI’s software stack and AWS infrastructure, potentially locking in long-term demand for Amazon’s chips and cloud services.

“There is clearly demand for AWS, and our sense is that AWS revenue growth is only going to be limited by how much compute capacity AWS can bring online,” William Blair analysts wrote in a note Friday.

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at ekim@businessinsider.com or Signal, Telegram, or WhatsApp at 650-942-3061. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here’s our guide to sharing information securely.

• Major aviation stocks are plunging amid travel chaos triggered by attacks on Iran.
• The parent company of British Airways saw its share price drop more than 5% on Monday morning.
• Disruption to global air travel is expected to persist in the coming days.

Major aviation stocks across Europe and Asia plummeted on Monday, as strikes by the US and Israel on Iran caused travel chaos across the Middle East.

In the first hours of trading in Europe on Monday, shares in the continent’s biggest airline groups — IAG, Air France-KLM, and Lufthansa — all plunged as investors digested the potential for long-term disruption to the airline industry due to the conflict.

At around 10:15 a.m. local time (5:15 a.m. ET), shares in the London-listed IAG, the parent group of British Airways, Iberia, and Aer Lingus, were down more than 5%. At the same time, Paris-listed Air France-KLM shares had dropped 8%, and Frankfurt-listed Lufthansa shares were 6% lower.

Earlier on Monday, shares of airlines based in the Asia-Pacific regions had also fallen sharply to start the week. Qantas, the Australian flag carrier, Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific, Singapore Airlines, and Japan Airlines, all saw drops in the region of 5% on Monday.

The three largest Middle East-based airlines — Emirates, Etihad, and Qatar Airways — are owned by their respective governments and are not publicly listed.

Global travel chaos

Tumbling airline stocks reflect the huge disruption to airline operations triggered by military actions across the Middle East over the weekend.

Initial US and Israeli attacks on Iran, and subsequent Iranian retaliation, led to the closure of virtually all airspace across the region.

Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Israel, and the United Arab Emirates all closed their airspace.

Tens of thousands of flights were delayed or canceled over the weekend, with scores of passengers stranded around the globe, largely due to the closure of major hub airports in the region.

The three major Middle Eastern airlines — Qatar Airways, Etihad Airways, and Emirates — operate hubs that connect passengers to destinations around the world, meaning that when their operations are disrupted, it creates a huge ripple effect.

While it is expected that some flights in the region may restart in the coming days, disruption to international air travel is likely to continue for many days, if not longer.

• OpenAI published a report detailing China’s “cyber special operations” that target critics online.
• The report followed OpenAI’s findings and removal of a ChatGPT account belonging to the CCP.
• Bluesky said it recently removed a small number of accounts for “inauthentic coordinated activity.”

It turns out that even the Chinese government uses ChatGPT — at least according to a cybersecurity report from OpenAI.

This is how OpenAI uncovered China’s “cyber special operations” targeting political dissidents in China and abroad, after the company found and removed an account owned by the Chinese government that uploaded periodic status reports to ChatGPT and asked them to be polished.

In OpenAI’s “Disrupting Malicious Uses of AI” report published on Wednesday, a third of the document detailed China’s tactics to silence and intimidate critics across social media platforms owned by American tech giants.

“This effort appears to be large-scale, resource-intensive and sustained, counting at least hundreds of staff, thousands of fake accounts across scores of platforms, the use of locally deployed AI models, and a playbook of dozens of tactics,” OpenAI wrote.

“The targets are not just people in China, but also dissidents around the world and representatives of foreign countries, up to and including the prime minister of Japan,” OpenAI added.

OpenAI’s report documented instances in which operatives for China forged US county court documents and submitted them to social media platforms in an effort to have certain posts removed.

Online operatives with thousands of fake accounts also collectively submitted abusive reports on dissidents to social media platforms to intentionally trigger false account bans and content restrictions, according to OpenAI. Many of these false reports, OpenAI said, include AI-generated images posing as screenshots of conversations and comments.

Some of the largest accounts on X have been targeted, according to OpenAI. That includes the handle @whyyoutouzhele, better known as “Teacher Li is not your teacher,” which has the fifth-largest overall traffic share on X as of January, with more than 2.1 million followers. The account mainly posts videos from inside China, often documenting instances of corruption and human rights abuses.

“We hope social platforms like X, YouTube, and Bluesky realize that your content moderation system is being used by the Chinese Communist Party as a weapon,” the team behind the Teacher Li account wrote in a post on X on Wednesday.

