• Every state has its own iconic breakfast food, whether it was invented or popularized there.
• Multiple Southern states are huge fans of biscuits and gravy, while pancakes rule up north.
• New Jerseyians will debate whether their most iconic breakfast is called pork roll or Taylor ham.

Nothing starts the day quite like a plate of steaming pancakes or spicy chilaquiles, but every state has its own unique way of doing breakfast.

We found the most iconic breakfast foods in every state, based on local favorites and dishes invented or popularized there. While opinions may vary on which dish deserves the top spot, every item on this list is worth trying on your next road trip.

From apple cider doughnuts in Connecticut and avocado toast in California to fried chicken and waffles in Georgia, these iconic breakfast foods will ensure you start the day right on your next vacation.

Here's the most famous breakfast food in every state.

ALABAMA: Conecuh sausage

Conecuh sausage is a hickory-smoked, peppery pork sausage beloved across Alabama, especially as a breakfast protein alongside eggs, grits, and other classic Southern side dishes.

Invented in Evergreen, Alabama, this breakfast meat takes its name from Conecuh County, where local smokehouses perfected the recipe.

ALASKA: Reindeer sausage

Reindeer sausage, a delicacy in Alaska, blends indigenous cooking traditions with European sausage-making culture and can be found in breakfast joints and diners across the state paired with eggs, toast, and other breakfast staples.

ARIZONA: Chilaquiles

Chilaquiles originated in Mexico as a resourceful breakfast dish made with leftover fried tortilla pieces, simmered in red or green salsa and topped with cheese, crema, or eggs.

As Mexican cuisine spread into the American Southwest, chilaquiles have become a beloved breakfast choice in Arizona and beyond, melding Mexican-American food traditions with popular local ingredients.

ARKANSAS: Chocolate gravy with biscuits

Chocolate gravy is a uniquely Southern breakfast treat, especially in Arkansas and the Ozark region. Made from cocoa powder, sugar, milk, and flour, this sweet sauce is poured over warm buttermilk biscuits instead of pancakes or waffles, as you might find in other parts of the country.

The origins of this unique dish are debated, but it's a staple at many Arkansas breakfast spots.

CALIFORNIA: Avocado toast

California is famous for its avocados, so it should come as no surprise that avocado toast is one of the most popular and famous local dishes in the Golden State. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that California residents have been making avocado toast for over 130 years.

An issue of The Daily Alta California from 1885 lists a recipe that suggests spreading avocado "on slices of bread, and season with salt and pepper."

COLORADO: Denver omelette

The Denver omelette, a diner classic, likely emerged around 1900 as an alternative to the Denver sandwich, which is served between two pieces of bread, for early Western travelers.

Made with ham, onions, and bell peppers, the Denver omelette was possibly designed to mask the taste of spoiled eggs from long wagon journeys taken by miners and settlers across the American frontier, according to Colorado Public Radio.

CONNECTICUT: Apple cider doughnuts

Nothing says New England in the fall quite like a fluffy, crispy apple cider doughnut covered in sugar.

They became popular in the early 20th century in multiple Northeastern states, combining the region's abundant apple production with emerging doughnut-making technology, Tasting Table reported.

While they're still popular each fall across multiple New England states, Connecticut is one of the best places to grab one alongside a coffee on a chilly autumn day.

DELAWARE: Scrapple

Scrapple is a pan-fried loaf of pork scraps, cornmeal, and spices with origins in Pennsylvania Dutch cooking.

In Delaware, scrapple has become a beloved breakfast side, often replacing sausage or bacon and served pan-fried with eggs or in breakfast sandwiches.

FLORIDA: Shrimp and grits

Shrimp and grits is a popular breakfast originating in the coastal South, including northern Florida.

Ground corn grits — which were first made by Native Americans — paired with the state's abundance of fresh-caught shrimp became a hearty, flavorful morning meal for fishermen and communities across the Sunshine State.

GEORGIA: Chicken and waffles

Fried chicken and waffles blend two beloved breakfast foods into one iconic Southern breakfast dish.

Even though its early roots trace back to the Pennsylvania Dutch in the 1600s, where waffles and stewed chicken were served together, the combination has since become practically synonymous with Southern soul food, PBS reported.

HAWAII: Spam and eggs

Spam became a Hawaiian staple during World War II, when military rations introduced the canned meat to the islands. With fresh meat scarce, locals incorporated Spam, which has a lengthy shelf life, into everyday cooking, pairing it with rice and eggs for a salty, filling breakfast.

Hawaii now consumes more Spam per capita than any other state, according to National Geographic.

IDAHO: Home fries

As America's leading potato producer, Idaho naturally claims home fries as a breakfast staple.

Pan-fried diced potatoes became common in 19th-century American kitchens as a practical way to use leftover potatoes, often served alongside other breakfast staples like sausage, eggs, and toast.

ILLINOIS: Apple pancakes

German immigrants heavily influenced Illinois' cooking traditions, bringing apple-based dishes that evolved into Chicago-style apple pancakes.

Popularized over 100 years ago by restaurants like The Original Pancake House, the thick, caramelized pancakes are a distinctly Midwestern dish that is enjoyed across the state, the Chicago Tribune reported.

INDIANA: Biscuits and gravy

Early forms of biscuits and gravy date back to the American Revolutionary War, but the dish as it's known today took shape in the Southern Appalachian region in the late 1800s, The Columbian reported.

From there, it spread north and became a hearty farm breakfast staple in states like Indiana.

The sausage-based "sawmill gravy" was inexpensive and filling enough to fuel long agricultural workdays, making it a Midwestern diner staple, although it's also a hugely popular breakfast dish in the South.

IOWA: Breakfast pizza

This isn't your typical pizza.

Breakfast pizza, topped with eggs, sausage, cheese, and sometimes even gravy, rose to fame in Iowa in the 1980s, particularly through the convenience-store chain Casey's General Store.

KANSAS: Chili and cinnamon rolls

While it may sound like an unlikely pairing to some, savory chili with sweet cinnamon rolls became a beloved Midwestern school lunch in the mid-20th century.

Food historians trace the combination to the Plains states, such as Kansas and Nebraska, where school cafeteria menus popularized the comforting contrast of flavors, Smithsonian Magazine reported.

KENTUCKY: Biscuits and gravy

Like much of the South and Appalachian states, Kentucky embraces biscuits and gravy as a go-to breakfast food.

A stick-to-your-bones kind of meal, it's no wonder that this dish was once popular with miners as well as tobacco and horse farm laborers.

LOUISIANA: Beignets

Visit New Orleans reported that French colonists brought beignets to Louisiana in the 18th century when they settled in the area.

In New Orleans, especially, the deep-fried dough squares dusted in powdered sugar have become a breakfast café staple, especially once the iconic Café du Monde began serving them in 1862.

Paired with coffee and doused in powdered sugar, beignets remain a defining Louisiana breakfast treat.

MAINE: Blueberry pancakes

According to Visit Maine, Maine produces nearly all of the US' wild blueberries, so it's no surprise that the state leans into including them in its breakfast traditions.

Topped with maple syrup or powdered sugar, blueberry pancakes are an iconic Maine dish you don't want to skip the next time you're in this northern state.

MARYLAND: Crab cake eggs Benedict

Maryland blue crab has shaped the state's cuisine for centuries, and it's even found its way into local breakfast dishes.

Often referred to as "Chesapeake eggs Benedict" or "Maryland crab cake Benedict," this regional twist on classic eggs Benedict replaces the traditional English muffin and Canadian bacon with a crispy fried crab cake smothered in hollandaise sauce and often topped with Old Bay seasoning.

MASSACHUSETTS: Dunkin' breakfast sandwich

Founded in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1950, Dunkin' — formerly Dunkin' Donuts — helped popularize the grab-and-go breakfast sandwich nationwide.

Its egg-and-cheese sandwiches may not be anything fancy, but they're quintessentially Massachusetts.

MICHIGAN: Pasties

Cornish miners brought pasties — handheld meat pies — to Michigan's Upper Peninsula in the early 1800s, NPR reported.

Designed as portable, hearty meals for long shifts underground, pasties became a regional staple often eaten for breakfast in mining communities.

MINNESOTA: Egg bake

Like many other types of casseroles, breakfast casseroles are popular throughout the Midwest.

"Egg bake," a casserole similar to a quiche made with eggs, cheese, meat, and vegetables, rose to prominence in church cookbooks and at community potlucks during the 20th century as a way to "stretch the meat" during times of rationing.

MISSISSIPPI: Fried catfish and grits

Catfish farming flourished in the Mississippi Delta during the 20th century, building on long-standing Southern fishing traditions, and the state is still the largest supplier of catfish to the rest of the country, according to Mississippi State University.

Fried catfish is still a local favorite and is often served alongside grits for breakfast, providing a salty, filling start to the day.

MISSOURI: St. Louis Slinger

The St. Louis Slinger — typically consisting of eggs, hash browns, a hamburger patty, and chili topped with plenty of cheese — emerged from local diners in the city around the 1950s.

It soon became a beloved working-class and late-night breakfast staple in Missouri and remains popular today.

MONTANA: Huckleberry crepes

Wild huckleberries have long grown in the Rocky Mountains and were traditionally gathered by Native American tribes in the region.

As French culinary techniques spread across the American West, delicate crepes filled with the sweet yet tart huckleberries became a popular way to showcase the state's most famous fruit.

NEBRASKA: Kolaches

Kolaches — sweet, risen pastries filled with fruit or sweet cheese — were brought to Nebraska by Czech immigrants who settled across the state in the late 19th century.

The baked goods became staples at church gatherings and in local bakeries, particularly in towns like Wilber, known as the "Czech Capital of the USA."

NEVADA: Steak and eggs

Steak is one of the most popular foods in Las Vegas, so it's no surprise that locals and tourists indulge in the meat as soon as the sun comes up.

Taste of Home reported that steak and eggs rose to prominence in the 1950s at Las Vegas casinos, where operators promoted the hearty, affordable meal to keep gamblers playing late into the night — and into the next morning.

NEW HAMPSHIRE: Pancakes with maple syrup

While Vermont produces more maple syrup than any other state, New Hampshire is also known for its syrup production.

True Granite State natives are known to douse their pancakes in 100% New Hampshire syrup.

NEW JERSEY: Pork roll or Taylor ham

Pork roll — famously called "Taylor ham" in North Jersey — was developed in 1856 by Trenton businessman John Taylor, who created a processed pork product designed to last without refrigeration.

Sliced and fried in a pan or on a griddle, it became a Garden State breakfast staple, especially on breakfast sandwiches with eggs and cheese, in place of other meats like sausage or bacon.

The ongoing North-versus-South naming debate has only cemented its place as one of New Jersey's most iconic foods, no matter what you call it.

NEW MEXICO: Breakfast burrito

The modern breakfast burrito — made from a tortilla stuffed with eggs, potatoes, cheese, and green or red chile peppers — was invented in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

It has since spread nationwide as a popular breakfast food.

NEW YORK: Bagel with cream cheese and lox

Popularized by Eastern European Jewish immigrants on New York's Lower East Side in the late 19th century, bagels of any kind are the most quintessentially New York food there is.

When it comes to a classic New York bagel, few would argue there's anything more iconic than an everything bagel with lox (smoked salmon), cream cheese, capers, and onions.

NORTH CAROLINA: Krispy Kreme doughnuts

Krispy Kreme began operating in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, on July 13, 1937. At the time, the owner, Vernon Rudolph, was only selling his doughnuts to local grocery stores.

However, after people passing by the bakery asked about the heavenly scent, he cut a hole in the outside wall and began selling glazed doughnuts to people on the sidewalk.

NORTH DAKOTA: Monkey bread

Monkey bread — bite-sized pieces of dough coated in butter, sugar, and cinnamon — became popular in mid-20th-century America after appearing in community cookbooks and women's magazines.

While not necessarily originating in North Dakota, the sweet breakfast dish is popular statewide at fairs and festivals.

OHIO: Goetta sausage

German immigrants who settled in Cincinnati in the 1800s created goetta as a way to stretch pork further by mixing it with oats and spices, similar to the sausages they made in Europe.

The mixture is formed into a loaf, sliced, and pan-fried until crispy, and is a popular breakfast meat throughout southwestern Ohio.

OKLAHOMA: Chicken-fried steak

Chicken-fried steak is often served with mashed potatoes and gravy or eggs and is popular throughout the South for both breakfast and dinner.

However, one state loves the dish so much that it has made it official. In 1988, Oklahomans named chicken-fried steak one of their state meals, the Oklahoma Historical Society reported.

OREGON: Smoked salmon eggs Benedict

Oregon has long embraced smoked salmon as a breakfast staple.

Also called Eggs Royale, the dish features smoked fish, poached eggs, and hollandaise sauce for a Pacific Northwest spin on eggs Benedict that capitalizes on local ingredients.

PENNSYLVANIA: Dutch baby

Despite its name, the Dutch baby pancake likely originated in early 20th-century Seattle, but draws inspiration from German "pfannkuchen" brought over by Pennsylvania Dutch settlers, according to Southern Kitchen.

The oven-baked, custardy pancake is often topped with seasonal fruits and reflects the region's strong German culinary roots.

RHODE ISLAND: Jonnycakes

"Jonnycakes," which resemble pancakes but are made with cornmeal, date back to traditional Native American flatbread recipes adopted by early colonists in New England.

In Rhode Island, the thin, griddled pancakes have become a breakfast tradition, particularly in coastal communities where corn was once a staple crop for early settlers.

SOUTH CAROLINA: Shrimp and grits

Though it's popular in other states, shrimp and grits originated in the South Carolina Lowcountry — most specifically, Charleston — as a simple fisherman's breakfast meant to power workers through their days.

Made with ground corn grits and fresh coastal shrimp, the dish has also been influenced by Cajun cooking.

SOUTH DAKOTA: Kuchen

While kuchen can be enjoyed any time of day, the official state dessert of South Dakota is also a breakfast food for many people.

Made with custard filling, pie crust, and fruit, this dessert is quintessentially South Dakotan.

TENNESSEE: Fried chicken biscuit

Fried chicken is popular in Tennessee — it's where Nashville hot chicken got its name, after all — so it's no surprise that fried chicken is even popular at breakfast time.

Paired with fluffy buttermilk biscuits, a fried chicken breakfast sandwich is an ideal way to start the day.

TEXAS: Breakfast tacos

Breakfast tacos emerged from Tex-Mex cuisine, which grew along the Texas-Mexico border, by blending Mexican tortillas with popular American breakfast fillings like eggs, bacon, and potatoes.

Popularized in cities like Austin and San Antonio and at Texas chains like Torchy's Tacos, they reflect the state's multifaceted food identity.

UTAH: Deep-fried scones

Utah "scones" are deep-fried pieces of dough, similar to what you'd call fried dough in many northeastern states.

Unlike British scones, this dessert or breakfast food is topped with powdered sugar or served with honey butter.

VERMONT: Pancakes with maple syrup

Vermont is one of the nation's top maple syrup producers, so it's no surprise that pancakes with maple syrup are a must-try for tourists and locals dining in the state.

VIRGINIA: Country ham

Virginia country ham has roots dating back to the Jamestown colony, when indigenous peoples taught the settlers how to preserve the meat using salt, smoke, and natural aging, according to Visit Virginia.

It's still a popular breakfast meat today and is often served with eggs, grits, and other traditional breakfast sides.

WASHINGTON: Smoked salmon scramble

Salmon is a huge resource in Washington thanks to its local fishing communities, and locals are known to incorporate the protein into a variety of breakfast dishes, including scrambled eggs with smoked salmon.

WEST VIRGINIA: Biscuits and gravy

The roots of biscuits and gravy can be traced back to the Southern Appalachian region of the United States in the late 1800s. The Washington Post reported that the earliest version of this Southern food used sausage gravy, which was also called "sawmill gravy" at the time.

Historians believe that the food was hearty enough to sustain sawmill workers through their long days of lifting heavy logs and also thick and flavorful enough to make biscuits of that era "more palatable."

WISCONSIN: Pancakes

Topped with maple syrup or local gooseberries, pancakes are a sweet way to start the day in Wisconsin.

While Wisconsin doesn't have many breakfast foods unique to the state, pancakes are a popular choice due to its rich German history.

WYOMING: Traditional breakfast plate

Wyoming's ranching heritage is preserved through authentic "cowboy breakfasts" that often feature meat, such as bison or elk, along with eggs, toast, and other traditional breakfast side dishes.

• 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."

• Kristi Noem was fired from her role at the Department of Homeland Security this week.
• Senators had pressed her about the cost and contracts behind a $220 million DHS ad campaign.
• The ad campaign cost more than the production budgets of some major Hollywood hits.

Kristi Noem might not be a Hollywood star, but her department spent like the big studios.

The former secretary of the Department of Homeland Security was ousted from her post on Thursday, following months of controversy over her handling of immigration enforcement in Trump's mass deportation campaign.

During Noem's appearance before Congress on Tuesday, Senator John Kennedy, among other lawmakers from both sides of the political aisle, pressed Noem about the department's spending of taxpayer dollars, including a $220 million ad contract.

The ads, which Noem said were intended to encourage undocumented immigrants to leave the US, included footage of the now-former secretary riding a horse in front of Mount Rushmore while delivering stern messages about border enforcement.

Lawmakers scrutinized the bidding process for the contracts behind the ad campaign, as well as the firms selected, raising questions about how taxpayer dollars were awarded and spent.

In her testimony, Noem defended the ads as "effective" and said President Donald Trump had approved the $220 million in spending. "We went through the legal processes, went through it correctly," she said.

Trump later disputed that account, telling Reuters on Thursday, "I never knew anything about it."

On social media, "The View" host Meghan McCain compared the DHS ad costs to the production budget for "Sinners." The Ryan Coogler-directed movie, which recently set an Oscars record with 16 Academy Award nominations, had an estimated budget of $90 million, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter.

"Kristi Noem's DHS vanity videos cost $130 million more than Sinners," McCain wrote in an X post.

"Sinners" isn't the only movie with a smaller budget than the department's ad spending.

The $220 million price tag — which also accounted for media buying and placement, consulting fees, and related administrative expenses — surpasses the budgets for a list of blockbuster movies.

Here are 15 of them, as well as their reported budgets, which have been adjusted for inflation to reflect what those costs would be today.

And spoiler: some of your favorite movies might be included.

"The Matrix" (1999)

Budget (adjusted for inflation): $124 million

"The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" (2003)

Budget (adjusted for inflation): $166 million

"Top Gun: Maverick" (2022)

Budget (adjusted for inflation): $189 million

"Barbie" (2023)

Budget (adjusted for inflation): $154 million

"Gladiator" (2000)

Budget (adjusted for inflation): $195 million

"Frozen" (2013)

Budget (adjusted for inflation): $209 million

"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2" (2011)

Budget (adjusted for inflation): $180 million

"Jurassic World" (2015)

Budget (adjusted for inflation): $204 million

"The Hunger Games" (2012)

Budget (adjusted for inflation): $111 million

"Oppenheimer" (2023)

Budget (adjusted for inflation): $106 million

"Jaws" (1975)

Budget (adjusted for inflation): $55 million

"Iron Man" (2008)

Budget (adjusted for inflation): $210 million

"The Lion King" (1994)

Budget (adjusted for inflation): $99 million

"Deadpool" (2016)

Budget (adjusted for inflation): $80 million

"The Batman" (2022)

Budget (adjusted for inflation): $209 million

• Niki Marie Taylor and her husband bought a 1920s-era home in Detroit.
• The house had been modernized, but Taylor wanted to return it to its original aesthetic.
• She "unflipped" the house, restoring its historic charm room by room.

Niki Marie Taylor was scrolling mindlessly on Zillow when she stumbled upon her dream house.

Built in the 1920s, the historic house had everything she didn't know she wanted for her forever home — except for some modern interior additions that felt out of place.

Taylor and her husband decided to buy the house and "unflip" it, bringing back its historic charm.

Niki Marie Taylor didn't mean to fall in love with a 1920s home.

Taylor, 31, is a destination wedding photographer who lives in Detroit with her husband and two dogs.

In the fall of 2023, Taylor and her family were living in a condo that they loved. They knew they would buy a bigger property someday, but they weren't in a rush. Then the algorithmic fates stepped in when Taylor spotted a historic home on Zillow that was a little over 3,500 square feet and built in the 1920s.

"It wasn't too far from where we were in Detroit," she told Business Insider of the house. "It's in a historic neighborhood in the city."

Since the four-bedroom house was nearby, Taylor and her husband decided to take a look, driving by it before setting up an actual tour. For Taylor, it was love at first sight.

"The moment we drove up, I just had a good gut feeling about it," she said. She fell even more in love when they saw the interior layout.

Taylor and her husband put in an offer, and soon, the house was theirs.

Although she loved the house, Taylor didn't like how it had been modernized.

Even though the house dates back to the 1920s, previous owners had modernized it, so it didn't have the historic look you might expect of a 100-year-old home.

Taylor, who said she's drawn to timeless architectural elements, and her husband decided to renovate the house room by room, bringing it back to its former glory.

"We wanted to make sure it was appropriate to the style of the home so it would feel more authentic instead of it feeling forced," Taylor said. "Our goal was to make it old but new in a sense."

Because they were making some substantial changes to the property, Taylor and her husband had to hire some help for the renovation, but they DIYed as much of the work as they could with the help of family.

"My dad and my husband did a lot of work in the house, and my aunt is a well-known artist in the Chicago area," she said. "She came over, and we commissioned her to do some work in our home too."

Taylor wanted to make big changes to the foyer.

The home's entryway was one of the areas that bothered Taylor the most.

Both the fireplace and the foyer had been covered in a faux marble tile that Taylor felt didn't suit the house.

"It would look fine on a more modern house or maybe modern new build, but not for a historic 1920s colonial," she said. The marble particularly bothered her in the entryway, because it contrasted with the grand staircase in the foyer.

"The staircase was basically one of the main things that sold me on the house," she said, and she wanted to ensure the rest of the space made the stairs shine.

Replacing the floor made the space look completely different.

Taylor replaced the faux marble with a black-and-white checkered marble-and-granite floor, giving it a more timeless feel.

It was one of the more expensive changes Taylor made to the home, but she said it was worth it.

"We also had the stairs restored to the best that we could," she said.

New lighting and furniture completed the transformation. Taylor gravitated toward ornate chandeliers, leaning into the luxurious '20s look.

The living room also had a modern look because of the fireplace.

Taylor thought the marble on the fireplace definitely needed to go, especially because it didn't have a mantle when they bought the house.

She initially wanted to splurge on a marble mantle, but the options she could find were too expensive. She decided to take the mantle from her condo to the house, giving it new life.

The condo's mantle was a perfect fit in the new house.

Taylor also installed new sconces next to the fireplace and a statement chandelier — a gift from her grandmother — on the ceiling.

She made the room feel brighter and more luxurious by adding molding, and her aunt handpainted scrollwork on the ceiling.

"I think it added a lot of depth and dimension and just more architectural interest to the room," Taylor said of the molding. "I work from home when we're not photographing and traveling, so having a bright space for me was important."

The dining room was plain when Taylor bought it.

The dining room was full of natural light thanks to its ample windows, but they made it somewhat difficult to decorate.

"There are a lot of windows in the dining room, so we're kind of limited with how much we can put in there," Taylor said.

Taylor also wasn't a fan of the black, modern light fixture.

Molding and lighting elevated the space.

Molding on the ceiling added a retro feel, as did a crystal light fixture.

Taylor also filled the space with a mix of modern and vintage furniture pieces, from a round table to a green hutch. She told Business Insider that she takes her time sourcing furniture, shopping everywhere from high-end stores to Facebook Marketplace.

"I do some research on things I'm drawn toward and then put them up in a mood board on Canva to see if it works in the space," she said, adding that she finds art in a similar way. "My husband and I just started collecting artwork wherever we travel, through Facebook Marketplace, or at estate sales. It's a fun hobby now."

The kitchen needed some pretty major changes.

Taylor said the kitchen was the first renovation project she took on after they moved into the house, as it wasn't functional for them.

The kitchen had white cabinetry with black hardware and butcher-block countertops, which didn't fit Taylor's vision.

"I think in the right house, butcher-block counters can be really beautiful," Taylor said. "But I think with how formal the house is, it made sense to swap the countertops out."

She selected a white, textured counter instead to elevate the space.

New hardware and upper cabinets transformed the kitchen.

The new countertops changed the kitchen's tone, as did the changes Taylor selected for the cabinets. All new cabinets weren't in their budget, but they were able to buy new upper cabinets and replace the hardware on the lower ones.

"I really wanted the cabinets to go to the ceiling," she said. "That was something that I was pretty adamant on."

Taylor also installed statement lighting fixtures, from a clear piece to sconces that brought in 1920s flair. A new archway leading out of the kitchen added some dimension to the room.

A room with a tile floor excited Taylor.

The room had simple white walls and a gray door, but the tile floors made it pop.

"It's a really cool element that we really love," Taylor said. "Since it's one of the few original features of the house we have left, we like to hold on to it."

Thanks to the floor and the cozy space, Taylor saw the room's potential immediately.

"The very first time we walked in the house, we went into that room, and I think I turned to my dad and said, 'Can you build me bookshelves here?'" she said.

The blank slate became a colorful library.

Taylor's husband and father built bookshelves that covered an entire wall, instantly turning the room into a bright library. They painted them a sage green to match the walls and ceiling in the space.

"We picked paint colors and everything based on the colors of the floor," Taylor said. "And then my aunt came in and did a ceiling mural for us."

The floral mural had shades of pink and blue, and they hung a statement chandelier from the ceiling to light the antique furniture in the space.

The back entrance to the home didn't have much character.

The house has a back entrance off the kitchen, and when Taylor bought the home, it was plain.

It had white walls and a white door. Taylor wanted to use it as a mini mudroom, but it needed more personality.

She made it pop with floral wallpaper.

Taylor selected a black-and-white floral wallpaper for the nook, accenting it with a gold mirror and a gold shoe rack to highlight the flowers' stems.

"I am a big fan of wallpaper, and there's something about black wallpaper," Taylor said of the bold choice.

Taylor also liked that the floral wallpaper could play up the other black-and-white details in the home, like the checkered floor, the granite detailing in the living room, and the grand piano.

Taylor said focusing on the details helped bring the charm back to her home.

The one-of-a-kind furniture and bold design choices, including the checkered flooring, were key to Taylor's vision, but she said the small, detailed elements, such as the crown molding and light fixtures, were equally important.

"Little details are sometimes the ones that really make something feel thoughtful," Taylor said. "Within two months of us moving in, I swapped out all of our light-switch plates. I found some on House of Antique Hardware that fit the time period."

Focusing on making the house look more authentic to its architectural style made it feel like home.

Before they bought their home, Taylor said she had fallen into "the modern, colorless trend" in home decor, gravitating toward neutrals and clean lines.

However, as she made the 1920s house into their forever home, adding back the original character brought the lived-in, cozy feeling she wanted for her family.

Taylor's advice for anyone looking to take on a similar project is not to rush the design process.

"Give yourself the time and the space to live in your house and to see how you live in it and to see what you're drawn to," she said, adding that what's "authentic to the house is important."

• I have an irregular schedule, so I always struggled with childcare.
• I then found a coworking space with an on-site preschool, which has changed everything for me.
• I can now work stress-free, while my daughter learns in a room a few feet from me.

I wish I had known about coworking spaces with attached childcare/preschools much sooner in my parenting journey. This community helped me solve a problem I had been stressing over for two years.

I'm a Chicago mom, an on-air contributor on "The Fred Show," a nationally syndicated morning radio show, and the founder of The Mami Collective, a media platform for ambitious mothers. My workdays aren't traditional, and they certainly don't fit into a 9-5 schedule.

My mornings typically start at 4 a.m., and once the show ends at 10 a.m., the rest of my morning is packed with meetings, recordings, and deadlines. Once that's wrapped up, it's time to head home to relieve my mother-in-law or sister-in-law of childcare duties. My husband is a fireman for the city of Chicago and has a side gig, so I've become the primary caretaker of our 2-year-old daughter every day after work.

For a long time, childcare was the hardest piece to align with our reality. But when I came across a day care and preschool located inside a coworking space, everything shifted.

Traditional day care never worked for my family's situation

Traditional day care assumes you can arrive by a specific time in the morning. They typically give you a window, and if you miss it, then you're out of luck.

This kind of set-up works for families with predictable schedules. It doesn't work when your mornings are spent inside a radio station or when your workday starts earlier than most schools open.

I also didn't feel fully ready or comfortable dropping my 2-year-old off at day care, where she would spend most of the day without me.

A coworking space with a day care was the answer I needed

What makes this model work for us is flexibility. Because of my morning radio schedule, we don't rush for the 8 a.m. drop-off. Instead, we arrive after lunchtime and nap (2 p.m. to be exact).

My daughter joins the other kids for the afternoon, where she learns within the Montessori curriculum, plays, and socializes until closing at 5 p.m.

The best part of this all? I get to be there on-site, five feet away from her classroom: working, taking Zoom calls, editing audio, or answering e-mails. That alone changed my life.

I no longer feel like my career and my childcare are working against each other. As a business owner, this setup gives me something I barely had before: carved-out time to get work done while my child is cared for in a structured, enriching environment.

I'm not squeezing work into nap windows or evenings. I'm not trying to build my business in fragments. When she's in school, I'm working, fully present, focused, and calm.

There's no anxiety around clock-watching. If a meeting runs long or someone is running late to our scheduled podcast recording, the entire day doesn't get off track. This proximity creates a sense of stability I didn't realize I was missing.

For my daughter, the benefits are just as meaningful

My child has consistency, peers (yay to friends her age), and caregivers who are fully focused on her development. Her day isn't shaped by my stress or unpredictability. She gets the social and emotional structure of preschool without any disruption.

At home, socialization was a large missing component for her, so I'm grateful she has this opportunity now.

This isn't about working while parenting at the same time. I'm not popping in and out of her classroom or blurring boundaries. If anything, I've found that this model reinforces them. When she's in school, I'm getting work done. When we're together, I'm fully present with her.

I live an unusual life, so I needed an unusual solution

I've come to realize that many childcare systems are still designed around a workforce that no longer exists: predictable hours, long commutes, and a default parent with endless availability.

My life just isn't built like that. And I know I'm not alone.

Coworking preschools are not for every family. They don't replace traditional childcare or solve every systemic issue. But for parents like me, other remote workers, entrepreneurs, and creatives, and people whose work is flexible but demanding, they provide an amazing option.

I didn't become a better mother by trying harder. I didn't become a better business owner by optimizing my calendar. Once my childcare reflected my reality, I showed up calmer, more focused, and present.

This isn't childcare as a treat. It's childcare that finally meets working parents where we are. My only regret is that I didn't find it sooner.

• Jennifer Jamali moved to Bogotá, Colombia, in 2025 to be closer to family and reduce living costs.
• Jamali, 34, moved with her husband and their young daughter.
• She said her family has a much better quality of life in Bogotá, and she's happier.

Jennifer Jamali lived in a quiet Austin suburb where she rarely crossed paths with her neighbors. The sameness of her days left her feeling stuck.

"A typical day involved going to the gym or getting coffee and then returning home to work with my husband," Jamali, 34, told Business Insider. "I felt isolated and craved more adventure and community."

After she was laid off from her job as a tech recruiter and a series of deaths in the family in the years that followed, Jamali confronted a hard truth: Her family was pouring too much time and money into a life that didn't feel fulfilling or connected.

In 2025, she and her husband moved to Bogotá, Colombia, where he's from and where his family still lives, hoping for a more affordable life and a stronger sense of community.

In the year since, Jamali said they've found both. She's cut back on work, spends more time with family and friends, and said she ultimately feels happier.

"Bogotá has a warm, human-first culture," she said. "My days are full of microconnections where I say hi to my neighbors, and they actually acknowledge me. I feel like I have a real community here — and I am lucky to be a part of it."

Still, Jamali acknowledged relocating to a new country comes with its challenges. Here are some of the positives and negatives of the move.

Bogotá has a strong sense of community

While the US is often defined by its individualism, Jamali enjoys Colombia's friendly, communal culture.

"I saw that level of care before I moved here, and that was one of the reasons I wanted to be here," she said. In Bogotá, she added, people seem to look out for one another, and children are treated with care and respect, not like nuisances.

"In Austin, no one would really acknowledge each other," she said. "The kids would play with their parents. Here, kids play with other kids, and parents are vigilant around other kids. At the park, I feel like there are multiple eyes on my kid and me, in the best way, because we're all community."

The childcare is more affordable and feels more intentional

Jamali said one of the biggest benefits of moving to Bogotá has been the childcare her daughter receives.

Her daughter, who is nearly 3 years old, attends a preschool that provides a structured early-learning curriculum, hands-on care, and three nutritionist-approved meals a day that are prepared by a chef. Jamali said it costs the family about $400 a month — roughly a third of what she and her husband paid for childcare in Austin.

"They're focusing on her development," she said. "Where I had her before, it was more like, 'let's put your kid on a playground all day,' and do a quick little lesson in the morning. But here, they tell us word for word, 'We're working on this activity to develop this skill.' We're able to track how she's building different skills."

Jamali also said she's noticed a difference in how her daughter is treated by teachers.

"School kind of feels like family," she said. "The teachers bring their humanness and empathy into their roles. I've just noticed the quality is so different."

Adapting to a new culture takes time

Jamali said the family is still adjusting to cultural differences, like how the country largely shuts down for holidays. She said it can make juggling work and childcare difficult.

"They take holidays really seriously here, and in January, almost all the daycares were closed," she said. "Since my husband and I both work for US-based clients, that was really hard to figure out childcare."

"We had to give ourselves grace," she added. "We weren't going to have the same capacity for work. But that's also the beauty of coming here — we came for a different kind of lifestyle. This is just one of the unexpected things we're adapting to."

Having a lower cost of living has improved their quality of life

For Jamali, a major upside of the move to Bogotá has been financial. She said the family's monthly living expenses have dropped from about $7,000 in Austin to roughly $2,000 in Bogotá.

Their biggest savings have been on housing. They still own a 1,800-square-foot, four-bedroom home in Austin that has a mortgage of around $2,000, which they're continuing to rent out as a mid-term rental on Airbnb and Vrbo. But in Bogotá, they live rent-free in a 900-square-foot apartment that her in-laws invested in.

"We've been able to save more, and our cost of living is just much lower," Jamali said. "We don't stress as much about having a good month or a bad month financially. We're not trying to keep up with the rising costs we dealt with in the US."

With a lower cost of living, she and her husband have been able to work less, giving the family more time together.

"We're a lot more active," she said. "And because we're saving more, the pressure we put on ourselves has gone down, the quality of life is better, and we're having better experiences."

Her family feels more connected

Moving to Bogotá has brought Jamali's family closer together. Her in-laws are just a short walk away, which means regular visits and extra childcare help when they need it.

With her in-laws living in the mountains, Jamali and her husband also have a place to go when they want to unplug, and they'll sometimes spend up to a week at their home. Being outside and spending time in nature — a contrast to Austin's concrete sprawl — has helped her feel more at ease and more creative.

"With the support from my in-laws and the safety I feel here, I've been thriving in Bogotá," she said. "It's helped my mental health and my life in so many ways."

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

Forget happy hour. Try playing hooky.

"We need it! Reparations for our pain and suffering," my friend, Lauren Grove, texted me.

It was right after a February blizzard had dumped more than 12 inches of snow over the Tri-State area, and with her kids being the same age as mine — busy 6- and 3-year-olds (and did I mention, they're boys!) — we were in desperate need of a break. So Lauren invited our mom group chat to play hooky from work that Friday.

As a person who prides herself on productivity and who's never met a to-do list I didn't enjoy tackling, playing hooky didn't immediately appeal to me. Still, Lauren assured me it was only an hour during the lunch break, and I'd still make it in time to pick up my children from school.

Fine. It felt like a no-brainer, especially since one of my goals this year is to be more intentional about creating community after my family and I moved post-pandemic to a sleepy New Jersey suburb. And overindexing on work has been known to cause burnout, higher rates of anxiety and depression, along with affecting sleep quality.

I'm not the only one. Although the hum of the loneliness epidemic isn't as loud in the headlines, many are still feeling the effects of increased solitude. We're also spending less time with friends. For years, Americans averaged about 6.5 hours a week with friends. Between 2014 and 2019, that number plunged by 37%, to just 4 hours. The year 2014 coincides with a rise in smartphone users.

I knew that community doesn't just happen; like most things in life, it takes effort. And there are only so many coffee shops and libraries you can go to without experiencing third-space fatigue. Plus, this hooky party felt low stakes: It was time-constrained with no expectation to hang out late. I also didn't have to hire a babysitter to enjoy it since it was midday.

After the party — which was an amazing time, by the way, complete with food and line dancing — I asked Lauren, the chief experience architect at event design firm The Grant Access, what inspired her to host the hooky party.

"The world is crazy right now, and all we truly have is community. We have to cultivate it and feed into it; not just by engaging online but by seeing each other," she told me. "This hooky party served as an opportunity for us to close our laptops and find joy with the people we love."

And when I got home, my to-do list was waiting for me, but at least I got a midday reminder that I don't have to do life alone.

• In February, KKR bought sports investing experts Arctos Partners for $1.4 billion.
• KKR's co-CEO Scott Nuttall explained how a deal a decade ago led to KKR's acquisition.
• He outlined how KKR and Arctos would build out a business buying stakes in private equity funds.

KKR's $1.4 billion acquisition of Arctos Partners traces back more than a decade to a relationship that began long before Arctos even existed.

"We have known Ian Charles, the founder, for a long time: a decade plus," Nuttall said at Bloomberg's Invest conference on Wednesday as he got into the backstory of the deal announced last month.

In 2016, KKR was looking for a secondaries specialist to help free up capital and worked with Charles, who at the time worked at Landmark Partners, a major secondaries investor later acquired by Ares. The collaboration helped lay the groundwork for KKR's healthcare and tech growth platforms, which now manage more than $17 billion, a person familiar with the matter told Business Insider.

"You know, sometimes you meet somebody and say, wow, they're really capable, and you would love to have him as part of our team," Nuttall said. "It was that kind of a moment. Sadly, he worked somewhere else at the time."

Charles went on to cofound Arctos in 2019, and the firm has fast become one of the biggest players in sports investing. It is the only firm with private equity stakes in all five major men's professional sports leagues in the US, including ownership stakes in the LA Dodgers, the Golden State Warriors, and the Buffalo Bills. They've also invested in international powerhouses such as the Aston Martin F1 team, Liverpool FC, and Paris Saint-Germain.

Sports have become a major investment thesis in private equity, with a record $23.6 billion in sports franchise acquisitions and $6.3 billion in sports services acquisitions in the first three quarters of 2025, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence Data.

KKR has yet to buy any sports franchises, but has made investments in cheerleading apparel company Varsity Brands, and high school streaming platform PlayOn! Sports, and previously invested in FanDuel and the UFC.

Once Charles co-founded Arctos, the relationship developed "organically from there," said Nuttall.

"And so we started looking at what they were doing and bec,ause of our relationship, we just were comparing notes," Nuttall said. "You know, they would call for advice, we'd call them, get their thoughts on the markets, that kind of thing."

So when KKR looked to finally add a stake-buying business, the "one thing we do not have" as a firm, Nuttall said, Arctos made sense. KKR evaluated other firms in this space as they went to market, but Arctos, which buys stakes in other private markets firms, was the right fit.

Their dominance in the "highly attractive" sports field, combined with their "secondaries background" opens up opportunities in not just sports franchises but also "real estate, securitizing media rights," and "GP solutions," he said.

The combination of the right relationship fit and their former expertise made it the right place to "build secondaries together," Nuttall said.

• Venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya is raising concerns over rising AI bills.
• Palihapitiya said his software startup's AI costs have tripled since November.
• Costs are going up every three months, Palihapitiya said, "My revenues are not."

Venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya said he can't believe how much his software startup is spending on AI.

"Our costs have more than tripled since November of 25," Palihapitiya said during an episode of the "All-In Podcast" posted on Friday. "Between the inference cost that we pay AWS, which is ginormous, between our cost with Cursor, between Anthropic, we are just spending millions."

Palihapitiya said 8090, which he started with "the goal of replacing/rewriting all the legacy software in the world," is trending toward spending $10 million a year on AI costs. His concern about ballooning bills comes as the tech industry continues to digest how AI is upending well-established fields like software engineering.

The biggest fear Palihapitiya expressed is that while AI costs are rising, 8090's revenues are not increasing at the same pace.

"The problem is that my costs are going up 3X every three months," he said. "My revenues are not."

The current system, Palihapitiya said on X, is partially subsidized by large venture capital firms that remain some of the biggest backers of AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic. Some in tech have questioned the sustainability of the current approach, comparing it to how Uber rides were first cheap and then increased in cost over time.

"Thank you to the VCs who will fund this all-you-can-eat token consumption through their huge investments," he wrote.

Palihapitiya singled out Cursor, a popular AI coding tool, as a source of some of 8090's biggest AI costs. He said that Anthropic's Claude Code is a much better bargain.