“We also call on the entire AI industry to take this matter seriously,” the team added in the original post written in Chinese. “When your technology is being used to systematically oppress human rights, to say that ‘we’re just makers of a tool’ is not an acceptable answer.”

Other social media platforms have observed similar patterns and have taken action to curb these activities.

Aaron Rodericks, head of trust and safety at Bluesky, told Business Insider that the platform has invested in its capabilities to identify and disrupt influence operations like those described in the OpenAI report, including hiring specialized investigative staff and expanding monitoring systems.

“As part of this ongoing work, the team recently removed a small number of accounts, consistent with those described in the report, that were engaged in inauthentic coordinated activity in violation of our Community Guidelines,” said Rodericks.

A person familiar with the matter told Business Insider that Meta includes activities that OpenAI described in its regular adversarial report, and takes action against accounts found to be violating platform policies.

X and China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

• OpenAI $110 billion financing is a record in more ways than one.
• The private-market transaction challenges decades of finance norms.
• Check out these charts to see just how huge the deal is.

OpenAI‘s latest funding round is unprecedented. The following charts put the deal in perspective.

The startup announced the $110 billion financing last week, pushing its valuation to $840 billion, including the new cash. It brings Amazon and Nvidia on as major backers and puts questions about OpenAI’s financial stability to bed. For now.

I asked venture capital data provider Pitchbook for help in sizing the round. It’s the largest ever, but also the biggest by a huge margin.

The deal “sets a new high for private tech fundraising,” said PitchBook analyst Dimitri Zabelin, in the understatement of the year so far.

What really stunned me: This private-market funding round is about four times larger than the biggest IPO ever.

Here’s the all-time ranking for IPOs, according to data from Renaissance Capital, a research firm focused on this key part of the market.

This is not how the financial world is supposed to work.

Usually, public markets offer companies a bigger pool of money to tap. Here, stocks trade all the time, so investors feel more confident about finding buyers quickly if they have to sell — what’s known as liquidity. And public-market investors get more information via regular financial statements, so they feel more confident putting money to work.

In private markets, investors can put money into a startup and not be able to sell their stake for years. And there’s no public financial statements for everyone to see. Historically, this has meant that there’s less money available for companies in this market. But OpenAI’s latest private round blows all this history out the water.

Speaking of history, do you remember the Facebook IPO? At the time, I thought it was huge. But that market debut raised $16 billion, about 15% of what OpenAI just took in from the private market.

OpenAI is expected to try its own IPO sometime in the next year or two. This jumbo private round has just raised the bar on that public market debut.

With such a massive valuation already, IPO investors “will want to see improving margins, stable usage trends and evidence that OpenAI can defend its position,” Zabelin said. “This round secures capital and computing power. The next test is proving that the economics of large-scale AI can support that valuation.”

Sign up for BI’s Tech Memo newsletter here. Reach out to me via email at abarr@businessinsider.com.

• Shares of LexisNexis’s parent company Relx are down roughly 17% since the start of the year.
• A top exec told Business Insider that LexisNexis isn’t doomed because AI model makers lack its proprietary data.
• Relx recently attributed growth in its law firm and corporate legal business to customers adopting its AI tools.

The AI boom has been hammering LexisNexis on Wall Street. The legal-software giant says its fundamentals tell a different story.

“Every time we see a new model, every time we see a step forward, we’re actually in a better position,” Sean Fitzpatrick, CEO of the global legal business of LexisNexis, told Business Insider.

In recent weeks, many software companies, including LexisNexis’s parent Relx have seen their stocks plunge over investor fears that AI poses an existential threat.

Shares of Relx fell about 14% on February 3, the day after the AI startup Anthropic rolled out a new plug-in for its Claude Cowork agent that can draft legal briefs and analyze contracts. The London-based company’s shares are down roughly 17% since the start of the year.

‘Authoritative content’

Fitzpatrick said investors are wrong about LexisNexis because AI model makers simply aren’t equipped to compete with it.

“What they don’t understand is that the most powerful thing that we have is our authoritative content, and that cannot be replicated,” he said.

This content, collected over several decades, includes some 200 billion legal documents, with around 4 million added daily, the company said, along with information from Shepard’s Citations, a service owned by LexisNexis that has tracked and validated legal precedent since 1873.

LexisNexis doesn’t license its proprietary data to general-purpose AI model providers, said Fitzpatrick. A spokesperson for Thomson Reuters said the company doesn’t either. LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters are the top providers of legal research software in the US.