"We need to migrate off of Cursor," he wrote on X. "Its just too expensive vs Claude Code. The latter is equivalent and if you use the Pro plan, you eliminate huge Cursor bills for token consumption."

Concerns about rising AI usage bills are still bubbling up. OpenCode creator Dax Raad recently said that CFOs are beginning to wake up to the cost of AI bills.

"Your CFO is like what do you mean each engineer now costs $2000 extra per month in LLM bills," Raad wrote on X.

Palihapitiya said that he suspects some of 8090's AI bills might be due to Ralph loops, the nickname for a usage technique that essentially keeps feeding the same prompt back into an AI model until the problem is solved. The approach is named after "The Simpsons" character Ralph Wiggum, a beloved doofus who can be very persistent.

"Everybody has gotten infatuated with what we call these Ralph Wiggum loops, just like send the thing off and it'll just go figure something out," Palihapitiya said during the podcast. "A, It never figures anything out. And B, you just get this ginormous bill from Cursor."

Going forward, Palihapitiya said there needs to be more flexibility to switch between models. He said that Anthropic's recent falling out with the Pentagon illustrates why this is needed.

"We need to gain more flexibility to swap between models without everything breaking," he wrote on X. "I think this is both a cost problem per #1 but its also a strategic flexibility issue after the events between Anthropic and DoW."

• Three wealthy brothers face possible life prison sentences at an NYC sex-trafficking trial.
• The jury returns to a federal courthouse in Manhattan on Monday for day three of deliberations.
• Here is a count-by-count guide to what the six-man, six-woman jury is weighing.

Three wealthy brothers, 10 rape accusers, one shocking indictment.

On Monday, the Alexander brothers — a trio who enjoyed money, good looks, and access to expensive homes and resorts around the world — will sit through the third day of deliberations in their federal sex-trafficking trial.

A Manhattan jury is considering the fates of these three men, former luxury real estate brokers Tal and Oren Alexander, and Oren's twin brother Alon, who worked for his parents' private security firm.

There is much to weigh.

Ten women, all testifying under pseudonyms, told jurors they were raped — sometimes through violence, sometimes after being drugged senseless, sometimes by more than one brother at once.

None called the police.

Prosecutors have argued that there was too much corroborating evidence, too much genuine pain in the women's words for their accounts to be false.

Defense lawyers countered that the sex was consensual, and that the women later invented or imagined stories of violence and violation out of regret or in hopes of a lawsuit payday.

After testimony by more than 30 prosecution witnesses and three witnesses for the defense, a six-man, six-woman jury must now agree on a complex, ten-count indictment that could put the brothers away for life.

Here is a count-by-count roadmap to that still-pending decision.

Count one: sex trafficking conspiracy

All three brothers are charged with conspiring to sex traffic four women who testified they were lured with something of value (a Hamptons beach getaway), only to be drugged or overpowered and then raped.

The youngest testified that she was drugged and raped at a Hamptons party by two brothers and two other men in 2009, after sneaking away from her boarding school, missing her high school prom.

To convict on this top count, jurors must find that between 2008 and 2021, the Alexanders worked together to get at least one of the four women to the Hamptons with the purpose of attacking her. They must also find that, for at least one woman, force, fraud, or coercion was then used to compel sex with at least one of the brothers.

All three brothers are charged with this count, which carries a potential sentence of 10 years to life in prison.

Count two: the sex trafficking Lindsey Acree

Lindsey Acree, who has a lawsuit pending against the brothers, told jurors that she was 25 when she and a girlfriend were invited to the siblings' East Hampton rental home in 2011.

Acree said that soon after arriving, she was urged to enjoy the backyard jacuzzi, where Tal handed her a glass of wine that made her feel like a "zombie."

She said that when she regained consciousness, Tal and a second man were raping her on the floor of the home's gym.

At some point in her assault, Tal set up a tripod and camera, she said. "They were laughing a lot," she told jurors of the two men. "I was on the ground. I couldn't move."

Tal alone is charged with this count.

Count three: Sex Trafficking Bela Koval

Bela Koval, a native of Ukraine, told jurors she was a 25-year-old model when Alon paid for her and a girlfriend to fly from Chicago to New York for a weekend at the brothers' Sag Harbor rental home in 2016.

All three brothers greeted the women at the door, she said. They were taken yachting and served meals prepared by a private chef — expenses that prosecutors say the brothers shared.

Koval told the jury that at a pool party the next day, she sipped a drink handed to her by Oren that made her unsteady, "like a wave overtook my body."

She said she felt still worse — "like my whole body was tranquilized" — after Alon gave her a glass of water. "I was unable to scream" as Oren raped her, she testified.

All three brothers are charged with sex-trafficking Koval.

Count four: sex trafficking Maya Miller

Maya Miller told jurors she was a 23-year-old aspiring model and about to enter nursing school when she and a girlfriend were invited by Tal to a summer weekend at the brothers' Sag Harbor home in 2014.

Miller told the jury that she agreed because Tal promised to reimburse her for her flight from Nevada to New York and that the trip would be all-expenses-paid.

"It was the biggest home I'd ever been in," she said of the mansion, where she and her friend were treated to a boat ride and meals by a private chef.

Tal turned "angry" as she remained sober through the second day, telling her, "I thought I invited fun girls," Miller testified.

She testified that Tal raped her in the shower the next morning as she cried and struggled to scream.

Tal alone is charged with this count.

Count five: sex trafficking a minor

This final sex-trafficking count concerns Isa Brooks.

The Netherlands native testified she was 16 when she and a dormmate skipped their high school prom to accept a party promoter's invite to the brothers' Southampton mansion in 2009.

"I always heard it was, like, the place to be on Memorial Day weekend," she said of the Hamptons.

She told the jury that during a party hours later, after drinking tequila in the backyard hot tub, "I was feeling woozy, kind of spinny."

Brooks said she stumbled to a bedroom, where Tal began kissing her, and told her "his brother was going to join us."

Brooks told the jury that she fell in and out of consciousness, and remembered "in flashes" being raped by Tal, Alon — the "more shy" twin — and two other men, including the one who'd given her tequila in the hot tub.

"I was wondering why they hated me," she told the jury.

Tal and Alon are charged with this count.

Count six: inducing Bela Koval to travel to engage in unlawful sexual activity

This count concerns Bela Koval, the woman who testified she was raped by Oren after being invited to Sag Harbor in 2016.

It alleges that the three brothers caused Koval to travel across state lines, from Chicago to New York, so that she could be forced or coerced into "unlawful sexual activity," meaning her alleged rape by Oren Alexander.

Prosecutors sought to prove this count by showing jurors communications among the brothers, including a text chain in which they mentioned Koval and her girlfriend, and joked about trying to "orgy them out." All three brothers are charged with this count.

Count seven: inducing Maya Miller to travel to engage in unlawful sexual activity

This count concerns Maya Miller, the woman who testified she was raped by Tal in the shower of a Sag Harbor mansion in 2014.

Tal alone is charged with this count.

Count eight: aggravated sexual abuse by force or intoxicant

This count alleges that Alon and his twin Oren sexually abused a heavily-drugged Rhonda Stone in the cabin of a Norwegian Sky cruise ship in 2012.

Stone testified she was 23 years old when she and her older sister went on a so-called "Groove Cruise" — a three-day trip to Miami and the Bahamas featuring round-the-clock live music and DJs.

She said she lost consciousness after drinking a mixed drink handed to her by one of the brothers, and woke up "naked in the bed," and unable to move or speak as the two took turns raping her.

Alon and Oren Alexander are charged with this count.

Count nine: sexual abuse of a physically incapacitated person

This count offers an alternate theory of sexual abuse and also concerns Rhonda Stone and the 2012 cruise trip.

To convict, the jury must find that Stone was "physically incapable of declining participation" in a sexual act.

Alon and Oren are charged with this count.

Count 10: sexual exploitation of a minor

This count concerns Amelia Rosen, who prosecutors allege was 17 years old and incapacitated when she was videotaped having sex with Oren and a second man in a Manhattan apartment in 2009.

Jurors appeared visibly upset when the video was shown to them in court. Prosecutors said it shows Rosen slurring her words and barely able to stand.

"I can hardly understand what I was saying," Rosen testified tearfully when shown snippets of the video in court.

Oren alone is charged with this count.

Spring is the ideal time to reset your sleep routine, especially with daylight-saving time and Sleep Awareness Week putting better rest top of mind. Quality sleep is essential for mental clarity, emotional balance, and physical health, and poor sleep habits and hygiene can impair concentration, memory, and decision-making while increasing anxiety and irritability.

"Sleep is very complicated and requires many parts of your brain and body to agree," says Dr. Benjamin Smarr, a neuroscientist and assistant professor at the University of California, San Diego. Establishing a pre-sleep routine helps signal to your body that it's time to wind down, making it easier to fall asleep and stay asleep.

We spend the year testing hundreds of products to find the best sleep products, but I wanted to know, what are my colleagues use to help them wind down, stay comfortable while traveling, and feel well-rested come morning. Here are their favorite bedding, sleep tech, and bedroom accessories they rely on for better rest.

All the products and apps the Reviews team use to get better sleep

This viral sunrise alarm clock is absolutely worth it

Hatch Restore 3

The Hatch Restore 3 is more than just a sunrise alarm clock; it's a customizable bedside sleep system designed to help you build a more consistent nighttime routine and wake up more naturally. It pairs gradual sunrise-style light with soothing soundscapes to guide you from wind-down to wake-up, supporting your circadian rhythm rather than jolting you with a harsh alarm. I love how the latest generation puts more emphasis on onboard controls so you don't have to rely on my phone at bedtime.To unlock its full library of guided meditations, sleep stories, podcasts, and music, you'll need to subscribe to a Hatch+ subscription, which costs $50 per year. However, the device includes a solid selection of options on its own —Jaclyn Turner, senior home editor

Read our Hatch Restore 3 review.

Breathable pajamas that keep us from overheating

Dagsmejean Slip Dress

Dagsmejan uses patented fabric technology, including its "Nattcool" textile, which the brand says is up to eight times more breathable than cotton and designed to wick away moisture as you sleep. I put it to the test during an August heatwave without air conditioning, and it kept me noticeably cool and dry through the night. While I wake up with damp pajamas when I overheat, I felt genuinely comfortable and surprisingly refreshed in this slip dress. It's made from 100% lyocell, so it feels silky, lightweight, and noticeably cool to the touch. The relaxed fit and split hem make it easy to move in if you toss and turn. It's admittedly pricey for a nightgown, so if you're only going to invest in one Dagsmejan piece, I also recommend the Relaxwear Kimono. —Gabrielle Chase, senior associate style editor

A warming, lavender-scented plushie

Blue Crab Warmies

Warmies combine the comfort of a plush stuffed animal with the soothing benefits of gentle heat. These lightly weighted, lavender-filled plushies can be heated in the microwave for cozy warmth, making them exceptionally soothing at bedtime or when you need a little extra relaxation. My Warmies is a total lifesaver when I have cramps or a stomachache. Plus, since there are no wires, I can have pain relief without the risk of a fire hazard. It's also just lovely to have a little extra warmth in the bed, especially on cold nights. — Kinsley Searles, associate home editor

A breathable linen quilt for even the hottest sleepers

Parachute Linen Box Quilt

As a hot and light sleeper, I've found that even lightweight comforters are too warm, which is why I've relied on the Parachute Linen Box Quilt for the past six years. It's alongtime Reviews team favorite, featuring a soft, garment-dyed linen, crisp percale cotton back, and airy, baffle-box construction that feels breathable and barely there. I love that this quilt is lightweight and made from breathable, cooling linen. It gives me that cozy, wrapped-up feeling without trapping excess heat. Even if you're not a hot sleeper, it's a great layering piece — many of my Reviews teammates swear by it, too. —Lauren Savoie, former deputy executive editor

A heated, massaging eye mask

Therabody SmartGoggles

The SmartGoggles are the indulgent sleep gear I never knew I needed. Therabody's SmartGoggles combine heat, massage, and vibrations into a blackout eye mask. There are three settings for personalized relaxation, headache relief, and sleep prep. Still, you can sync it with the Therabody app to unlock an audio experience, further customize settings, and track your resting heart rate. Now, I prepare for bed with a temple massage and comforting heat, with the added benefit of reducing eye strain and easing stress. —Jaclyn Turner, senior home editor

The best pillow we've tested

Coop Sleep Goods Original Pillow

I've tested dozens of pillows over the years, but the Coop Original is still one of my favorites. There's a reason it consistently ranks at the top of our guides, including as our best overall pillow for neck pain and the top pick for side sleepers. It works across sleep positions and makes it easier to maintain proper alignment, which can really help with neck and back tension. Several members of our team have continued using it long after testing. For me, it checks all the boxes, and it's still the one I reach for every night. — Suzy Hernandez, contributor

A white noise machine that uses a real fan

Snooz White Noise Machine

During a visit back home for the holidays, my partner's grandparents urged us to try their Snooz White Noise Machine. We ended up loving it so much that we got our own. It uses a real fan to create comforting, soothing sounds that help you drift off to sleep. The design is super intuitive — a simple tap of a button starts the machine. It's fantastic at helping me sleep, especially when my neighbors throw a party, or my dog decides to give the squirrels in our backyard a piece of his mind. —Kinsley Searles, associate home and kitchen editor

Read our guide for the best white noise machines.

A size inclusive bamboo pajama set that is also nursing and mom friendly

Kindred Bravely Clea Bamboo Long Sleeve Pajama Set

I used to be the kind of person who slept in whatever t-shirt I found lying around, but after moving to Maine, I'm always cold. I discovered Kindred Bravely after having my first child because of their incredibly popular hands-free pumping bra. Even though that was eight years ago, I'm still a fan of the brand. These pajamas are not only incredibly soft, but they are so stylish. I recently took them on a trip, and I found myself lounging in them comfortably. This pajama set keeps me warm, and I also love that they have several pockets, since I'm always carrying something for one of my kids throughout our bedtime routine. — Conz Preti, deputy editor

A pair of sheet straps to keep the fitted sheet from slipping off

Gorilla Grip Bed Sheet Straps

When I sleep, I toss and turn a lot. My constant flip-flopping used to cause my fitted sheet to come loose, so I'd have to get out of bed in the middle of the night to pull it back into place. These Gorilla Grip Bed Sheet Straps solved that problem. They clip onto the corners and sides of your sheets to ensure that you won't have to worry about sheet creep, keeping the fitted sheet snugly secure on your mattress. The best part about this bed hack? It'll cost you less than $20. — Kinsley Searles, associate editor

A cooling, plush pillow that's wallet-friendly

Beckham Hotel Collection Down Alternative Gel Pillow

I'm a hot sleeper, so a cooling pillow is a must. This gel fiber pillow is breathable and helps keep me from overheating at night. It's a fluffy, plush option, but it's not overstuffed, so I've found it comfortable no matter which position I sleep in. More than 250,000 Amazon shoppers agree that the Beckham Hotel Collection down-alternative pillow is an elite, budget-friendly pick. Softer and flatter than memory foam, it's more squishy than supportive, making it especially well-suited for stomach and back sleepers, and anyone who likes to hug, fold, or stack their pillows. It's filled with hypoallergenic polyester fiber, they hold up well over years of use without getting flat or lumpy. —Lillian Brown, associate editor

A luxurious silk eye mask that stays put

Drowsy Silk Sleep Eye Mask

I have tried so many silk sleep masks, but none compare to this one from Drowsy. My sleep immediately improved when I started using it because the design solves a lot of the annoyances I experienced with classic masks. It's extremely wide and has a slit in the nose area, so you don't have that frustrating sliver of light that comes in from the bottom. It also doesn't move around even if you toss and turn a ton, thanks to the wide, adjustable band on the back (which is also made of silk to protect your hair). And even though it's squishy and padded, you can't really feel the mask or strap when you're lying on a pillow. I also really appreciate that the silk material doesn't irritate my skin or absorb all my moisturizer. — Sally Kaplan, executive editor

Comfortable earplugs to keep out the city noise

Loop Quiet Earplugs

My partner gave me a pair of these Loop earplugs after I complained about the noise levels at my SoulCycle class. They instantly make the music clearer and volume management more manageable, so I also take them along to concerts and my busy office. They're also if you sleep in a street-facing bedroom or a part of the house that gets extra noisy. They drown out noise better than standard disposable foam earplugs and are way more comfortable. You can barely feel them, and they stay in all night without fail. — Sally Kaplan, executive editor

A body pillow to help keep your spine aligned

Coop Sleep Goods Memory Foam Body Pillow

The Coop Sleep Goods Memory Foam Body Pillow is the best body pillow in our guide for good reason. It's made with supportive, moldable fill, it helps support proper alignment and maintains its shape over time to offer long-lasting loft and comfort. I'm a side sleeper and I use this long pillow to keep my knees aligned and prevent lower-back strain. I've used the Coop body pillow for four years, and it hasn't lost its fluff. —James Brains, former senior reporter

A good old-fashioned crossword puzzle

The New York Times Take It Easy Crossword Puzzles: 75 Easy Puzzles

I do a crossword puzzle every night to help me wind down. It's a great analog activity that keeps me from late-night doom-scrolling. I suggest doing them with a gentle light on once you're already in bed — that way you can zonk out as soon as you're ready. —Sally Kaplan, executive editor

A cool, luxurious silk pillow

Cozy Earth Silk Pillow

We've all heard that a silk pillowcase is good for your skin and hair. The jury may still be out on whether this fabric can help prevent acne and keep hair from getting frizzy as you move in your sleep, but the feel of high-quality mulberry silk in this pillow is undeniably luxurious and sleeps cool all night long. I've tried dozens of pillows, and few can compare to the breathable, cool feeling that this one provides. As a back and side sleeper, I was worried it wouldn't be lofty enough compared to the pillows I usually gravitate to, but it's perfectly moldable, providing the support I need. I'm a silk pillow convert. —Jaclyn Turner, senior editor

A weighted eye mask

Nodpod Weighted Eye Mask

I've never been much for eye masks, but the Nodpod has changed my mind. It's subtly weighted, with just the right amount of pressure without feeling claustrophobic. It also blocks out light. I just drape it over my face and start to feel calmer. It lacks straps, so it won't be ideal for stomach sleepers, but you can fit one end into the other to secure it to your head if you want to keep it in more secure. — Jaclyn Turner, senior home editor

Earbuds that are actually comfortable to wear to sleep

Soundcore Sleep A20 Earbuds

Unlike regular earbuds, the Sleep A20 Earbuds are comfortable to wear to sleep and ideal for people who, like me, prefer to doze off to music or podcasts. They stay in place all night — even for side sleepers — and dramatically reduce ambient sound. A simple double-tap switches them from music to sleep mode They can also play gentle sounds to block out noise if you prefer complete quiet. — Les Shu, former deputy editor

See the best sleep headphones.

A portable mini humidifier

Riecin Portable Mini Humidifier

During winter, the heater dries me out and inflames my nasal passages, disrupting my sleep. So, I bought a portable mini humidifier — and it's a game changer. Not only is it super quiet, but the humidifier runs continuously for four hours, or my preference, intermittently for eight hours. The moisture in the air makes it easier to breathe and results in a deeper sleep. Not to mention, this portable humidifier always travels with me to super dry areas like New Mexico or high-altitude destinations like ski resorts as it prevents nosebleeds and elevation-related sleep issues. — Alex Temblador, contributor

An inexpensive weighted blanket

Luna Weighted Blanket

The Luna Weighted Blanket is the best budget pick in our guide to the best weighted blankets, offering the calming pressure of deep-touch stimulation at an affordable price. I've struggled with insomnia and parasomnias for years, but the most noticeable improvement in my sleep experience has been with a weighted blanket. The Luna is my go-to sleep aid because it helps limit my nighttime movement, and I wake up feeling more rested. It's one of the best sleep investments I've ever made. — Lauren Savoie, former deputy executive editor

A smart home hub with several sleep-improving features

Google Nest Hub (2nd Gen)

My Google Nest Hub has become a core part of my sleep routine. I like getting insight into my sleep without having to change or wear a device, and it offers a calming way to wake up in the morning. It features a gradual sunrise alarm and integrates seamlessly with other smart home devices, allowing you to control lights, thermostats, and plugs from bed. You can even connect apps like Calm and Spotify to stream audio hands-free.—Jaclyn Turner, senior editor

An e-reader with adjustable brightness settings

Kindle Paperwhite

I love using my Kindle Paperwhite to read before bed. Since its screen is backlit with adjustable brightness, it helps ease my eyes into the dark for an enjoyable activity that requires no harsh, bright lights. So much better than doom-scrolling on my phone! — Sarah Saril, deals editor

A serene meditation app

Headspace Meditation App

Whenever I have trouble sleeping, I turn to Headspace's sleep content to help me unwind. The mix of gentle narration and soothing sounds feels incredibly calming and helps settle my mind before bed or when I wake up in the middle of the night and have trouble falling back asleep. — Maliah West, contributor

A travel blanket that's easy to pack

EverSnug Travel Blanket and Pillow

No matter how frequently I travel, I'm notoriously bad at sleeping on airplanes due to the lack of space and paper-thin linens. I bought this $35 Amazon travel blanket before an early-morning flight to the Galápagos last year, and it has been keeping me comfortable ever since. It folds up into a compact carrying case with a luggage sleeve, so it's easy to bring with you and can even double as a pillow. But what I wasn't expecting was that I would start using it at my destinations, too. It came in handy as an extra layer when my cruise cabin was too cold, and it completely saved me when I stayed in a Madrid apartment where the host only supplied a top sheet. As a self-proclaimed cozy girl, I can always use a little more plushness when I'm on the go. — Rebecca Shinners, contributor

A comfy u-shaped body pillow that doesn't overwhelm the bed

Yana 360° body pillow

The Yana body pillow is one of the few U-shaped designs that truly impressed me. It provides full-body support without the excess bulk or heat I've experienced with similar pillows. The cooling gel version remained breathable and supportive all night, and it's also available in a latex foam version. I also love how versatile it is. I use it for both sleeping and lounging since it's easy to reposition and light enough to move around. — Suzy Hernandez, contributor

Read more of the best body pillows.