While anyone can use off-the-shelf AI agents to complete legal work, Fitzpatrick said their data won’t be secure, and the results won’t be reliable.

“They’re not grounded in authoritative legal material, and that’s the standard for legal work,” said Fitzpatrick, noting that many lawyers have filed court documents containing AI-generated hallucinations. “You can’t be ‘probably’ right.”

LexisNexis did, however, cut a deal last year with Harvey, the OpenAI-backed legal software startup last valued at $8 billion, to pipe its legal corpus into the company’s platform. Users still need a LexisNexis subscription to access its content in Harvey’s app.

Not all legal work demands traditional legal research. A corporate lawyer doesn’t rely on case law as much as a litigator does. The opportunity for a company like Anthropic is to sell to in-house legal teams that use software to assist with reviewing contracts and comparing terms across agreements.

AI sales boost

LexisNexis uses a range of third-party AI models to enhance its products, including its digital legal assistant, Protégé. Fitzpatrick said the difference between general-purpose models and what LexisNexis’ AI tools offer is that the latter are grounded in the company’s legal corpus. That’s been helping LexisNexis deliver more value to customers, a boost reflected in Relx’s top and bottom lines, he said.

Earlier this month, Relx reported 7% revenue growth for 2025, and a 9% increase in adjusted operating profit. The company said its law firm and corporate legal business, which accounts for about 70% of its legal division’s revenue, is growing at a double-digit rate, driven by customers adopting its AI tools.

LexisNexis is hiring, said Fitzpatrick. The company hasn’t done any layoffs because of AI, and doesn’t plan to do any, he said.

For now, Fitzpatrick isn’t letting investors’ anxiety color his outlook, even though software stocks took another beating this week, and Wall Street forecasters said fears of a software apocalypse could drag the market into another sharp decline. He said investors will eventually realize their AI fears about LexisNexis are misguided.

“I’m not concerned, not one bit,” he said. “I haven’t sold a share.”

Additional reporting by Melia Russell.

• The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is the sole federal regulator of prediction markets.
• Chairman Michael Selig has emerged as an ally of the industry in its legal battles with states.
• Here’s what to know about Selig and the CFTC.

If you pay attention to Kalshi and Polymarket, there’s a name you should probably know by now: Michael Selig.

Selig, the 36-year-old lawyer selected by President Donald Trump to lead the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, is the country’s top federal regulator of prediction markets.

And in recent weeks, he’s made clear he’ll be a champion for the burgeoning industry.

“It’s something that I think is valuable to society,” Selig said of prediction markets on a recent episode of Bloomberg’s “Odd Lots” podcast.

Here’s what to know about Selig and the agency he leads.

Who is Mike Selig?

Selig graduated from George Washington University Law School in 2015. While in law school, he worked as a law clerk for Chris Giancarlo, then a CFTC commissioner.

He later worked at several private law firms, where he represented many clients regulated by the CFTC.

Selig began serving in the Trump administration in March 2025, when he was named chief counsel of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Crypto Task Force and as a senior advisor to SEC Chairman Paul Atkins.

He was nominated by Trump to serve as CFTC Commissioner in October and was confirmed by the Senate as part of a larger tranche of nominees on a party-line vote in December.

What is the CFTC?

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is a federal agency, established in 1974, that’s in charge of regulating derivatives markets.

That includes futures contracts, which allow people to hedge against potential price fluctuations, as well as swaps.

Because platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket are selling what they call “event contracts” — derivatives that either settle at $1 or 0 based on the outcome of future events — they fall under the purview of the CFTC as well.

The CFTC doesn’t handle things like stocks — that’s up to the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC.

How Selig is boosting prediction markets

Prediction markets have found themselves in the crosshairs of state regulators, who view the platforms as a means for illegal sports betting.

Several states have taken legal action against prediction markets, including Nevada, which is home to a large gambling industry.

Under Selig, the CFTC has begun to intervene in those cases, starting with a friend-of-the-court brief in Nevada arguing that prediction markets are solely in the domain of federal regulators. That’s been met with praise from the industry.

“Today, the CFTC is taking an important step to ensure that these markets have a place here in America,” Selig said.

Selig previewed that approach in a speech at the end of January, when he said the commission may “defend its exclusive jurisdiction over commodity derivatives.”

It wasn’t initially clear that this would happen

When Selig was nominated to lead the CFTC, it wasn’t initially clear if he would take a side in prediction market companies’ battle with state regulators.