A convenient pillow spray you can bring anywhere

This Works Deep Pillow Spray, 75ml

The spray is vegan and made of cruelty-free ingredients like lavender, vetivert, and chamomile to help relax busy minds as soon as they hit the pillow. I've lent this spray out to friends, roommates, and family to help them sleep, and I've always had trouble getting it back from them. — Mara Leighton, former senior reporter

PJ's that have convinced me to move on from the oversize t-shirt

Lake Hamptons PJ Set

I spent years sleeping in oversize T-shirts from random high school events and concerts, but I've finally upgraded now that I'm an adult. I once balked at spending more than $50, let alone more than $100, on a pair of pajamas, but the Hamptons set from Lake has completely won me over. The cotton gauze material is so breathable and airy — perfect for hot sleepers. Plus, they're cute enough that I wouldn't be embarrassed to be seen by neighbors walking to my mailbox. Whether I'm haphazardly doing my nighttime skincare routine or making breakfast in my messy kitchen, wearing these makes me feel like I'm in a dreamy cottage somewhere in Nantucket. Worth every penny. These have become my summer sleep uniform. — Paige DiFiore-Wohr, deputy editor, life & entertainment freelance

A cheap cotton eye-mask

Mavogel Cotton Sleep Eye Mask

I've tried fancier sleep masks, and nothing beats the comfort of this budget-friendly option. I've used the Movogel Cotton Sleep Eye Mask on flights, while sleeping over at museums and aquariums with my kids, and on regular nights when I want to make sure I won't be distracted by any ambient light. This breathable cotton mask provides a snug fit over my eyes, without being too tight or squishing my lashes, and has never left an unsightly dent in my hair. — Jennifer Beck Goldblatt, senior editor, health + parenting

A travel pillow so you can finally fall asleep on your flight

Trtl Pillow

At first glance, it looks more like a scarf than a pillow, but that's what makes the The Trtl pillow so effective. It reimagines the traditional travel neck pillow with a lightweight fleece wrap that conceals an internal support. Instead of cushioning your entire neck, the support rests against your shoulder or neck to hold your head in a more ergonomic position—without creating uncomfortable pressure points— when you sleep upright. — David Slotnick, contributor

Ambient bedroom lighting

Govee Uplighter Floor Lamp

Since my focus is on sleep health, I'm intentional about my evening lighting. One newer addition to my bedroom that I've been having a lot of fun with is the Govee Uplighter floor lamp. It creates such a beautiful, relaxing ambiance for winding down at night. I set it to a warm glow to signal it's time to unwind, and I love the soft, wave-like light that gently fills the room. It's app-controlled and fully customizable, which makes creating a cozy, sleep friendly atmosphere effortless. — Suzy Hernandez, contributor

Crisp cotton sheets that sleep cool

Brooklinen Classic Percale Core Sheet Set

I'm firmly team patterned sheets for both my bedroom and my guest room. I love how they pair with a simple duvet or quilt. Over the years, I've tried several sets from different brands, and most recently, the Brooklinen Classic Percale Core Sheet Set in two patterns — plus a set of solid pillowcases. Since then, I've stopped checking other sites for something better.

My partner and I both tend to sleep hot, but we've noticed a real difference with these sheets. They have a tight, smooth weave with a bit of crispness, yet they're lightweight and breathable. After a year of use, they've held up better than other brands I've tried. The colors are still rich and the patterns sharp. Whenever we have guests, they always compliment the sheets, too — not just for the beautiful pattern (Oyster in Storm), but for how comfortable they feel. — Lisa Sabatini, senior pets editor

A crescent-shaped pillow for side sleepers

Coop Sleep Goods Crescent Adjustable Pillow

I was late to jump on the Coop bandwagon, even as the brand's adjustable pillows passed our rigorous testing, earned rave reviews from editors, and made their way to the top of our list of the best pillows. After spending more money than I care to remember on pillows made with shredded latex, down, and memory foam, I finally bought the Coop Crescent Adjustable pillow last month. Now I see what all the hype is about.

Designed especially for side and back sleepers, the ergonomic contour is what won me over. The crescent-shaped cutout cradles my head without forcing me to scrunch the pillow up under my neck and shoulder, a nightly wrestling match I'd come to expect as a side sleeper. Instead, the shape does the work for me, and I can even assume the T-Rex position without waking up with a sore shoulder or numb arm. After four weeks of sleeping on it, I'm going to dip into the included extra Oomph fill to boost the loft slightly—the fact that I can fine-tune the Coop pillow feels like built-in longevity. — Bronwyn Barnes, deputy editor

• Ford workers built a secret "VIP" Explorer — and only later learned it was destined for the Pope.
• The Explorer won't replace the Popemobile. That remains an electric Mercedes-Benz G-Class.
• Ford gifted the car to the Pope in February.

Workers at Ford's Chicago Assembly Plant knew a three-row Explorer rolling through the factory was meant for a VIP.

They just didn't know it was built to be a gift for the Pope.

Now, that SUV is at the Vatican.

Ford CEO Jim Farley and his wife, Lia, personally delivered a customized Explorer to Pope Leo XIV on February 28. The vehicle was built about five miles from where the Chicago-born pontiff grew up.

"I reached out to the Vatican a few months ago, and that's how this began," Farley said in a press release. "We even took a quick drive, and I can confirm the Holy Father enjoys driving a sporty ride."

Ford said the SUV is a luxury-spec, all-wheel-drive Explorer Platinum hybrid — a powertrain configuration that isn't available at US dealerships.

The automaker has built hybrid 2026 Explorers for police interceptor models, according to CarGurus data.

The new Explorer won't replace the Pope's official Popemobile, the company confirmed to Business Insider. It doesn't have bullet-proof glass or a ceremonial standing platform.

Mercedes-Benz has historically supplied the Pope's official set of wheels. The luxury German automaker last delivered an electric G-Class to Pope Francis in December 2024.

That custom-built vehicle — complete with a white interior, red carpets, and a higher-raked second-row seat — reportedly cost about $500,000.

Platinum-trim Explorers typically start around $50,000 and can climb to roughly $65,000 depending on options, according to Ford's website.

The Pope's new Explorer looks like a regular Ford from the exterior. Inside, it comes with personalized touches honoring the Pope's hometown, including Chicago flag seat tags, skyline stitching on the center console, and engraved door plates.

"He noticed and appreciated the personal touches," Farley said about the Pope.

Workers at the Chicago plant say they were thrilled to learn they had helped build a car for the Pope — especially one with ties to their hometown.

"I come from a huge Catholic family, so everyone was thrilled and just thought it was the coolest project," Jennifer Barilovich, a lead electrical systems engineer for Ford, said. "I wrote a letter to the Pope to tell him how much it meant to me. I hope my letter gave the Pope a sense of how proud I am. This is the highlight of my professional life so far."

• The stock market is rotating away from the tech sector into what Goldman calls "old economy" stocks.
• HALO, a term coined by Josh Brown, is short for heavy asset, low obsolescence.
• Brown says the HALO trade is a more accurate framework for finding winners in today's market.

There's a shift taking place in markets this year, away from the tech winners of recent memory and into HALO stocks.

That stands for "heavy asset, low obsolescence." It's the market's hot new trade, but the term's inventor says Wall Street is misunderstanding it.

The HALO framework says companies with substantial physical capital and durable economic relevance will outperform asset-light businesses like software makers, and has been flagged as the antitode to investors' AI panic.

Josh Brown, CEO of Ritholtz Wealth Management and the coiner of HALO, says the recent market rotation is more than an anti-AI play; it marks a simple yet significant shift in the characteristics investors want in the companies they are buying into.

Brown told Business Insider that the HALO framework, which he created in early February, describes a market rotation that was already underway. The recent AI scare has only further catalyzed the trade.

The tech sector is in the red since the start of 2026, with the software industry among the hardest hit. The State Street Technology Select Sector ETF is down 5% year-to-date while the iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF is down 17%.

This dramatic downturn came despite software companies' latest earnings reports generally showing strong results.

"The internal logic of the stock market today has nothing to do with the real-time results the company's reporting, and has everything to do with whether or not companies are immune to AI or susceptible," Brown explained.

He said that asking, "Can a chatbot or an LLM replicate what this company sells or not?" is a good indicator of whether a stock fits into the HALO framework, but it isn't the only factor.

Energy, materials, and industrials sectors, which tend to fall into the HALO bucket, have outperformed the broader market, a sharp contrast from recent years of tech dominance driving the bulk of the market's gains.

Brown's HALO framework caught the attention of some of the market's biggest firms, including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Morgan Stanley, but Brown told Business Insider that while Wall Street's framing is on the right track, it doesn't quite nail his thesis.

To Brown, the HALO trade isn't just an inflection point in the usual investment cycle, but a distinct regime change in the market that falls outside the usual paradigms.

"It's not old versus new, it's not growth versus value, it's not defensive versus cyclical, it's not small versus large. Those are all an old paradigm that's not applicable to what's going on," Brown said.

He explained that since the global financial crisis in 2008, investors have favored asset-light companies that don't rely on investment in physical infrastructure, such as software makers.

"That paradigm has been flipped on its head, and in the HALO era, you no longer are championing asset-light business models," the investing pro told Business Insider.

"Now, we actually want companies to possess heavy assets, physical assets on their balance sheet, be it equipment, land, facilities with logistics. This is now what's prized," he outlined.

• A cardiologist said most of us have too much stress, an underrated risk factor for heart health.
• Heart disease is on the rise on young patients. Managing stress is key in your 20s, 30s, and beyond.
• A few minutes of meditation, movement, or social connection each day helps protect your heart.

In over a decade as a cardiologist, Dr. Tara Narula has seen a major risk factor for heart disease in 90% of her patients. It's completely preventable — but we're not talking about it enough.

"My patients are walking around with this level of chronic stress that is unimaginable," she told Business Insider. "And most of my patients don't know how damaging it can be."

Chronic stress can be a silent killer, putting strain on your heart that can prompt serious or even life-threatening conditions like a heart attack or stroke. These risks are on the rise in younger people, with heart disease increasingly being diagnosed among patients in their 30s or even younger.

A recent report from the American Heart Association found that women between the ages of 20 and 44 are likely to see the biggest increase in risk of heart attack, stroke, and cardiovascular disease in the next few decades.

"This is a disease that cuts across every age, and in many ways it can be silent until it's not," said Narula, chief medical correspondent for ABC News and cardiologist at Northwell Health. "Prevention is key, and that means you have to start in your 20s thinking about heart health."

Her new book, "The Healing Power of Resilience," focuses on steps we can take to reduce stress and the crucial connection between physical and mental health.

She said a few simple strategies can help reduce stress in a few minutes each day, adding up to major benefits for long-term health.

"We are not going to be able to tackle someone's heart health or their risk factors unless we address stress," Narula said.

Have an exercise snack

About 80% of the risk of heart disease can be prevented with lifestyle changes, Narula said, and stress can make it harder to keep up healthy habits.

"If you're under stress, you may not exercise, you may drink more alcohol, you may smoke, you may eat more unhealthy. So it's driving up a lot of those risk factors, but also having direct effects on the cardiovascular system," she said.

To break the cycle, start small, Narula said.

You don't need to hit the gym for an hour a day to see the benefits. She recommends adding a few minutes of activity at a time.

Sometimes called "exercise snacks," these small doses of movement can relieve stress and strengthen your heart at the same time, studies suggest. As few as 500 extra steps a day can boost longevity.

"I'm taking the stairs. I'm parking a little farther away. I'm taking a walk on my lunch break. All of those micro-movements add up over time," Narula said.

Take a meditation break

Another habit Narula swears by is a regular mindfulness practice. Setting aside a few minutes during the day to breathe deeply and calm your thoughts can quickly change your mood.

"You can sit at your desk in the middle of your office workday and do a meditation for 10 minutes that is going to get your mind in a different space than it was before," she said.

Mini-meditations or breathing exercises can be particularly helpful when used to replace stressful habits, such as doom-scrolling.

"You want to be invested and involved, but at some point, you don't want to be inundated with stuff that's making you feel bad. I think dialing off things that you know upset you is a good thing," Narula said.

Phone a friend

One of the biggest ways to boost longevity is a strong social life. Narula said reaching out to loved ones for support is a great way to ease stress. If you have a packed schedule and tend to postpone social calls, making time for even a quick message can help.

"So many of us have people that, gosh, I've been meaning to call this person in my life, and I'm so busy, I haven't done it," she said. "We put off a lot of the social stuff that we could easily find 10 minutes in the day to connect with another human being."

As you build on your support network, she also recommends finding a qualified therapist. While it takes a bit more time and effort to get started, therapy can help you work through larger issues or stress patterns in your life. Narula said it's been crucial in helping her tackle her fears about the future and let go of past events.

When it comes to heart health and overall wellness, sometimes the biggest benefits come from facing the things you struggle with the most.

"It's an investment," she said. "The more you invest in it, the bigger the payoff is going to be."

• Ayşe Baltacıoğlu-Brammer, an NYU professor, has bought her students notebooks for their assessments.
• She didn't want to approach students with suspicion regarding whether they were using AI.
• So far, she is having more fun with her students and some are even decorating the front covers.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Ayşe Baltacıoğlu-Brammer, an assistant professor of history and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I've had a no-tech policy in my classroom for years now.

But after I realized AI was creating a trust problem between my students and me. I decided to take it a step further.

At the start of this semester, I bought my students $1 notebooks from Amazon. Instead of submitting typed papers online, they are journaling by hand to analyze what they're reading.

My no-tech classroom predates the AI acceleration

Around six years ago, I told my students that laptops and tablets weren't allowed in my class, unless they had an accommodation from the university.

I was seeing lots of students distracted by the screens in front of them — messages, links, emails, and notifications were popping up, taking them elsewhere mentally.

I realized that having no laptops in the classroom was making a huge difference. My students were finally paying attention.

The feedback was positive too. In anonymous comments from students evaluating the course, I've had numerous responses along the lines of: 'I actually hated that we weren't going to have laptops. But now I'm glad the professor actually did that. It was way more engaging not to have technology in the class.'

AI was messing with online submissions

Before the notebooks, I would normally have two or three primary-source assignments where students had to analyze a historical source and upload it as a Word document or PDF.

However, anxiety about whether my students were using AI to write their assignments was creating a trust problem in my classroom.

I didn't want to approach my students with that sense of suspicion all the time. After all, maybe they hadn't used AI.

So I thought: How can I bring back that trust between my students and I?

I was inspired by a colleague at NYU who was providing notebooks to his students in class.

After all, if they write by hand, then I'm not going to be as worried about whether they are using AI.

Even if a couple of students feed the questions to the AI and then write the generated answers by hand, that's a win for me — they are still spending much more time thinking and writing.

They are more authentic

So far, the notebooks are going well — I've not received any negative comments. I can clearly see that the answers are more authentic — I see scribbles and crossed-out words, and attempts to replace them with better ones.

There are also more misspellings. I've had some cases where I've really had to scratch my head to decipher what they've written. But I would say 90% have been a joy to read so far.

The switch to the notebooks has added about 2 hours to my workweek, but it's meant I'm having much more fun with my students. Two students asked if they could decorate the front page, and I've suggested we could even have an art contest at some point.

Many people have found the notebooks inspiring — one post I shared about them on X received over 11,000 likes.

Several colleagues have said they're inspired to try implementing them as well. Others are worried about the class size and having to decipher different types of handwriting.

AI has democratized cheating

This is also not to say that I'm a Luddite.

Before AI, a much smaller group of students was cheating the system by paying people to write their exams. The accessibility and affordability of generative AI mean that this problem has simply become more widespread.

We have to accept that AI exists. You cannot ignore it — being good at the digital world is so important for my students' future.

There are opportunities for AI to improve education, too. I'm a non-native English speaker myself — I know the trouble that I went through to fix my papers. Students without means can now have a virtual editor.

However, AI shouldn't be there for you to put a prompt in and then ask it to write an essay on your behalf — that defeats the purpose of education.

As a historian who spends her days deciphering centuries-old handwriting, there's nothing wrong with writing by hand. In fact, I think it's something we should all practice.

• Commentators have warned that the war in Iran could spark stagflation.
• Yet, economist David Rosenberg doesn't think it's a risk.
• Higher oil prices are more likely to cause inflation to crash and the economy to slow by year's end, he said.

Stagflation talk is picking up on Wall Street again, but one top economist says it isn't in the cards. Unfortunately, that's because he sees the economy slowing to the point where inflation craters.

Stagflation, a troublesome mix of high inflation and low economic growth, was in the air this week as the Iran war sent oil prices surging.

David Rosenberg, the president of Rosenberg Research, waved off the prospect, though, as he thinks it's more likely that inflation will plummet by the end of the year. That's because higher oil prices will likely push the US economy into a cost-squeeze, a phenomenon where high prices cause consumers to pull back spending, eventually sending prices in the opposite direction, he told Business Insider in an interview.

"I think we're going to get inflation running up in the next few months and it's going to come crashing down by the end of the year," Rosenberg said.

"This shock to demand that we're seeing right now is going to make inflation come down even more by the end of the year than if we hadn't had it," he added.

US investors dumped stocks and bonds this week amid concerns that higher oil prices could eventually seep into consumer prices.

Brent crude, the international benchmark, soared 9% to top $92.80 a barrel on Friday as markets digested as the market saw the war continuing.

April contracts for West Texas Intermediate crude, meanwhile, rose more than 13% to top $91.31 a barrel, its highest level since September 2023.

The spike has drawn comparisons to the oil shocks of the 1970s, when inflation spiraled and sent the US into a stagflationary downturn.

While the US could see a small burst of stagflation due to the short-term impact of higher oil prices, Rosenberg thinks the aggregate hit to demand will outweigh any inflationary impact over time.

A few things explain why:

• Inflation is on a long-term cooling trajectory. The economy has flashed several signs inflation is cooling for the long run — and will likely continue to do so despite the uptick in energy prices.
  
  Rosenberg pointed to the M2 money supply, a measure of the stock of money in the economy that feeds into inflation. M2 money supply growth has stagnated at around 4% for the past year, according to Fed data.

• The Fed won't rescue markets. The central bank has made it clear it's planning to hold interest rates steady to keep inflation expectations anchored. Despite the spike in crude prices, markets are still pricing in just two or three more rate cuts by the end of the year, according to the CME FedWatch tool.
• Real incomes have taken a hit. Wage growth, when adjusted for productivity, is also growing at around a 1% yearly pace, about half of what it was a year ago, Rosenberg said.

• Economic growth is slowing. Real GDP growth is also slowing. The economy expanded at an annualized 1.4% pace over the fourth quarter, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, down significantly from its highs in recent years.

"What's going to happen is that this massive cost-push squeeze on real incomes and purchasing power is going to cause disinflation or deflation in other parts of the economy. So that's what people miss," Rosenberg said.

While the prospect of falling inflation seems counterintuitive to the fears currently roiling markets, the economy has experienced similar situations in which inflation plummeted after oil prices soared.

Rosenberg pointed to when oil spiked following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which led headline inflation to peak at around 9% in the summer of 2022. Price growth, though, quickly cooled over the next year as consumers pulled back and the Fed raised interest rates.

Oil prices also spiked to around $150 a barrel during the summer of 2008, right as the economic slowdown was picking up steam. In the third quarter of that year, headline inflation dropped to 2.6% for the third quarter, down from the prior quarter's 7.9% growth, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

"Those are the fundamentals and everything else, including the oil price, is just background noise," Rosenberg said.

• Ria Singh got stranded in Doha after her flight to Dallas turned back due to the Iran war.
• Singh said she's staying in a 5-star hotel for free but is worried about how she'll get home.
• Qatar has said it is covering expenses for stranded travelers.

Ria Singh was asleep on a long-haul flight from Doha, Qatar, to Dallas one week ago when she awoke to the pilot announcing the plane was turning around due to air restrictions.

The 24-year-old pulled up the flight map and saw that the plane was heading back to Doha. Then she checked her phone: The US and Israel had attacked Iran.

"I was very concerned, very terrified," Singh, who had a layover in Doha while traveling home from a wedding in India, told Business Insider, adding, "I still don't believe it's real."

Singh has been stuck in Doha since then, with no idea when she will be able to leave. Though she's been put up in a luxury hotel, she said it doesn't feel like a vacation because she is constantly updating family and wondering when she'll make it home to Texas.

She's one of many Americans who got stranded in the Middle East following the attacks on Iran and the retaliatory strikes that have hit several countries. Some Americans have said they've struggled to get help from the US, while others have been left with pricey and unforeseen expenses as they scramble to find a way home.

Flight records show Singh's flight, expected to last nearly 17 hours, took off at 8:30 a.m. local time on February 28 and turned around almost an hour and a half later. The plane returned to Doha and then circled several times near the airport before landing, according to flight path data on FlightAware. Other people on "flights to nowhere" last week spent nearly 16 hours in the air before landing back where they started.

After her flight landed back in Doha, Singh spent a chaotic day at the airport, which was filled with other travelers trying to get home, and spent the night at a hotel at the airport, hoping to fly out the next day.

But Sunday's flight was canceled too, and the airport, which had been damaged in an air strike, was evacuated.

A 5-star hotel stay for free

On Sunday, Singh and other passengers were shuttled away from the airport by Qatar Airways staff and eventually to hotels, for which they were given vouchers.

Singh was brought to a 5-star hotel on the Arabian Gulf. Since she is traveling alone, she asked that the hotel not be named for privacy reasons. The hotel stay includes breakfast, lunch, and dinner buffets each day. She's been staying there since and has not personally paid for anything at the hotel.

Qatar Tourism has said it will cover the hotel stays for tourists who are stuck in the country as a result of the airspace closures, Euro News reported. Officials in the UAE have also said they will cover some expenses. However, it's unclear how many tourists have had their expenses covered, as there have been conflicting reports.

Singh said the hotel and food have been great, with the buffets featuring extensive options of Western and Arabic foods and desserts, and even a gelato bar. But it doesn't exactly feel like a luxury vacation.

She said she's "grateful I have a nice hotel" but that she just keeps wondering when she will get home. "Every day I wake up, and I'm hoping for good news."

Singh has mostly been spending her days at the hotel, with some jaunts in Doha. She made a friend, another stranded American, during the ordeal, who had connections to some people in Doha, so they ended up at a local's apartment for dinner one night. She's also gone to the mall and a nail salon.

One day, she and her friend planned to meet in a park, but then they heard some booms and received a government alert on their phones telling them to stay inside. A large part of her time is spent constantly updating her friends and family back home and assuring them that she is safe.

She has, so far, missed a week of work.

She still has no idea when she'll get home

Singh praised Qatar Airways and the Qatari government for the handling of the situation, as well as the hotel, which she said even set up a temporary play space for travelers with kids that has board games, a ping pong table, and a PlayStation.

But she said she's been disappointed by the US response. "It's hard to believe that when they were sitting down to plan these strikes, that there was nothing set in place for evacuating the Americans that would inevitably be stuck in this region," she said.

On Monday, the State Department told Americans in over a dozen Middle Eastern countries to evacuate, though commercial flights were largely unavailable. Several US Embassies in the region also told Americans they were unable to offer help.

The State Department later said it was chartering flights to bring people home, with one taking off from the Middle East on Wednesday. On Friday, the department said "several flights" had returned "hundreds of Americans" home and that more were scheduled for the coming days.

Singh said she has registered with the State Department to get help getting home, but she's also trying to get on any commercial flight she can find that can take off westbound.

"I know that there's people in much worse situations than me in this war zone, and so sometimes I feel guilty feeling bad about my situation," Singh said, adding, "I just hope that all of this ends soon."

• Jefferies predicts a stock market rally to buck labor-market gloom and Iran war fears.
• The bank pointed to several indicators that tend to signal market bottoms.
• Still, risks to inflation and the labor market could continue to weigh on investors.

Investors can't seem to catch a break in 2026, but Jefferies says the pain should soon be over and that stocks are poised to surge.

Major stock indexes fell on Friday after data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed the US economy lost 92,000 jobs in February, well off economists' expectations for a gain of around 50,000. It was the latest in a string of headaches this year for investors, who have had to grapple with AI disruption, further tariff uncertainty, and surging oil prices amid the US confrontation with Iran.

But fear not, analysts at Jefferies say — a rip-roaring rebound awaits.

"I think we rally from here," Michael Toomey, a managing director for Jefferies' equities trading team, said in an email to clients on Friday.

He added: "I think this has been the most painful week in a long time for performance and we're hitting a variety of stress levels that tend to help the tape bottom."

The outlook for the months ahead remains murky, and Friday's jobs report should stoke fears of a potential consumer slowdown if the labor market starts to crumble. At the same time, if the Iran war drags on, high oil prices could generate new inflationary pressures.

Still, Toomey offered several reasons that a bottom should be in on the recent stock sell-off. Let's lay them out:

Crude oil overbought

Toomey said crude oil is at its second-most overbought levels ever — as measured by its relative strength index — meaning upward price pressures should soon ease, soothing investors' inflation concerns. This is, however, simply a technical observation and doesn't account for real-world political moves.

"The only time it was more extended was during the Gulf war in 1990 (10,583 trading days in this dataset)," Toomey said. "Given the inverse correlation to equities, as crude stalls, that should help the tape."

Near-term VIX levels

As a way of protecting against downside in stocks, investors can buy contracts on the CBOE Volatility Index, or VIX, for the months ahead.

Near-term contracts have recently shot higher than those many months out, signaling investors are extraordinarily concerned about risks in the weeks ahead. When investors are this fearful, it can be a contrarian bullish sign.

"Highest level since Tariff scares last April," Toomey said. "Historically these inversions are good times to buy stocks."

CNN Fear & Greed Index

To a similar point, CNN's Fear & Greed Index is showing high levels of pessimism, Toomey noted, another contrarian signal that suggests the market's next move is up.

Implied correlation high

Another manifestation of weak investor sentiment is the implied correlation among S&P 500 stocks. It's fairly elevated, which means investors are dumping stocks indiscriminately as panic sets in.

Short momentum slowing

Long-short momentum indexes started to normalize on Friday morning after dramatically favoring the short side over the last few days, Toomey said. This could be a sign of waning pessimism in the market.

ETF trading elevated

Finally, ETF shares made up 42% of the trading volume on Friday, up from a low-30s average, Toomey said. A lower trading volume from shares of individual stocks means investors are exceptionally fearful, he said.

"This remains very elevated and shows the stress in the market," he said. "I can't recall a time of ETFs being this elevated for this long."

• Chaim Mazal said he wrote a program that could generate credit card numbers when he was 12.
• Today, he's a cybersecurity executive at a company that secures complex network infrastructures.
• Mazal now uses the hacker mindset he developed as a kid to protect data from AI-driven threats.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with 41-year-old Chaim Mazal, chief security officer of Gigamon, a cloud security company based in Santa Clara, California. This story has been edited for length and clarity.

I got my first computer in the early '90s when I was 8 years old and living in Florida. A few years later, I started hanging out in hacker chat rooms on a service called Internet Relay Chat. My parents had no idea.

I was very taken by the hacker community. The people in these chat rooms talked about making programs to perform various tasks. It was a large community, and we would all share information. Some people in it helped me learn how to create internet utility tools, and not all of them were so great.

For example, when I was 12, I wrote a program that could generate credit card numbers. I then used those cards to purchase commercial software and distribute it for free. It was the coolest thing that I could think of doing at the time.

I didn't get arrested, but some of my friends did. That encouraged me to change my trajectory.

How my hacking background helped me

After high school, I enrolled in a local community college to study computer science. However, I didn't finish my degree until later in life because I got an entry-level customer support job at Microsoft for one of the company's early cybersecurity offerings.

A friend who worked at a Microsoft satellite office in my area gave me a referral. I didn't mention my hacking background in the interview, but that experience helped me pass a two-hour aptitude test.

Two years later, I decided to take a career break. I hated working in a cubicle, so I went to Israel to take part in a study abroad program, with a plan to become a rabbi. But ultimately, I concluded that I didn't want to mix God and money. I moved back to the US, finished my college education, and got a job at a boutique cybersecurity firm in Chicago.

As my career progressed, I gained the opportunity to work with some of the world's best security teams. I eventually built up my own reputation as a cybersecurity expert, and began getting offers for speaking engagements and consulting work.

An attacker's mindset

I joined Gigamon, the company I work for today, three and a half years ago. We help protect some of the most complex network infrastructures in the world, including more than 80% of the Fortune 100.

It's a huge challenge. My No. 1 goal when I show up to work is to safeguard customer data. I'm trying to solve potential problems for our customers so they don't have to worry about their data ever being compromised or their identity being stolen.

If I were to give career advice to my young hacker self, I'd say you can still do what you're doing — only for good. You can provide value to the world because understanding how attackers think is essential in cybersecurity. It provides the perspective needed to stay ahead of increasingly sophisticated AI-driven threats and to build defenses that organizations can trust.

From the beginning, my intent was never about causing harm. It was about curiosity and understanding how systems worked so they could be improved. Like many in the early hacker community, I was driven by the belief that technology should be better, more secure, and more accessible.

That same mindset drives me today. The difference is scale and responsibility.

• Governments and airlines are using Muscat as a hub, while other Gulf airports are limited.
• Business Insider created three maps showing how flights from the Omani capital have changed.
• Oman has friendlier relations with Iran than other Gulf countries do.

Muscat, Oman, has become the temporary center of Middle Eastern aviation after air travel was thrown into disarray by the US and Israel's strikes on Iran last Saturday.

While most Gulf countries have closed their airspace, Oman's has remained open. Airlines and governments have therefore been using it as a hub to help people get home.

Italy and Slovenia organised buses to help their citizens travel from the UAE to Muscat, about a five-hour drive.

However, demand is pushing some infrastructure to its limits. On Wednesday, Oman Air told passengers to arrive at the land-border crossing 12 hours before their flight's departure.

144 flights departed from Muscat on Thursday, compared to 125 a week earlier, according to data from Flightradar24.

The flight-tracking service also said that private aircraft account for nearly one-third of takeoffs and landings.

Business Insider created three maps that show how Muscat International Airport has grown in significance in the past seven days.

While the data listed another 10 takeoffs on February 26, these have been excluded because they returned directly to Muscat.

Flights from the Omani capital arrived in 20 new destinations on Thursday compared to a week earlier.

Previously, Dubai and Salalah, Oman, were the most popular destinations for flights departing Muscat. But on Thursday, it was Cairo and Istanbul. The Egyptian capital rose from four flights to 15, and the Turkish capital from two flights to 12.

From these cities, it is easier for passengers to find connections across the world.

Indeed, 12 of the 144 flights made only brief stops before continuing to Europe.

For example, the maps only depict the first leg of Austrian Airlines' special flight to Riyadh, before it later arrived in Vienna.

An Airbus A320 chartered by the British government stopped in Cairo before reaching London. Slovenia also chartered a plane, which went to Jordan, then continued to Ljubljana. And the Czech airline Smartwings operated three flights that stopped in Hurghada, Egypt, then went on to Oslo.

Airlines are also operating direct flights to support repatriation efforts.

British Airways, which doesn't usually serve the country, has flown from Muscat to London three times this week. Qatar Airways is also operating flights from Muscat while its home airspace is closed. Six of its airplanes departed the Omani capital on Thursday, flying to Madrid, Rome, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Berlin, and London.

Oman Airports said Thursday that it is "well-positioned" to support airlines because it operates 24 hours a day and has no constraints on the number of takeoffs and landings. It added that, for new airlines, it will help "facilitate and expedite regulatory approvals wherever possible."

Thanks to its geography and wealth, the Middle East region is a major travel hub. Its main airlines — Qatar Airways, Abu Dhabi's Etihad Airways, and Dubai's Emirates — have helped boost tourism while connecting travelers from across the world.

With some 95 million passengers, Dubai International Airport was last year the world's busiest for international traffic and the second-busiest overall, behind only Atlanta. By contrast, Muscat handled around 12 million passengers in 2025.

The UAE has partially reopened its airspace, but flights are still strictly limited. Dubai International is operating at about a fourth of its typical level, according to Flightradar24.

However, Emirates said Friday that it "anticipates a return to 100% of its network within the coming days."

Like the other Gulf states, Oman is home to some US military bases. However, Oman maintains friendlier relations with Iran than its neighbors do. It has helped mediate talks between Iran and other countries.

While an Omani port was hit by Iranian drones on Tuesday, Iran's foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said this "was not our choice" because military units are "independent and somewhat isolated."

Jeff Mason, 76, could get by if he didn't drive for Uber until 2 a.m., but money would be tight.

Decades ago, Mason had a stable job in construction, while his wife, a stay-at-home mom, returned to work. However, in 1993, she had pains that required gallbladder surgery. They paid to keep her employer's health insurance after she took a leave of absence. While undergoing treatment, she discovered a lump in her breast. It was cancer.

Months later, bills started pouring in. They later discovered they didn't have coverage, as her cancer was a pre-existing condition. They cashed in their IRA, sold their car, and remortgaged their homes. By the time her treatments concluded, their bills totaled about $300,000. Mason would work 12-hour days and weekends. His wife worked in elder care.

After years of methodical saving, Mason built his IRA to around $300,000, and he retired in early 2018. But after years of retirement, he felt uneasy about further medical costs. In 2020, Mason was diagnosed with prostate cancer and had several heart surgeries, and he figured that medical costs wouldn't go away in the near future.

Over the last year, dozens of older Americans told Business Insider that caring for loved ones years ago, while rewarding and important, was hard to financially bounce back from. Some, like Mason, said they recovered their losses through meticulous planning. Others never had the chance to recuperate, as they couldn't secure a decent job or had to care for another family member. Many said they felt forgotten and left to fend for themselves, sometimes working into their 80s and 90s to save enough.

This wasn't the first time Mason had been a caregiver. His brother lived with him on and off before he met his wife. Mason and his wife took care of her best friend's two children while she battled multiple sclerosis. His sister and niece lived with them during financial hardship, and their youngest daughter needed care after a cancer diagnosis. And both of them cared for their ailing parents.

Mason began driving for Uber a few years ago, aiming to make $600 a week. He typically works nights and weekends and said driving feels somewhat effortless, despite his health. Much of his money anxiety has subsided, though it'll never disappear, especially since he wants to leave his children with something.

"I know that if I retire today, we'll be able to make it work and could possibly remortgage our house. But everything is getting more expensive," Mason said. "Our children check up on us and want us to move closer, and we know they'll have our back when we get older."

Nationwide, there are about 53 million unpaid caregivers, many of whom don't work or have modified hours. AARP quantified that caregivers pay about $7,200 annually on average in out-of-pocket caregiving expenses, while 13 million are navigating their own health issues. About a third of those caring for adult loved ones are also raising children under 18. Very few have any medical training.

For decades, experts have been pointing out how people need more support given the cost required to care for family, said Emily Abel, a professor emerita of health policy and management at UCLA. The US continues to spend less on long-term care than most other wealthy nations, she added.

"Anyone can become incapacitated and need a caregiver, but we don't champion our caregivers," said Kendra Davenport, president and CEO of Easterseals, a nonprofit providing disability services. "Private care for anyone of any age is outrageously expensive, and most insurance doesn't cover all of it, so unless you have very deep pockets and a benefactor, you're not going to be able to afford it."

When there are no breaks

For many of America's caregivers, there are few breaks to pause, breathe, and restart.

Sonja Egan Johnston, 83, worked as a marketing researcher, reporter, and event organizer during her career, but in 2006, her mother was in a car accident that also killed her uncle. Her second husband had died years prior, so she had no financial assistance. For two months, she stayed with her mother in the intensive care unit, and she sold her house to become an unpaid caregiver in Olympia, Washington.

Her mother improved and had a few healthy years, but she developed dementia and required more intensive care. In her mother's last two years, Johnston's younger brother came to help with daily caregiving tasks. Her mother died in 2013.

Around that time, her brother was diagnosed with cancer, and his health deteriorated. She became his full-time caregiver, and he died in 2015.

Her son had experienced mental health challenges, and while she cared for her family members, she helped him find places to live. At this point, she had depleted much of her savings. From 2015 to 2018, she provided her son with a place to live.

"A lot of women my age are up against this and don't have a lot of resources," Johnston said. "It's hard for a 50-year-old to move jobs easily, and for 80-year-olds, it doesn't get a lot easier."

She decided to become a paid caregiver through the state for her son and other clients in 2018, including people in hospice care, with addiction problems, or with Down syndrome. She worked six days a week for the first few years, though she's recently had a harder time finding clients.

"Financially, I'm not at a great point, but I do have some savings I can use, and I have equity in this house that would give me a few more years," Johnston said. "When I wake up in the morning and my feet hit the floor, I say it will be a good day."

An optimistic ending

Some older Americans told Business Insider that they were able to have a fulfilling retirement after a long stretch of caregiving, despite the traumas that still linger.

Patricia Newell Smith, 82, married her husband, Rick, at age 19. He was a star athlete and a combat soldier before becoming a math teacher. Patricia, who lives outside St. Louis, taught social studies.

For 30 years, their marriage was "nearly perfect," she said. They raised their son, Steve, and lived normal lives. Rick was an intense saver, at one point working three jobs, and they paid off both their houses during their marriage as quickly as possible.

She recalled that on his 40th birthday, he ran over 20 miles. However, the signs were showing that he was predisposed to myotonic dystrophy, a progressive muscle loss disorder. She remembers how his hand would slip off the monkey bars while playing with their son.

Ten years later, he couldn't walk without a cane. He worked until he could no longer stand up, retiring at the peak of his earnings. He wasn't yet 62, so he didn't get Social Security, but he received a 50% teacher's pension. His brother showed symptoms earlier, and as he had no caregiver, they helped him get into a nursing home, where he died in 2007. With $35,000 in personal savings, Patricia quit teaching and took a higher-paying job with 401(k) benefits.

"I sold myself out for money in business, which had much better pay, benefits, and a pension, but I got what all people who sell themselves for money do: regrets and money," Patricia said. "My husband's disability meant we went from having plenty of money to having not nearly enough, and I had to splice that gap. I had to put money first, and I did."

A decade into working as a training manager for a grocery chain, Patricia retired in 2001 as her husband's health declined. She became Rick's full-time caregiver. They had about $250,000 in personal pension funds.

Her insurance covered most of his medical costs. They rolled all their 401(k)s and other retirement funds into indexed annuity IRAs, enough to cover their needs. As she got older and his care required more attention and physical strength, she hired at-home nurses.

"It was painful to watch someone you knew as strong and well and whole deteriorate into an absolute shambling wreck of a man," Patricia said. "I didn't sleep at night for 10 years. It was running me into the ground."

Rick died in 2011 at 69. Steve, her son, advised her not to make any drastic decisions as she processed years of trauma. She took some vacations in the years after her death and tried to avoid making any major financial choices.

Patricia now lives on her two pensions from work, required minimum distributions, Social Security, and occasional IRA withdrawals, which is fully paid off. She doesn't have anywhere near the amount she anticipated, but she has enough to live a full life. She's become more involved in her community, volunteering as an environmental officer, participating in book clubs, and hiking.

"I don't believe in dwelling on dying when it's inevitable," Patricia said. "I can die happy having everything a woman can have: fun adventure, travel, and love in my life."

• Simone Solazzo and Anne Leijdekkers built a tiny home with the help of ChatGPT.
• AI helped plan their tiny house build, but was not always accurate or reliable.
• The couple learned firsthand that AI is useful but not a substitute for human expertise in building.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Simone Solazzo, 31, a former tech worker from Italy, and Anne Leijdekkers, 32, a Dutch arts entrepreneur. In 2025, the couple built their house and transported it to the tiny-home village of Minitopia in Valkenswaard, the Netherlands. This piece has been edited for length and clarity.