At his confirmation hearing in November, when Selig was asked whether sports contracts offered on prediction market platforms constitute sports betting, he said it was a “really complicated issue.”

“It is an interpretive question that is working its way through the courts, and so I will respect the decisions of those courts,” Selig said at the time.

Now, Selig’s gotten involved with ongoing battles in the courts — and Democrats want him to reverse course again.

In a letter sent to Selig in February, 23 Democratic senators urged the commissioner to “abstain from intervening in pending litigation involving contracts tied to sports, war, or other prohibited events.”

• Anthropic was designated a supply chain risk amid a dispute about the military’s use of its tech.
• Hours later, OpenAI struck a deal with the Department of Defense to use its AI models.
• The conflict may determine who ultimately controls the country’s most powerful AI models.

This week, in a dramatic escalation reshaping how artificial intelligence is integrated into national security — and who controls it — Anthropic was officially blacklisted by the Trump administration while OpenAI swooped in to win a new defense contract.

On Friday evening, the Pentagon designated Anthropic as a supply-chain risk, barring its technology from use by defense contractors after a transition period. That came just hours after President Donald Trump directed federal agencies to stop using Anthropic’s AI tools, citing the company’s refusal to agree to the military’s proposed use of its Claude model.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said he could not “in good conscience” allow the tech to be used for mass domestic surveillance or to independently direct autonomous weapons — two use cases he says violate the company’s ethical guardrails.

Amid the standoff, Anthropic’s rival, OpenAI, announced that it had reached a deal with the Department of Defense to deploy its own AI models in classified environments.

The dispute has turned into a broader confrontation between the Pentagon and the private AI sector — not just over military contracts, but who ultimately sets the terms for how these powerful systems are used.

A clash of principles and contracts

Anthropic argued that restrictions around its system’s use for surveillance and autonomous weapons systems were not adequately reflected — or enforceable — in the government’s draft contract language.

Defense officials responded that they need to be able to deploy Claude for any “lawful use” — a term that would give the military broad discretion, even though mass domestic surveillance is illegal under several statutes.

Dean Ball, senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation, described the standoff as “uncharted territory” rooted in competing principles: Anthropic’s insistence on setting contractual limits on how its tech is used, and the Pentagon’s view that defense policy should prevail over corporate priorities.

“This is a matter of principle for both sides,” Ball told Business Insider.

Shortly after Anthropic was declared a supply chain risk, OpenAI published a blog post saying it had agreed with the Pentagon on a framework that explicitly includes guardrails similar to some of those sought by Anthropic.

OpenAI outlined three main “red lines” guiding its collaboration with the Department:

• No use of its technology for mass domestic surveillance;
• No use in directing autonomous weapons;
• And no use for other high-stakes automated decisions, such as “social credit” systems.

OpenAI says its agreement is structured to protect these limits through layered safeguards, and that any use involving autonomous weapons or surveillance must comply with existing statutes and Department directives.

In a series of Ask-Me-Anything-style posts, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said he is prepared for a potential dispute over the legality of specific government requests. However, he said that OpenAI would not agree to allow the government to use its technology for mass domestic surveillance.

“I am terrified of a world where AI companies act like they have more power than the government,” Altman added. “I would also be terrified of a world where our government decided mass domestic surveillance was ok.”

Potentially ‘existential’ stakes

Legal scholars say the government’s threats to enact the Defense Production Act and designate Anthropic as a supply-chain risk, in this context, are unusual.

Eric Chaffee, a business law professor at Case Western Reserve University, described the move as a “gamble,” noting that the recent Supreme Court decision that overturned Trump’s tariff policies has pushed back on expansive executive actions without clear statutory backing.

And while national security authorities generally enjoy deference in court, any litigation would unfold in legally unsettled terrain.

“The government, at this point, has ultimately outsourced a lot of its work to private entities,” Chaffee said. “As a result of that, because of the reluctance against state-run corporations, there are going to be tensions, and ultimately, in a context like this, figuring out how a private entity interacts with the government is going to be a complex process.”

For the Pentagon, removing Anthropic from military AI pipelines could cause disruption. Signum Global Advisor policy analyst George Pollack said Claude is deeply embedded in defense planning and readiness systems and that transitioning away from them risks operational friction.

He also argued that sidelining a leading US AI firm contradicts the stated goals of maintaining American leadership in the technology.