Anne: When we decided to build our tiny home in late 2024, we had no building experience whatsoever. Simone had never even painted a wall before.

Thankfully, ChatGPT had arrived at the perfect time.

We spent our evenings asking it about almost everything. While AI was genuinely helpful during the building process, we quickly learned we couldn't rely on it alone.

I dreamed of living differently

Anne: I'd known about tiny homes for a long time. One of my best friends is an architect, and he built one himself about 10 years ago. Back then, tiny homes were a new concept to me, but I'd always dreamed of living differently. I never saw myself moving into a traditional, and boring, Dutch house.

Simone: Tiny homes were a foreign concept to me until more recently. When I moved to the Netherlands from Germany with Anne three years ago, I was working in tech and earning a decent salary.

It felt like the world was pushing the narrative of "you should buy a house now," but I never felt great about the idea of taking on a mortgage and working for 20 years to pay it off.

When we visited Anne's friend's tiny house, I found it quite small and wasn't convinced by the idea. Then, we went to see a tiny house for sale in Rotterdam. It was big and bright, and I realized tiny homes didn't have to be that tiny. I was sold.

Anne: We were outbid on that home, but it turned out to be a beautiful, defining moment. The disappointment of not getting it instantly shifted our mentality. We decided we were going to build one ourselves.

ChatGPT helped us work out what to buy and when, and how to split costs

Anne: After pitching the idea to our parents in late 2024, we spent the first two months of 2025 planning and designing the house. My architect friend helped with the drawings and the more conceptual side of things.

Once we started building in February 2025, we asked ChatGPT questions constantly, far more than we used YouTube, which we turned to for help with specific tasks, like how to build the roof.

Simone: We asked ChatGPT very specific questions and used it to think through what would happen if we went off plan and did things slightly differently. It mostly helped us clarify our thinking.

Anne: Building a house involves a lot of headwork: sums, measurements, and counting. It helped that Simone had a background in tech, but ChatGPT was a helping hand with that as well.

Simone: We had to buy around 250 items to build the house. With so many materials to keep track of, ChatGPT helped us work out quantities and the order in which to buy them. It was also useful for managing the finances. We were splitting the costs, so we used it to help calculate that too.

ChatGPT would tell false information if it didn't have an immediate answer

Simone: Over the five months we were building, we had to make many decisions every day. It's important to trust the guidance you're following.

With ChatGPT, we often found ourselves questioning whether the guidance was accurate. After talking to our architect friend, we realized that the answers were frequently wrong. Sometimes, if it didn't have an immediate answer, it would just tell us something that was false.

It was helpful, but I wouldn't have felt comfortable relying on it alone. Anne's father also helped us with setting up the electricity and water. Thankfully, our architect friend helped us handle things like the ventilation and insulation. It was fundamental to have someone who could put everything into context for us.

The build would have taken longer if we just used ChatGPT

Anne: It would have been possible to build the house using only ChatGPT and with no outside help, but I don't think our house would be as good as it is now. I also think it would have taken longer because my friend's guidance saved us a lot of time.

Simone: I agree. It's doable, but having someone there who can put things into context and who has built houses before gives you more confidence in what you're doing. And that's crucial when building a tiny home for the first time.

• Prediction markets have already been the subject of scrutiny in recent months.
• The Iran war is only adding more pressure.
• There's now a bill to ban the president, VP, and members of Congress from event contract trading.

Prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket were already dealing with growing skepticism in DC after the Venezuela raid.

Then came the war in Iran.

Over the past week, lawmakers on Capitol Hill have seized on activity on prediction market platforms to make the case that prediction markets need to be reined in, including via new legislation.

"Nobody should be making bets on if the United States is going to war, or what words President Trump is going to use in his speech," Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut told reporters this week. "Those are fundamentally corrupt markets, because there are people on the inside who know the answer, and it perverts the decision-making process."

It may not amount to much in the near term, given GOP control of Washington and the Trump administration's friendly regulatory approach toward prediction markets.

Still, there are signs of a growing backlash toward some of these markets — and signs that prediction market companies are taking it seriously.

Earlier this week, following online outcry, Polymarket took down a market that allowed users to trade on whether a nuclear weapon would detonate this year.

Two new bills on prediction markets

In the wake of the Iran strikes, some in Congress want to ban top federal politicians from trading on sites like Polymarket and Kalshi entirely.

The "End Prediction Market Corruption Act," a bill introduced on Thursday by Democratic Sens. Jeff Merkeley of Oregon and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, would ban the president, vice president, and members of Congress from trading on prediction market platforms altogether.

That's a broader effort than the bill introduced by Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres of New York in January that would ban government officials from making trades when they may have influence or inside information on a forthcoming decision.

And Murphy, a staunch critic of prediction markets, told reporters this week that he's planning to introduce a bill to ban prediction market trading on certain government actions.

The Connecticut Democrat specifically named markets tied to war and so-called "mention markets" in which users can trade on whether public figures, including politicians, will say particular words during public appearances.

Kalshi, a US-regulated prediction market, already does not allow betting on war or death. In fact, that prohibition led to a separate controversy, with some users growing enraged after the company did not count the death of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei as the leader being "out" in a market about his political future.

Polymarket, on the other hand, has not yet launched its US market and is operating offshore, though American users have been able to use the site via VPNs.

A spokesperson for Kalshi told Business Insider in a statement that the company has been in talks with "policymakers from both sides of the aisle about work they're doing to ensure market integrity," including Merkley.

"We support Congress and regulators taking action to police insider trading, and keep prediction markets onshore and under federal regulation," the spokesperson said.

Polymarket did not respond to a request for comment.

Don't hold your breath for congressional action

If you had to wager on Congress doing anything on prediction markets in the near term, you're better off betting no, despite the growing scrutiny.

Most of the legislative energy around prediction markets is coming from Democrats, who are largely locked out of power in Washington for now.

Republicans have generally taken a friendlier approach toward the markets, including the current chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which oversees the companies.

Republican Sen. John Boozman of Arkansas, the chairman of the Senate committee that oversees the CFTC, said there were "some incidents that need to be looked at" by the commission, referring to suspicious trade.

But he said he didn't see a need for the heads of prediction market companies to testify before Congress anytime soon. "Right now, we're waiting to see what the CFTC does," Boozman said.

And for plenty of other lawmakers, prediction markets just haven't caught their attention.

"I think there's a lot of these things that we've got to kind of keep an eye on and take a look at," Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas told Business Insider. "But honestly, I haven't thought through it all."

• When AI started disrupting the tech industry, Gautami Nadkarni saw the writing on the wall.
• She started upskilling and networking, planning to pivot her career into AI.
• Nadkarni is glad she moved toward the disruption in her industry rather than shielding from it.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Gautami Nadkarni, 33, who lives in New Jersey. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

In 2024, six years into my time at Google, I started questioning myself.

I joined as a customer engineer in the Google Cloud org in 2018. My job was to design scalable cloud solutions that would help Google's enterprise customers manage their data and operations. At the time, cloud computing was the thing everyone in the industry was talking about.

By 2023 and 2024, AI was cropping up more in my projects and client conversations. In one, customers said they wanted to implement AI in every part of their business. It felt like a huge shift, and I saw the writing on the wall of where the industry was headed.

By early 2025, I made moves to pivot my career into AI. In November 2025, I transitioned at Google from a customer engineer who focused on infrastructure and data analytics at different times to one specializing in AI.

Instead of shielding myself from disruptions that AI was causing in my industry, my "inner voice" told me to move towards them, and it paid off.

I wasn't sure I was smart enough to work on AI, but I needed to be uncomfortable to grow

I was interested in AI for years before 2023's chatbot boom, but I wasn't sure if I was smart enough to work on something so complicated. As AI grew more prominent, I realized I needed to think about my career strategically.

I knew that to grow, I'd need to be uncomfortable and that just saying "I'm interested in AI" at networking events without proof of work wouldn't get me anywhere. Instead of overthinking, I jumped into AI upskilling in late 2024.

I followed the "80/20" rule, spending 80% of my week on my existing role and using AI to automate parts of my role to free up 20% of time for AI upskilling. For example, I'd use AI to take meeting notes and produce action items, but I'd also work after hours when I needed to finish a critical part of my job.

To learn more about AI, I completed a GenAI certification, watched YouTube videos, and used AI to teach me about itself. I dumped resources, like PDFs, into NotebookLM, which can produce audio overviews and visual aids, and answer your questions about the information you feed it. I used it like a personal tutor, asking it to quiz me on core concepts.

I also used AI to create an automated newsletter that would email me every morning at 9 a.m., showing me the top five or 10 news articles about general developments in the AI world.

Within my role, I took advantage of opportunities to improve my AI skills. If a customer had an AI-specific issue, I would take on the challenge myself before going to one of Google's AI experts and asking them for feedback on how I addressed the problem.

Networking helped me gain more confidence

I aimed to meet one new person in the AI space every two weeks, both in and outside of Google, and I used my Fridays to book time on my calendar with others. They'd tell me how they pivoted into their career, and I'd think through how I could replicate their success.

I asked one person with a Ph.D in AI if I needed one to work in this field, who assured me it wasn't necessary. This kind of encouragement while networking helped me feel less intimidated about entering AI.

I started networking with my peers, and then I spoke with marketing teams at Google, who'd said they were looking for technically proficient Google employees to represent the company at speaking events. I asked if there were any AI-related speaking opportunities I could volunteer for, which led to my first speaking engagement. I presented a new Google AI product I had prior experience using in my role, and also about Google's agentic AI vision.

Since then, I've done several speaking engagements at AI-focused events, which have helped me work toward being an industry leader in this space.

I see my career pivot as future-defining, not just future-proofing

In August 2025, I saw a role open internally at Google for a customer engineer in AI and machine learning within the Google Cloud org.

The interview process tested my AI skills, and my interviewers said they'd seen me putting myself out there in the AI space. I feel like all the personal brand building I did put me in a better position.

I started in November 2025. My role is still customer-facing, but unlike before, when I was more like a first point of contact, I'm now a specialist who is called upon when an AI expert is needed to solve customer issues.

I see my career pivot as future-defining, not just future-proofing, actively positioning myself where the disruption is occurring, and where it's creating the most economic value.

We don't know what will happen in the future, but I think AI will stay for a while. It was important for me to be at the forefront and to be in charge of my own career, rather than play it safe.

Do you have a story to share about AI disrupting and transforming your career? Contact this reporter at ccheong@businessinsider.com

• 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."

• Jordynn Ison, 27, is a nurse living in Ohio and solo traveler.
• She said medical tourism in Asia for primary care and dental work has saved her thousands.
• Ison has an international health insurance plan but no longer has coverage in the US.

Jordynn Ison has recommendations for your next Thailand vacation. Don't miss the sunny beaches, snorkeling, or the Bangkok temple tours.

Aside from the typical tourist destinations, Ison has one particular piece of advice: A primary care checkup at the local hospital is absolutely worth the price.

"I wish people would realize how much easier it really is," she said. "I think some people get scared because they have it in their heads that if they don't speak the language and they're in another country, that it can't be good care. Honestly, my experience is the exact opposite."

Ison is a nurse living in Ohio. After graduating and working full-time in healthcare for a few years, she began solo traveling. She now splits her time between travel influencing and occasional nursing shifts in the Columbus area. She rarely books her own care near home — she said it's more affordable to get bloodwork on vacation.

The 27-year-old is part of a growing cohort of Americans seeking healthcare abroad. Medical tourism is gaining traction as people of all ages look for ways to avoid steep medical bills and insurance red tape in the US. It's a growing industry: The international health insurance market is projected to increase from nearly $32 billion in 2025 to $40 billion in 2030, with North Americans accounting for the largest share. The Centers for Disease Control reports that millions of Americans are traveling to places like Mexico and the Caribbean for everything from cosmetic surgery to cancer treatment.

Even for someone like Ison, who works in healthcare, booking appointments overseas feels "way cheaper."

"If you want to check your thyroid and things like that, which I think is so important, especially for women, I love getting that kind of thing done when I'm traveling," she said.

Ison no longer has US health insurance and gets most care abroad

As a 20-something, Ison is still figuring out what she wants for her career and finances. She said she qualified as a dependent on her parents' health insurance until age 26, briefly had health insurance through her Ohio hospital, then decided to scale back to contingent hours as a nurse and embrace content creation as a second job. She loves the new arrangement, but it left her in a tricky spot: She no longer qualified for employer-sponsored insurance.

Instead of returning to a full-time nursing schedule or buying a plan off the marketplace, Ison opted to fold her medical appointments into her travel itineraries. She has recently been to Vietnam, Turkey, Australia, Indonesia, South Korea, Thailand, and Japan. A $50-per-month international insurance plan covers her basic care in 180 countries, she said.

"I am in places for months at a time, so I just pay per month, and that pretty much covers everything. It's really easy to put bigger claims on that plan," she said, adding that she will often pay out-of-pocket for smaller charges like labs and dental cleanings instead of filing with insurance, "because it's like $15 or $20" in places like Bali.

Ison said that she typically pays less than $50 for most preventive care and basic tests overseas, especially in Asian countries. Even more involved care, like her recent dental crown procedure, was a fraction of the average US cost. Beyond the price difference, she said she can see providers in other countries much more quickly than in Ohio.

Of course, Ison said there can be risks to getting healthcare outside the US. She said she carefully reads reviews of clinics before booking and researches which providers speak English. Business Insider has heard similar stories from other travelers — most do thorough research before attending appointments, but the ease of international booking and low prices are common themes.

Ison isn't sure if she would ever move abroad permanently, but she doesn't plan to give up traveling — and medical tourism — anytime soon. Her latest trip included hiking and camping in Guatemala.

"I'm going to hike a very active volcano, so I'm really excited for that, she said." I've been wanting to do it for years."

• Restaurant chains from Taco Bell to Starbucks are experimenting with AI and other tech.
• The investment is intended to improve efficiency, protect margins, and drive traffic.
• However, there's a balance to strike between cutting-edge tech and hospitality-focused service.

Not long ago, a restaurant's edge was its secret sauce. Now, it might be its source code.

From McDonald's "Experience of the Future" initiative, which expanded the rollout of in-restaurant kiosks and app-based ordering, to Chipotle's Autocado, which automatically cuts and peels avocados, the trend is accelerating across the industry. Even Starbucks, long known for its human-centric "third place" positioning, recently introduced a generative AI tool for baristas called Green Dot to provide real-time support inside stores.

Whether they're selling pretzels, burgers, or lattes, major chains are building internal AI copilots, rearchitecting their data systems, and operating their restaurants like interconnected tech platforms. The new competitive edge isn't just menu innovation — it's technological infrastructure.

As Amir Hudda, CEO of restaurant tech company Qu, told Business Insider, for fast-casual and quick-service brands, a restaurant is both a retail storefront and a manufacturing center "in one room, where the product expires in 30 minutes or less."

Increasingly, that manufacturing center runs on software, and adapting to the shift isn't just riding the appeal of a shiny new tech cycle. It's a survival strategy.

Consumers are more price-sensitive. Labor costs are up. Delivery and mobile orders now flow in from multiple channels at once. And in a K-shaped economy, where affluent consumers keep spending while others pull back, restaurants are fighting to protect both traffic and margins.

Technology promises to both drive revenue and cut costs. But it also raises a deeper question: At what point does a restaurant stop feeling like a restaurant and start feeling like a vending machine?

Restaurant operators or project managers?

At Taco Bell, CEO Sean Tresvant describes digital operations as a pillar of the brand's "magic formula," alongside value and innovation. The chain is testing voice AI in hundreds of restaurants, with a focus on improving the experience for staff and consumers. Loyalty programming, he told Business Insider in February, "is going to continue to be a big story for us."

At GoTo Foods — parent company of brands including Auntie Anne's, Cinnabon, Jamba, and McAlister's — CEO Omer Gajial told Business Insider the company is investing in unified POS systems and customer data platforms to better segment and re-engage guests. Loyalty members already visit their favorite brands more often than non-members, so the next step, he said, is "having a high level of precision around the different offers made to the right customer segment."

AI tools are being carefully layered in, Gajial added, to improve operations before reshaping the guest experience.

Burger King has gone further, building its own internal AI system called BK Assistant. Chief digital officer Thibault Roux told Business Insider the company now uses AI to generate real-time "next best actions" for managers, like flagging out-of-stocks, surfacing performance metrics, and simplifying back-office work.

"We really want to emphasize the word 'assistant,'" Roux said. "This is meant to help them in their work, not replace them."

For Hudda, who helps restaurants implement tech solutions, that infrastructure shift has been a long time coming.

For decades, restaurants operated under a simple model: orders were placed, prepared, and consumed under one roof. Today, orders flow in from apps, delivery platforms, kiosks, and counters, all feeding a single kitchen that still functions like a high-speed manufacturing center. That shift created enormous complexity, but many brands didn't redesign their tech stacks to match it. Until now.

Hudda argues that modern restaurant tech isn't just about AI features, it's about unifying data at the core. Labor, loyalty, inventory, and delivery all ultimately depend on the point-of-sale system and the human staff operating it. If that foundation isn't resilient and unified, everything else becomes harder to manage.

"Without a strong core, layering on AI is just decoration," Hudda told Business Insider.

Hospitality is still the heart of the industry

Mike Perry, founder of creative agency Tavern, argues that many chains are moving so aggressively toward efficiency that they risk eroding what made customers love them in the first place.

"If you're going all tech and no human, you're just losing brand touch points," he said. In his view, restaurants aren't really selling food — they're selling hospitality. Strip away too many human interactions, and you're left with what he calls "a really, really fancy vending machine."

He points to Chick-fil-A as a counterexample: a brand that uses significant technology behind the scenes while keeping hospitality front and center in the drive-thru. "The tech backing is really making that all function," he said, "but the front end of that is person-to-person hospitality."

Wall Street is watching closely to see which approach wins.

Motley Fool analyst Asit Sharma says the K-shaped economy is squeezing traffic, particularly among price-sensitive diners, making automation and AI-driven efficiency more urgent than ever. And if the "wealth effect" fades, discretionary spending can soften quickly, further underscoring the need for brand loyalty and repeat visits.

Restaurants are investing in tech to protect margins and counting on loyalty to protect traffic; a balancing act that can't come at the expense of hospitality.

Because no matter how advanced the AI gets, someone still has to make your coffee — and make you want to come back tomorrow.

• The low cost of drones means they're being fired in huge numbers in the wars with Iran and Russia.
• Stopping them creates debris that has killed and injured civilians.
• The danger from shooting down drones and missiles isn't new, but it's now on a wider scale.

With wars in the Middle East and in Ukraine, a new era of drone warfare has arrived that's harming more civilians.

Skies are full of large, powerful, and lethal drones that are much cheaper than cruise and ballistic missiles. That means more of them are being launched and need to be stopped.

The United Arab Emirates, for example, said that as of Wednesday, it had intercepted far more drones than missiles: 876, compared to 183 ballistic and cruise missiles.

The process of defeating drones and missiles can cause problems of its own. There are more targets to intercept, and US allies have said that objects hit in flight have killed civilians and damaged homes.

"Large-scale drone war is a civilian risk because there are more projectiles in the fight than if it were just missiles, thus inherently creating more debris," Molly Campbell, a drone and counterdrone warfare expert at the Center for a New American Security, told Business Insider. It's not that drone debris inherently causes more damage than missile debris, but there can be so much more of it.

The use of drones in warfare is surging. Ukraine says Russia attacks with about 6,000 Geran drones modeled after Iran's Shaheds each month. A Shahed drone has a wingspan of roughly 8 feet and can carry a warhead up to 110 pounds.

Militaries want to stop attacks before they reach a military target, and that could be dangerous if they're flying over populated areas.

The problem is that "what goes up must come down," Mark Cancian, a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told BI.

A missile that hits its target will typically cause more damage than a drone due to its higher speed and larger warhead.

It's simply dangerous when "large numbers of drones are being intercepted over populated areas," as James Patton Rogers, a drone expert at the Cornell Brooks Tech Policy Institute, put it to BI.

Most drone interceptions in the Middle East appear to be kinetic, which involves a projectile launched to hit and destroy them. "Kinetic interceptions create debris, and the risk of collateral damage is real and particularly complex in the urban settings we're seeing in the Gulf," said Campbell, the drone expert at the CNAS think tank.

Interception comes with its own risks. It could merely deflect the threat or achieve a partial hit that divides the missile into fragments that leaves its warhead active.

The problem of debris from intercepting an attack isn't new, and it's long been a factor in missile defense. In Europe, for example, Douglas Barrie, an air warfare expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told BI that there has always been the knowledge of "if you try to intercept things at extended range, then you might be shooting something down effectively over somebody else's airspace," and cause damage to an ally.

The problem with drones, Barrie said, is that "there are so many of them that if you intercept them at comparatively short range and it's a kind of urban or a quasi-built-up environment, then some of them are going to fall in populated areas. It's inevitable."

Militaries can and do try to intercept attacks while causing minimal damage. Modern air defense systems track threats like drones and missiles to give air defense crews a sense of what they threaten and whether they should be countered.

Rogers said that civilians can often become better protected over time in a long conflict or war, as "a kind of bunkerisation begins to take place as societies adapt to the risk." In Ukraine, for example, people receive alerts about bombardment and move to hardened shelters. But that's also a negative outcome: "In that sense, drones don't just kill people, they take the life out of a city."

The low cost of drones enabled so many more of them to be used. Iran's Shahed one-way attack drones cost an estimated $20,000 to $50,000 each, for example. Missiles cost far more: hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars each.

The effects of large-scale drone warfare are clear in Ukraine, where drones are being used more than in any other conflict in history. Ukriane's military relies on them, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in January that Russia had fired more than 57,000 of its Shahed-style drones since the full-scale invasion began in 2022.

Russia's drones have devastated Ukraine. Many still caused harm even after being intercepted.

Both the Middle East and Ukraine show that "future conflicts will likely feature high-volume drone and missile attacks designed to saturate air defenses," meaning more of them flying over and near civilian areas, Campbell said.

Countries will need to stop these attacks, making the debris risk unavoidable, Campbell said.

"Debris from kinetic interceptions compounds this risk — but it remains far preferable to allowing an armed drone or missile to hit its target."

Sleep Awareness Week runs from March 8 to 14, and many mattress and bedding brands use the occasion to offer steep discounts on some of the best sleep products we've ever tested. Getting a good night's sleep is top of mind right now, and these savings are a practical push to invest in the tools that can quite literally transform your sleep.

Almost all of the best mattresses we've tested are on sale this week, meaning you can save hundred from brands like Leesa, Saatva, and Helix. Additionally, premium sheets and pillows from our favorite bedding brands like Coop Sleep Goods, Brooklinen, and Sijo are discounted for the occasion.

If your bed is already perfect, don't miss the chance to upgrade with our other sleep favorites, like Loftie alarm clocks and Levoit humidifiers. Additions like these make a serious difference in sleep quality and should not be underestimated, especially at deal prices.

Keep reading to find the best Sleep Week deals on mattresses, bedding, pajamas, and other sleep aids, and our other favorite sleep products.

The best Sleep Week deals of 2025

When it comes to Sleep Awareness Week, you can expect savings on mattresses, sheets, pillows, sunrise alarm clocks, and more. Here are some of the most noteworthy deals.

• Read more: best mattress, best pillow, best sheets, best comforter, best weighted blanket, best sunrise alarm clock

What is Sleep Awareness Week?

Sleep Week 2026 is an annual awareness campaign from the National Sleep Foundation to promote the importance of sleep for your overall health and wellbeing. It always coincides with the start of daylight saving time to highlight the impact of what losing just one hour of sleep can do to your health. Retailers and mattress and bedding brands take part by offering discounts on their products.

This year, Sleep Week takes places Sunday, March 8 to Saturday, March 14.

What type of deals should I expect to find during Sleep Week 2026?

Outside of Sleep Week, March is typically a slow season when it comes to sales, especially after the winter clearance sales that take place around President's Day. Most bedding basics, like sheets, pillows, comforters, and mattresses, are averaging discounts between 20 and 30% off.

During Sleep Week, you should prioritize buying more warm weather bedding that my not go on sale again until Memorial Day. It could also be a good time to invest in a wake up alarm clock to help you though the time change. We're also seeing extra discounts around sleep bundles, if you like to buy everything for your bed from one place.

In addition to bedding, you'll find savings on sleep adjacent products like air purifiers, fans, sleep trackers, furniture, and more.

• Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai will get a new performance-based equity pay package worth up to $692M.
• The new package ties Pichai's compensation partly to the financial performance of Waymo and Wing.
• Waymo has expanded to 10 markets, marking significant growth for Alphabet's autonomous service.

Alphabet's chief executive just got a new equity pay package that, for the first time, ties a chunk of his payout to Waymo, the company's robotaxi service.

In an SEC filing posted on Friday, the company awarded CEO Sundar Pichai a three-year equity cycle that could be worth up to $692 million if the CEO meets the board's performance targets.

Much of the package remains unchanged from the CEO's 2022 award, according to the filing. The new incentives revolve around the value of two of Alphabet's "Other Bets": Waymo and Wing Aviation, a drone delivery service.

According to the filing, Pichai could be awarded up to $260 million depending on the increase in Waymo's per-unit value over a three-year period, as determined by the compensation committee — essentially, the board's estimate of what a single Waymo equity unit is worth.

The company doesn't list specific operational milestones Pichai will have to reach. A spokesperson for Alphabet declined to comment.

In addition, the company granted the CEO Wing-linked equity units that could be worth up to $90 million, contingent on the company's per-unit value over the next three years.

Tying Pichai's compensation to Waymo and Wing is a signal that Alphabet no longer views the two entities as moonshot experiments but rather as assets representing valuable, scalable businesses

The board said in the filing that "incentivizing Mr. Pichai to focus his efforts on developing and scaling Alphabet's later stage Other Bets, such as Waymo and Wing," is in the best interests of Alphabet and its stakeholders.

Waymo, which began as a project inside Google's moonshot factory in 2009, has driven over 200 million autonomous miles to date. This year, the company expanded its commercial service to 10 markets, serving riders in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Orlando.

Wing is another moonshot factory venture that began in 2012. The company, which provides last-mile drone delivery services, became an independent Alphabet subsidiary in 2018. Wing announced in January that it would expand to more than 270 Walmart stores by 2027.

Pichai maintains a base salary of $2 million, unchanged since 2020, and will be awarded performance stock units (PSUs) tied to Alphabet's total shareholder returns relative to the S&P 100. The max value of the PSUs could be worth up to $252 million.

There's also a time-based equity package that will award Pichai $84 million, provided he stays with the company for the next three years.

• Panama City is vying for a free tunnel beneath the Panama Canal from Elon Musk's Boring Company.
• The city's mayor, Mayer Mizrachi, talked with POLITICO's Sophia Cai about the effort.
• Mizrachi envisions "a public space" where the city's residents and tourists can "live" the canal's history and travel beneath it.

Mayer Mizrachi, the 38-year-old mayor of Panama City, wants Elon Musk to build him a pedestrian tunnel under the Panama Canal. And Musk's Boring Company recently announced it just might.

Panama City this week was named one of 16 finalists — the only one outside the United States — in the company's Tunnel Vision challenge, which offers the winning municipality a free tunnel that can be used for freight, pedestrians, water, utilities or Loop — the electric, underground system that uses Tesla vehicles to transport people.

Mizrachi's idea is a 0.6 mile pedestrian tunnel under the Panama Canal, which would give city residents a chance to "live" its history and take advantage of the vital maritime trade route that is critical to the global economy. More recently, the canal has been the subject of geopolitical tensions as President Donald Trump threatened to take control of the waterway because, he said, the US was being ripped off by high fees and that it had come under Chinese influence. In February 2025, Panama withdrew from China's Belt and Road initiative.

The winner will be announced on March 23. Of the 16 finalists, half were in Tennessee or Texas, where the Boring Company is headquartered and where Mizrachi recently went to make his pitch. The project, if chosen, has the potential to tie together Mizrachi, the former DOGE leader, and the Panama Canal that Trump once fixated on seizing.

Mizrachi, the youngest mayor in the city's history, founded Criptext, a secure email platform, and, like Trump, has styled himself as an outsider. Like Musk, he came to office looking to cut government in the name of efficiency and insists he has succeeded.

In an interview with POLITICO, which is, along with Business Insider, part of the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network, Mizrachi said the tunnel proposal began as a last-minute response to a Boring Company social media post and ballooned from there.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How did the tunnel idea begin, and what exactly was your pitch to The Boring Company?

Mizrachi: I merely just ran into a tweet by the Boring Company in January, and they had this tunnel vision challenge, and they were offering a free tunnel up to a mile long anywhere around the world to the best idea. I did a visit in January to the existing tunnel that's being built for a subway station in Panama City, and I said, "What if we built a pedestrian tunnel crossing the canal with parks on either side? You can tell the story of how the canal was built and the history of the country, and the biodiversity."

City planners started working on a proposal, and they kind of really brought the plane in for a landing with a beautiful proposal, and we submitted that on the last minute of the last day.

What did you learn in Texas about how The Boring Company would approach this project?

Mizrachi: We met with Jim Fitzgerald, the VP for global, and we kind of took a 101 on how a Boring Company project works. Tunnels are freaking expensive. But it turns out that the way that they do it makes it actually feasible, and it's quite a wonder the way that they have put this together.

And as I told Jim, I said, "Listen, I know this is very preliminary, and here are many other projects that they're considering, but you know, it would be quite a marvel that 100 years ago, you know, the US built the canal, and then 100 years later, that they would build a tunnel that crosses the canal in a modern marvel of engineering in the way that they do it."

They reuse their tunneling machines. Whereas typically, the tunneling machines are built specifically for a given project, and then they get buried with the project.

What would this tunnel mean for Panama, especially at a moment when the canal is caught up in broader geopolitical tensions?

Mizrachi: First of all, Panamanians, we're really proud of the canal, its management, its history, but we seldom get to live it. So it's like the rest of the world uses the canal. But you know, Panamanians, we don't live the canal. You could go to the Miraflores Locks, and you go to the tourist center. You can maybe see a ship, but we don't really live it.

So the vision here is you create a public space where you integrate families, tourists, and they can cross the canal themselves with an underground tunnel that's 0.6 miles, the distance. It's quite short, and I can only imagine it being almost an educational experience, where you can have screens, very thin screens, because the space is not that big, but thin screens that are showing the story, the history of how the canal was built, the biodiversity of Panama, and then stats on the canal, the impact that it has on world trade, etc. It started as an idea, but it's shaping up. And I think it goes above my pay grade. I spoke to the president [of Panama] about this. This needs to be handled by a task force designated by the president in representation with the entire country.

Why do you think Panama City could beat out American cities for this project?

Mizrachi: Well, there's one very unique thing about this. They don't have a canal. The Boring Company has never bored underwater, much less crossing a canal. And I think it's part of the value proposition to show themselves as engineers, how far they can go with their mindset, with their methodology and their ingenuity.

Also it's a pedestrian tunnel. So it's not a loop tunnel that is managed and operated by the Boring Company. So if you think of Vegas, they operate the Loop itself. So, here, it's a lot more hands off. They build a tunnel, and they don't have to have an active operation.

You've drawn comparisons between your work and DOGE-style cost cutting in Washington. How do you describe your governing approach?

Mizrachi: I mean, honestly, I still consider myself an outsider. I am not subscribed to any political party, and I still very much employ the mindset of the tech entrepreneurial efficiency and try things before you scale things, which is uncommon in politics.

As soon as I came into office in July 2024, I realized people's money was being wasted on a scale that I was just shocked to see. So we were able to reduce the size of City Hall personnel by 50% so it used to have 6,500 people. We reduced it to about 3,500 people. And by all counts, City Hall is operating faster and better with more impact, tangible, visible impact, with less people. And also, we reduced the budget by about 32%, so we did the biggest budget reduction in the history of the city as well.

This story originally ran in POLITICO's West Wing Playbook and appears on Business Insider through the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network. The network publishes major stories from the Axel Springer network of publications, a worldwide group of news outlets that includes Business Insider.

Purchasing a new pair of glasses can get pricey, especially when you're shopping for prescription lenses, but online eyewear retailer Zenni can help ensure you're not sacrificing style for affordability. Zenni sells all sorts of glasses — including prescription frames, readers, blue-light blockers, and sunglasses — and the vendor has developed a fantastic reputation for its affordable prices. However, you can always save a little bit more on your next purchase by using one of the best Zenni promo codes we've tested.

Our editors have tested out all the leading online eyewear retailers, and Zenni consistently makes the cut as one of the top options thanks to its stylish, budget-friendly glasses. The brand's in-house frames deliver impressive quality for the price, while designer options from labels like Calvin Klein and Marc Jacobs prove you don't need to spend luxury-level prices to get a polished look. Zenni offers a massive selection of frames and lenses, including options for all ages and face types. For a closer look at why we like the retailer, you can check out our full Zenni review.

Zenni is already known as one of the more deal-friendly online eyeglass retailers, but savvy shoppers can get even lower prices by using one of the many active Zenni coupon codes on their next order. To help save you some time, we've rounded up and tested several codes below, with potential savings reaching up to 15% off at checkout.

Today's best Zenni discount codes

Previous Zenni promo codes

Are there any other Zenni sales running at the moment?

You can check out Zenni's sale page anytime for a full list of current markdowns on their frames. At the time of writing, Zenni is also running the following promotions.

• Follow our Instagram page and WhatsApp channel for more deals and buying guides

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The T20 World Cup is almost over, and the final match will see reigning champion India square off with New Zealand. Keep reading to learn where to watch the T20 World Cup online, no matter where you are in the world.

The 2026 T20 World Cup kicked off more than a year and a half after the 2024 tournament, which saw India walk away victorious after a final win over South Africa. The defending champions are back, and playing host this time around (alongside co-hosts Sri Lanka).

India defeated England in the semifinals to advance to the final, where they'll take on New Zealand and attempt to retain their title. New Zealand, who were bounced in the group stage at the 2024 tournament, have had a much better go of it this time around and beat out the undefeated South Africa in the semis to secure their place in the final.

No matter who you're rooting for or where you're cheering from, we've got you covered if you're hoping to tune in. Keep reading to learn how to watch the tournament, including free and global streaming options.

• See also: Where to watch Paralympics | Where to watch UFC | Where to watch Indian Wells

Where to watch T20 World Cup in the US

All T20 World Cup matches are available through Willow TV in the United States. Willow, the streaming home for all things cricket in the US, is available as a standalone streaming service for $10 a month. Cricket fans can also live stream Willow through Sling TV's Desi Binge Plus ($15 a month, $10 in the first month) plan or Dakshin Flex ($10 a month) plan. These offer the most bang for your buck because they include Willow HD, along with other channels. Matches featuring Team USA will be available for free, including through Willow's YouTube channel.

Where to watch T20 World Cup in the UK

The T20 World Cup is broadcast through Sky Sports in the UK, with coverage available through Sky Sports Cricket and Sky Sports Main Event. Subscriptions vary from plan to plan, but fans can also stream the matches with a NOW Sports subscription.

How to watch T20 World Cup from anywhere

The T20 World Cup is available to view and stream through different broadcasters and services around the world. In several countries (including some competing regions like the Netherlands and Italy), streams are available for free through the ICC.TV streaming platform. Users just need to create an account, and then they're all set to start streaming.

If you're away from the location where your streaming service works and you're still hoping to catch a match, you can access your go-to viewing options (including the free ones) from anywhere with the help of a VPN. Short for virtual private networks, VPNs are handy cybersecurity tools that allow people to temporarily alter the virtual locations on their electronic devices. They're especially popular among those looking to access their usual websites and apps while traveling abroad or hoping to upgrade their online privacy and security.

NordVPN is one of the best options on the market. It's user-friendly and features a massive selection of global servers. For a limited time, those who sign up for a two-year contract on a Plus or higher plan will get a free Amazon gift card thrown in. You can learn more about the service in our NordVPN review.

Note: The use of VPNs is illegal in certain countries and using VPNs to access region-locked streaming content might constitute a breach of the terms of use for certain services. Business Insider does not endorse or condone the illegal use of VPNs.

• Companies are seeking refunds from Trump's International Emergency Economic Powers Act tariffs.
• The Supreme Court ruled on February 20 that Trump's tariffs are illegal.
• These corporations filed lawsuits against the Trump administration to get refunds.

Top global companies want their money back from the Trump administration.

The Supreme Court ruled on February 20 that Trump's tariffs enacted under an emergency law, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, are illegal.

According to the Customs and Border Protection, more than $129 billion in tariff revenue has been collected under IEEPA as of December 10. Though SCOTUS did not explicitly order that the federal government pay back the revenue, some of the largest global corporations that have already paid billions in duties over the past year are suing for refunds — some, like Costco, filed even before the tariffs were struck down.

The Court of International Trade ordered on March 4 that the CBP must return all IEEPA tariffs. The CBP responded to the order in a court filing on March 6, stating that it cannot immediately comply due to constraints on its existing technology and manpower. The CBP said in the filing that it could begin issuing refunds by late April after revamping its technology.

Typically, duties paid to the CBP undergo a process called liquidation within a year of the entry of the goods in question. Once liquidation occurs, the chances of getting any money back become harder, though one attorney told Business Insider last week that it is "not an unsolvable problem."

From Costco to Toyota, here are some of the largest global companies that want their tariffs refunded.

Costco

Costco is seeking a "full refund" of tariffs it paid under the IEEPA, arguing the levies were imposed illegally and could soon become unrecoverable.

In a lawsuit filed with the Court of International Trade in December 2025, Costco's lawyers argued that the law, first enacted in 1977, has never authorized tariffs.

"The text of IEEPA does not use the word 'tariff' or any term of equivalent meaning," the company wrote.

The company also said in the complaint that it filed its own suit because even if the Supreme Court ultimately rules the tariffs unlawful, importers are not guaranteed refunds without separate court judgments. Costco said that its imports could begin entering "liquidation" as early as mid-December, which is a customs process that could permanently close the door on refunds. Customs has already declined to extend that timeline, Costco said in the suit.

Costco did not disclose how much it has paid in duties.

Toyota

Subsidiaries of the Toyota Group, Toyota Tsusho America, Toyota Tsusho Canada, and Toyota Tsusho Nexty Electronics America filed a lawsuit in November 2025 to secure refunds.

"And this action is necessary now because the entries for which Plaintiffs paid tariffs imposed under authority of IEEPA will begin to become liquidated and final as a matter of law by January 31, 2026," the companies wrote in the complaint.

"Plaintiffs seek relief from the impending final liquidations to ensure that their right to a complete refund is not jeopardized," they added.

The auto sector has been among the industries most exposed to Trump's tariffs, which added duties on vehicles as well as on steel and aluminum. In May 2025, Toyota said that the higher import and export rates could cost the company about $1.3 billion over a two-month period.

BYD

BYD's lawsuit marks the first from a Chinese carmaker against Trump's tariffs.

The EV giant filed the suit on February 9 and detailed nine executive orders related to trade that affected the company, including tariffs on cars, auto parts, aluminum, steel, and exports from China.

In the complaint, BYD wrote that it is seeking a refund of "all IEEPA tariffs paid to date" and "all IEEPA tariffs that may be paid in the future."

The company also said that aside from China, its imports into the US from Canada, Germany, Mexico, and Poland were also affected.

The Chinese carmaker does not sell passenger cars in the US, but its business here includes buses, commercial vehicles, batteries, energy storage systems, and solar panels. According to its website, the company's truck plant in Lancaster, California, employs 750 workers.

Goodyear Tire & Rubber

On December 10, 2025, Goodyear Tire & Rubber filed its complaint and request for relief, and detailed how tariffs, especially the ones imposed on China, which changed nearly a dozen times, affected the company.

"Where CBP acts in a ministerial capacity (i.e., without discretion) in imposing a duty, the entry's liquidation cannot be protested," wrote Goodyear in its complaint as to why the company is asking the court to block liquidation.

Goodyear sources a significant portion of its raw materials from Southeast Asia, where the rubber plant is widely commercially grown. According to Goodyear's website, the company's manufacturing facilities are located across 23 countries, including China, the US, Germany, Poland, and Thailand.

Alcoa

Alcoa Corp, one of the world's top producers of aluminum, bauxite, and alumina, filed a complaint for tariff refunds on November 26, 2025.

This case is one of several dozen that were consolidated with AGS Company Automotive Solutions v. United States Customs and Border Protection, which became the lead case regarding IEEPA duty liquidation as of December 2025.

As of June 2025, tariffs on most steel and aluminum imports increased to 50%.

FedEx

FedEx filed a lawsuit on February 23 with the Court of International Trade for a "full refund" of all tariffs it paid under the overturned IEEPA, becoming the first known large corporation to do so since SCOTUS made its tariff ruling.

"The Supreme Court also confirmed that challenges to the IEEPA tariffs fall 'within the exclusive jurisdiction of' the Court of International Trade," FedEx wrote in the complaint.

"Thus, this Court has jurisdiction and authority to order remedial relief and refunds of IEEPA duties paid by importers," FedEx added.

The global logistics company did not specify the exact amount of refund it is seeking. According to its website, it processes 17 million packages per day through hundreds of countries.