For Anthropic, the stakes are “existential,” Ball warned. He said the dispute could send a chilling message to entrepreneurs about the risks of doing business with the federal government if companies can be penalized for insisting on ethical guardrails.

OpenAI’s agreement with the Department appears aimed, in part, at breaking the impasse that engulfed Anthropic’s negotiations. In its blog post, OpenAI said it requested that the same terms be made available to all AI labs and urged the government to resolve its dispute with Anthropic.

Representatives for OpenAI and Anthropic did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider. It was not immediately clear whether Anthropic, or any other leading AI company, had been offered similar contractual terms to those that OpenAI said it had agreed to.

Ultimately, how the conflict is resolved could influence not just one company’s fortunes, but the balance of power between the US government and private AI developers in setting the rules of engagement for next-generation technologies.

• Anthropic’s stance against the Pentagon and OpenAI’s resulting agreement is shifting the chatbot wars.
• As some ChatGPT users posted about canceling, Anthropic’s Claude over took ChatGPT to hit No. 1 on the App Store.
• OpenAI said its Pentagon agreement emphasizes human oversight of autonomous weapons and limits mass surveillance.

While OpenAI locks down Washington, Anthropic is locking down users and rocketing to the top of the App Store.

Anthropic has been sidelined in Washington following a public dispute with the Department of Defense over how its AI models would be deployed. President Donald Trump ordered federal agencies to phase out its technology.

Meanwhile, OpenAI has secured new ground, with CEO Sam Altman announcing in a Friday night post on X that it had reached an agreement with the Department of War to deploy AI models in its classified network.

OpenAI’s agreement has left some loyal ChatGPT users uneasy about OpenAI’s ambitions, prompting online debates about the ethical implications — and some saying they were defecting to its rival Claude.

As of 6:38 p.m. ET on Saturday, Claude ranked number one among the most downloaded productivity apps on Apple’s App Store, trailing ChatGPT.

Converts have taken to social media to share screenshots documenting their switch.

Pop musician Katy Perry wrote that she was “done” on X, alongside a screenshot of Claude’s pricing page, with a red heart around the $20-per-month “Pro” plan.

Another X user, Adam Lyttle, wrote “Made the switch,” alongside a screenshot of his email inbox with a receipt from Anthropic and cancellation confirmation from OpenAI.

On Reddit’s ChatGPT subreddit, dozens of users say they’ve deleted their accounts and are urging others to do the same.

“Cancel ChatGPT” has become a common refrain online, while some users have taken a more personal tone, saying Altman’s move “crossed the line.”

The agreement hasn’t polarized all AI users, however.

In one Reddit thread, several commenters said the news does not affect their choice of AI model, arguing that Anthropic’s work with Palantir raises similar concerns. In November 2024, Anthropic, Palantir, and Amazon Web Services struck an agreement to provide US intelligence and defense agencies access to Claude models.

After Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said he would designate Anthropic as a “supply chain risk to national security,” Anthropic said it would “challenge any supply chain risk designation in court.”

In his Friday post, Altman said the Department of War had agreed with two of OpenAI’s safety principles.

“Two of our most important safety principles are prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous weapon systems,” Altman wrote on X. “The DoW agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement.”

By Saturday afternoon, OpenAI published a more detailed description of its contract with the DoW, including the specific language it used surrounding the use of its models for surveillance and autonomous weapons.

On the topic of autonomous weapons, OpenAI said:

The AI System will not be used to independently direct autonomous weapons in any case where law, regulation, or Department policy requires human control, nor will it be used to assume other high-stakes decisions that require approval by a human decisionmaker under the same authorities.

On the topic of mass surveillance, OpenAI said:

The AI System shall not be used for unconstrained monitoring of U.S. persons’ private information as consistent with these authorities.

While some chatbot users suggested it’s all fair in business, war, and federal procurement, others suggested the Pentagon’s stance may have handed Anthropic a public relations win.

X user Tae Kim joked that Hegseth might need a new title: “Secretary Hegseth Chief of Claude Marketing.”

• Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is dead, Trump said in a Saturday Truth Social post.
• The US confirmed Khamenei’s death after strikes on Iran on Saturday.
• The US and Israel pushed for Iranian regime change ahead of the strikes on Iran.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed during the massive joint US-Israeli strikes on the country, President Donald Trump said in a Truth Social post on Saturday.

“Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead,” Trump wrote. “He was unable to avoid our Intelligence and Highly Sophisticated Tracking Systems and, working closely with Israel, there was not a thing he, or the other leaders that have been killed along with him, could do. This is the single greatest chance for the Iranian people to take back their Country.”

Khamenei, 86, was in power for almost 40 years, and his reign was marked by high tensions with the US and the West more broadly, as well as a recent brutal crackdown on Iranians protesting high inflation. Tensions with the US have centered on Iran’s longstanding support for terrorism and its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

In recent weeks, as the US urged Iran to make a new nuclear deal, the American military has been building up its forces in the Middle East. The buildup has been accompanied by heated rhetoric and warnings from both Washington and Tehran.

Missiles struck several high-value targets in and around Tehran, including Khamenei’s compound near Tehran and his offices in the capital. Khamenei’s location during the strikes was previously unknown.

During President Donald Trump’s video statement announcing the start of “major combat operations” against Iran on Saturday morning, the president called for Iranian citizens to “take over your government.” He said, “This will be probably your only chance for generations.” Trump has recently made similar comments in favor of regime change in Iran.

Separately, Israel has repeatedly issued threats against Khamenei. In June 2025, after joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran, Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz said Khamenei “cannot continue to exist,” calling him a dictator. Other Israeli officials, like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have made similar statements.

Khamenei became Supreme Leader in 1989, acting as the ultimate authority across all branches of the Iranian government and the military. Khamenei was also the country’s religious leader and was granted the title of ayatollah, a title for high-ranking clerics in Shia Islam, Iran’s official state religion.

His death marks a major upheaval amid US combat operations against Iran, which both the US and Israel said was aimed at eliminating imminent threats to Americans and Israelis. The American operation, called “Epic Fury,” has involved a mixture of land, air, and sea assets, including Tomahawk missiles, High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, and drones.

It remains to be seen how Khamenei’s death will affect the fate of the Iran’s regime, which is bolstered by the hardline Revolutionary Guard Corps and a vast internal security force.

Iran’s retaliatory strikes targeted US bases across the region, with US assets and partner forces, including Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, involved in air defenses.

• Warren Buffett held tight to the purse strings in his final quarter as Berkshire Hathaway CEO.
• Berkshire’s cash pile grew to a record $373 billion as it sold stocks and refrained from buybacks.
• Operating profits fell sharply as insurance weakness outweighed strength in other Berkshire units.

If you handed most people nearly $400 billion, they’d find plenty of silly ways to squander it. Warren Buffett isn’t most people.

The legendary investor — known for his patience, discipline, and love of a bargain — said last year that he would happily put $100 billion to work if the right opportunity arose. But he resisted any urge to go on a last-ditch spending spree in his final quarter as Berkshire Hathaway CEO.

The message to shareholders from Berkshire’s fourth-quarter earnings report, released Saturday, is that Buffett once again struggled to find much worth buying.

That’s been the situation for years now with stocks trading near record highs and bidding wars breaking out over acquisitions.

Buffett and his team were net sellers of stocks for a 13th straight quarter in the three months ended December 31. The last time they bought more stocks than they sold was the third quarter of 2022.

Berkshire’s recent portfolio disclosure showed that it built a small stake in The New York Times Company, pared its key bets on Apple and Bank of America, and cut 77% of a small Amazon position in the period.

Buffett refrained from stock buybacks for a sixth consecutive quarter, after repurchasing around $17 billion worth of Berkshire shares over the course of 2022 and 2023.

The stock sales and lack of buybacks contributed to Berkshire’s pile of cash and Treasury bills reaching a record $373 billion after payables at December’s close.

Berkshire’s cash pile was around $130 billion at the end of 2022, meaning it’s nearly tripled in size over the last three years. It now exceeds the current market capitalizations of some of the world’s biggest companies, including Bank of America, General Electric, and Coca-Cola.

Buffett shocked the business world last May when he unexpectedly announced to an arena full of his shareholders that he planned to retire before the new year. He’s spent the last six decades transforming Berkshire from a failing textile mill into a $1 trillion conglomerate.

Berkshire’s new CEO, Greg Abel, said in his inaugural letter to shareholders on Saturday that he wouldn’t rush to pay out dividends or cut deals just to put the money to work.

Abel has plenty of work to do after a challenging fourth quarter. Berkshire’s operating earnings slumped 30% year-on-year to $10.2 billion.

The decline reflected a sharp drop in profits from its key insurance unit, which more than offset higher earnings at the BNSF Railway and in Berkshire’s manufacturing, service, and retailing division.