Nintendo

Nintendo is suing the federal government over tariffs and seeking a "prompt refund, with interest" for duties it says it paid under IEEPA. It filed the suit in March, shortly after SCOTUS deemed the tariffs illegal.

The gaming giant filed the complaint on Friday at the Court of International Trade.

Nintendo announced launch details for the Nintendo Switch 2 on the same day Trump levied sweeping tariffs on April 9. Nintendo delayed the preorder as a result, and the company had to raise prices on several products, including the original Switch game console.

LG just took the wraps off its 2026 OLED TVs: the C6 and G6. They're up for preorder now and will start shipping later this month. I got to see both in person during a visit to LG's US headquarters in New Jersey, and they left a strong first impression.

The C6 is LG's new midrange OLED, replacing last year's C5. As you'd expect, it gets a typical year-over-year boost in picture processing. But here's where things get interesting. For 2026, LG is offering a submodel called the C6H, and it's the TV I'm most excited about. The C6H is available in 77- and 83-inch sizes, and it uses the brighter panel that LG usually saves for its pricier G series. So basically, you're getting a taste of flagship-level brightness at a lower cost. Then there's the premium G6 itself, which looks like a solid upgrade over the already-impressive G5.

I'm looking forward to spending more time with each TV soon, but for now, here's a closer look at the LG C6, C6H, and G6 with everything you need to know before preordering.

LG C6 OLED 4K TV price and specs

If you've followed LG's OLED lineup for a while, you know the C Series is usually the brand's top value. Every year, LG gives it modest upgrades with a little more brightness and better processing, while keeping the stuff that makes the best OLED TVs so great in the first place: perfect black levels, infinite contrast, and wide viewing angles. The new C6 follows suit.

The 42-, 48-, 55-, and 65-inch versions all use a standard WOLED panel like last year's C5. The big change is the jump to LG's new Alpha 11 AI Processor Gen3, which supports 12-bit processing. That should mean cleaner gradients and fewer issues with color banding or near-black posterization. Basically, dark scenes and subtle color transitions should look smoother and less blocky. I also expect a small bump in brightness over the C5, but nothing dramatic. Otherwise, this is very much an evolution, not a reinvention.

Pricing at launch is the same as the C5 was last year. But here's the catch: you can find the C5 heavily discounted now. So, most people shopping for a 65-inch OLED or smaller are probably better off grabbing a cheaper C5 while it's still in stock. However, things get more interesting above 65 inches. That's where LG has introduced a new submodel, the C6H, that offers more notable improvements over last year's C5.

LG C6H OLED 4K TV price and specs

The C6H is a variant of the LG C6, available only in 77- and 83-inch screen sizes. On the surface, it looks like its smaller counterparts and shares most of the same specs. But there's one big difference: the C6H uses a Tandem OLED panel instead of a standard WOLED panel.

Tandem panels are usually reserved for LG's pricier G Series TVs, so seeing this tech trickle down to the C Series — even if it's just for the largest sizes — is exciting. The big advantage is brightness. Tandem OLED can get significantly brighter than traditional WOLED, which means punchier HDR highlights, more vibrant images, and better performance in bright rooms where glare can wash out the picture.

I'll need more hands-on time to get exact measurements, but the brightness boost was visible when I compared a 77-inch C6H to a 65-inch C6. I don't expect the C6H to match the new flagship G6, but it should land closer to last year's G5 in performance. And considering the G5 was one of the best TVs I tested in 2025, that's saying something.

Honestly, the C6H is the model I'm most eager to spend more time with. If it really delivers near-G Series performance at a lower price, it could be one of the most compelling big-screen OLEDs of 2026.

LG G6 OLED 4K TV price and specs

The G6 is the most impressive TV LG has ever made, and it's poised to be one of the very best TVs for picture quality in 2026. It offers a few key upgrades over last year's already impressive G5, and its advanced capabilities make it a top pick for home theater enthusiasts.

The G6 uses LG's newest Tandem OLED panel, which the company says delivers about a 20% bump in brightness over the G5. It also adds an upgraded polarizer filter to reduce reflections and glare without sacrificing a glossy screen. Seeing it in person, both upgrades were obvious.

Side by side with the G5, the G6 pushed brighter, more detailed highlights, giving HDR scenes more punch and a look that felt closer to what filmmakers intend. With the lights on, reflections on the G6 were also more subdued than on the G5. The G6 still isn't quite as glare-resistant as a matte screen OLED like Samsung's S95F, but there's a trade-off: matte panels can make black levels look hazy. The G6 keeps OLEDs' deep black levels, even in a bright room, which is a big win.

I also got a look at what the new Alpha 11 AI Processor Gen3 can do. LG played a clip from the movie "The Green Knight," which is particularly tricky for many TVs to display properly. The dark scene features the main character diving into murky water under intense red lighting. The G5 had issues here, with visible color banding and flickering shadows. The G6 wasn't flawless, but it handled the scene much more smoothly and naturally. Since banding was one of the G5's few weaknesses, this is a meaningful improvement.

But while these are the kinds of upgrades that home theater nerds like me geek out over, they're unlikely to be as noticeable to casual viewers. With that in mind, casual viewers are better off saving cash with a C Series model or grabbing a discounted G5 while it's still around. I'll need more time with the TV to make a full verdict, but based on what I've seen so far, the G6 looks like a true flagship for people willing to pay top dollar for top-tier picture quality.

Note: The 97-inch G6 does not use a tandem panel, so its brightness capabilities are not on par with its smaller siblings.

• The February jobs report shocked markets, with 92,000 job losses, compared to forecasts of 55,000 hires.
• The labor market is stumbling at a time when markets are also worried about inflation from the Iran war.
• The Dow lost 450 points, and the Nasdaq fell nearly 2% in the session.

Stocks tanked again on Friday, with bad news in the job market piling on to fears about surging oil prices amid the Iran war.

The US lost 92,000 jobs in February, badly missing estimates of 55,000 payroll additions. The unemployment rate rose to 4.4%.
The year has been marked by a spate of layoff announcements in tech, most recently from Block. Meanwhile, some sectors that been bright spots for hiring saw payrolls decline. Healthcare lost 28,000 jobs last month, though the sector was impacted by a strike of workers from the Kaiser Permanente hospital system.

Meanwhile, oil prices are still rising as the US-Iran conflict escalates, sparking even more economic uncertainty and predictions for inflation to spike.

Brent crude spiked 9% to above $92.80 a barrel, while US oil jumped 12% to around $91.

Investors have begun to fear a stagflationary scenario as higher oil prices dent economic activity while pushing up consumer prices. Gas prices at the pump have already spiked this week.

Here's where major indexes stood at the 4 p.m. ET closing bell on Friday:

• S&P 500: 6,740.02, down 1.33%
• Dow Jones Industrial Average: 47,501.55, down 1% (-453.19 points)
• Nasdaq Composite: 22,387.68, down 1.59%
  
  Jeff Schulze, head of economic and market strategy at ClearBridge Investments, said that February jobs data creates a highly negative outlook for the US labor market, which he views as stuck in a dangerous place.
  
  "Today's release puts the Fed between a rock and a hard place as the labor market remains at stall speed but inflationary pressures are building due to both events in the Middle East and continued firm wages, which came in 10 bps ahead of expectations this morning," he said.
  
  Brad Conger, chief investment officer at wealth management firm Hirtle Callaghan, noted that while he doesn't think AI is replacing jobs, layoffs are funding companies' new AI expansions.
  
  "February's employment report resumed the trend of a weakening labor market from last year," he stated. "Block's (XYZ) decision to lay off 40% of its workforce is a sign of the job bloat in the economy."
  
  Brad Smith, a portfolio manager from Janus Henderson
  acknowledged the pain of the February jobs report for markets, though he was slightly more optimistic in his assessment.
  
  "While a negative sign for the labor market narrative, there are one time events in the month that make the print less useful," he noted." Labor strikes, adverse weather and benchmark methodology revisions all cloud the signal from this single data point. Averaging the strong print from January and this print shows a labor market that is tepid and below replacement in line with the "low hire low fire" economy."
  
  

• Saks Global is closing more stores, including locations of its flagship brand and Neiman Marcus.
• In January, Saks filed for bankruptcy after failing to pay vendors for over a year.
• The company says it is now focusing on the luxury sector.

Saks Global, the bankrupt company behind Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, and Bergdorf Goodman, is continuing to close stores.

On March 6, the company announced it will close another 12 Saks Fifth Avenue and three Neiman Marcus locations. The news came after a February announcement that it would close eight Saks Fifth Avenue stores and one Neiman Marcus, as well as nearly all of its Saks Off Fifth and Neiman Marcus Last Call locations.

Following the closures, only 13 Saks Fifth Avenue locations will remain open, according to a Friday release. Thirty-two Neiman Marcus stores will continue operating, the company said.

"Our go-forward store portfolio will comprise the best performing and most desirable locations in markets with the highest concentration of luxury customers," Geoffroy van Raemdonck, Saks Global's new CEO, said in a statement announcing the closures.

The announcement of the latest wave of closures came with some good news for the company: More than 500 brands have resumed shipping to Saks' retailers after the company had struggled with inventory for months.

"The Company has reached or nearly reached agreements with more than 175 brands across all categories," the statement said.

In January, Saks Global filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection following a year marked by missed payments and restructuring. The company owes hundreds of millions of dollars to brands like Chanel and LVMH.

As part of its turnaround plan, Saks said it was "sharpening its focus on luxury" and closing the majority of its discount store, it sais in January.

Saks Off 5th's website, a separate legal entity from Saks Global, is hosting a liquidation sale and will shut down.

Earlier in January, Saks shut down a facility in Florida and said it would lay off at least 74 positions.

Here is the full list of Saks Fifth Avenue, Saks Off 5th, Neiman Marcus, and Last Call locations closing:

Saks Fifth Avenue locations closing:

1. The Summit (Birmingham, AL)

2. Polaris Fashion Place (Columbus, OH)

3. American Dream (East Rutherford, NJ)

4. Shops at Canal Place (New Orleans, LA)

5. Bala Plaza (Philadelphia, PA)

6. Biltmore Fashion Park (Phoenix, AZ)

7. Stony Point Fashion Park (Richmond, VA)

8. Utica Square (Tulsa, OK)

9. Beachwood Place (Beachwood, OH)

10. Wisconsin Avenue (Chevy Chase, MD)

11. Michigan Avenue (Chicago, IL)

12. South Coast Plaza (Costa Mesa, CA)

13. Las Vegas Boulevard (Las Vegas, NV)

14. Long Island (Huntington Station, NY)

15. The Gardens on El Paseo (Palm Desert, CA)

16. Triangle Town Center (Raleigh, NC)

17. North Star Mall (San Antonio, TX)

18. The Mall at University Town Center (Sarasota, FL)

19. Plaza Frontenac (St. Louis, MO)

20. Tysons Galleria (Tysons, VA)

Neiman Marcus locations closing:

1. Copley Place (Boston, MA)

2. Ala Moana (Honolulu, HI)

3. Topanga (Canyon Park, CA)

4. Westchester (White Plains, NY)

Saks Off 5th locations closing

1. Mebane (Mebane, NC)

2. Charleston (Charleston, SC)

3. Grand Prairie (Grand Prairie, TX)

4. Ala Moana (Honolulu, HI)

5. Petaluma (Petaluma, CA)

6. Glendale (Glendale, AZ)

7. Tucson (Tucson, AZ)

8. Merrimack (Merrimack, NH)

9. Riverhead (Riverhead, NY)

10. Clinton (Clinton, CT)

11. North Atlanta (Woodstock, GA)

12. Aurora Chicago (Aurora, IL)

13. Dallas Park (Dallas, TX)

14. Northbrook (Northbrook, IL)

15. Eagan (Eagan, MN)

16. Columbus (Columbus, OH)

17. San Diego (San Diego, CA)

18. Camarillo (Camarillo, CA)

19. Ontario (Ontario, CA)

20. Milpitas (Milpitas, CA) 21. State Street (Chicago, IL)

22. Stamford High Ridge (Stamford, CT)

23. Greenburgh (Greenburgh, NY)

24. Arundel (Hanover, MD)

25. Hawaii (Honolulu, HI)

26. Palm Desert (Palm Desert, CA)

27. Scottsdale (Scottsdale, AZ)

28. Phoenix (Chandler, AZ)

29. Eastchester (Eastchester, NY)

30. Bridgewater (Bridgewater, NJ)

31. Clarksburg (Clarksburg, MD)

32. Deer Park (Deer Park, NY)

33. Shrewsbury (Shrewsbury, NJ)

34. Elizabeth (Elizabeth, NJ)

35. Boston (Somerville, MA)

36. Wrentham (Wrentham, MA)

37. Orlando Vineland (Vineland, FL)

38. Naples Park Shore (Naples, FL)

39. Orlando (Orlando, FL)

40. Tampa (Lutz, FL)

41. Ellenton (Ellenton (Tampa), FL)

42. Destin (Destin, FL)

43. Charlotte (Charlotte, NC)

44. Atlanta (Woodstock, GA)

45. Hilton Head (Bluffton, SC)

46. Rosemont (Rosemont, IL)

47. Cypress (Cypress, TX)

48. Sugarland (Sugarland, TX)

49. Katy (Katy, TX)

50. Costa Mesa (Costa Mesa, CA)

51. Beverly Connection (Los Angeles, CA)

52. Woodland Hills (Woodland Hills, CA)

53. Las Vegas N (Las Vegas, NV)

54. Livermore (Livermore, CA)

55. San Antonio (San Antonio, TX)

56. Cabazon (Cabazon, CA)

57. Las Vegas S (Las Vegas, NV)

Last Call locations closing:

1. Sawgrass Mills (Sunrise, FL)

2. Desert Hills Premium Outlets (Cabazon, CA)

3. Grapevine Mills (Grapevine, TX)

4. San Marcos Premium Outlets (San Marcos, TX)

5. The Outlets at Orange (Orange, CA)

While on maternity leave last year, I decided to learn how to weight lift. Twice a week I would take my son to a parent-baby gym class. He played with his toys, while I picked up a barbell.

One of the most important things I learnt about safe weightlifting is that your feet need to be planted firmly on the ground, as if you're barefoot. So when I asked my local moms' Whatsapp group for the best barefoot shoe recommendations, and the answer was unanimous: Try Vivobarefoot, and you'll never look back.

Training "barefoot" took some getting used to

To me, barefoot shoes conjure up an image of those weird-looking Vibram Five Finger shoes, with individual toes which look like gloves for feet. When my fitness-obsessed friend started wearing them about 15 years ago, I teased him endlessly.

But barefoot shoes have come leaps and bounds since then. The Vivobarefoot Primus Lite IV is light, slimline and actually quite subtle in appearance. My black pair are barely distinguishable from my other sneakers. When I wear them to the gym, I feel light on my feet, and I feel firmly on the ground when I'm lifting a heavy barbell.

My feet are quite wide in the toe box, and I often have to size up in shoes to get a comfortable fit. The great thing about Vivobarefoot is that the toe box is already wide and flat, so I they fit me true-to-size with enough room to spread out my toes.

They can help you strengthen your foot muscles and improve balance

According to a study conducted by Vivobarefoot, people who wore its barefoot shoes for a six month period saw their foot strength improve by 60%. I've definitely found them to help my sense of balance. My feet and my legs feel stronger, and they've also helped my posture — which thanks to a long-term desk job and five years of picking up small children, is less than perfect.

I enjoyed wearing my Vivobarefoot shoes to the gym so much that I soon started wearing them out and about. Before I knew it, I was wearing them on the school drop-off, out shopping, and even to work.

They're not my most stylish shoes, but I've worn them continuously for six months

I'm quite fashion conscious, and although I probably wouldn't wear these bare-legged with a mini skirt in the summer, I have no issues wearing them casually. They're kind of nerdy looking — and nowhere near as trendy as No Bull — but for me, the health benefits outweigh their aesthetic value.

Starting at about $150 dollars a pair, Vivobarefoot are well-priced for the barefoot shoe category. If you're not bothered about getting the latest model, you can often pick up a pair from a previous collection during sales, too. You're also doing your body some good by wearing them, which has to count for something.

FAQs on barefoot shoes

What are barefoot shoes?

Barefoot shoes have thin, flexible soles, minimal cushioning, zero heel-to-toe drop, and wide toe boxes that allow your toes to splay naturally. This recreates the sensation of walking barefoot by engaging the nerve endings on your feet.

What does "zero-drop" mean?

Zero-drop means there's no height difference between the heel and the forefoot of the shoe. This keeps your foot level with the ground.

What are the benefits of barefoot shoes?

The design can help strengthen foot muscles and ankles over time, promoting better balance and a more natural stride. I also like them because my feet are wider in the toe box, and they make me feel more grounded than heavily cushioned sneakers.

Can barefoot shoes help with plantar fasciitis?

It depends. You may find that the more you strengthen your foot muscles, the less pain you feel. Others may find their symptoms aggravated by the lack of cushioning. See our guide to the best shoes for plantar fasciitis for our top tested picks.

The bottom line

If you have wide feet, are serious about weight training, or you want to work on your posture and strength, Vivobarefoot are a great value barefoot shoe option. They might not be the most stylish footwear, but your body will thank you for wearing them.

Underwear can play a big role in your daily comfort and confidence, so choosing the right pair (instead of whatever's on the shelf at the store) can mean the difference between feeling cool, comfortable, and fully supported and the discomfort of constant readjustments, chafing, and tight elastic waistbands.

As a men's style editor, I've spent years of my career actively testing underwear from well known brands and smaller startups alike, writing reviews of the best ones, and coordinating testing among our team to get additional feedback. Our team's top pick for the best men's underwear brand is Tommy John, and more specifically, we love the Tommy John Cool Cotton boxer briefs because they're super supportive despite the extraordinarily light and breathable material.

Below, you'll find our recommendations for the very best men's underwear brands and which pairs are the most comfortable, based on many years of testing. To shop for more specific underwear styles, check out our buying guides to the best boxer briefs for men and the best boxers for men.

Learn more about how the Reviews Team tests and researches style products.

Our top 3 picks for the best men's underwear

Best overall: Tommy John

You know that one pair of underwear you get a little bit excited to put on when it makes its way to the top of the underwear drawer? For me, that's Tommy John.

I've tried just about every noteworthy pair, and Tommy John has the best boxer briefs for men to surpass them all.

While the brand's startup buzz may have dwindled somewhat, it still remains our top pick for a specific reason: the amazing fit. Boxer briefs are my go-to underwear style, and Tommy John's have a slightly longer-than-average inseam length. This eliminates that awful feeling of riding up or chafing. There's plenty of room and support in all the right places.

Secondly, the Cool Cotton material is incredibly comfortable against the skin, doesn't cause irritations like polyester, and holds up well in the wash. If you like trunks, briefs, or relaxed fit boxers, Tommy John has all of those, too. They are relatively expensive, but are well worth the upgrade.

Read more in our full Tommy John review here.

Best support: Saxx

While several of the best men's underwear brands focus on either comfort or fun patterns, Saxx Underwear manages to do both exceptionally well, and its Vibe Xtra Soft Comfort Boxer Brief is the best example.

The highlight of the brand's comfort technology is the BallPark Pouch, which adds support, reduces chafing, controls moisture, and prevents you from constantly having to readjust. For most men, there's not much more you can ask for in underwear.

You'll find basic solid colors as well as cool patterns, bright colors, and themes. If you like to have fun with your underwear, you'll find plenty of options to fill your drawer with.

Read more in our full Saxx review here.

Best odor-resistant: Mack Weldon

Using a combination of Pima cotton, Ionic+, and Lycra, the Mack Weldon Silver Boxer Briefs are made with some of the highest quality materials for the best men's underwear available.

While Supima cotton and Lycra are common in soft and comfortable clothes, the inclusion of pure silver in Ionic+ is rather important. Silver is naturally anti-microbial, so it helps rid garments of bacteria, including the types that cause odor. Learn about Ionic+ technology here.

To put into perspective how useful silver can be, similar technology has been used in clothing for NASA astronauts, Olympic athletes, and US Special Forces.

Although astronauts probably have to wear their gear for much longer than you have to wear your underwear, you'll still get great use out of them in the real world. Whether you work super long days, you live a high-intensity athletic lifestyle, or you're on a camping or hunting trip where showers are few and far between, you'll get through it without stinking.

In addition to odor protection, the Silver Boxer Briefs are very comfortable thanks to a no-roll waistband, which is designed to prevent digging into the skin, and targeted mesh zones to keep high-heat areas nice and cool.

Read more in our full Mack Wheldon review here.

Best value: All Citizens

There's a lot more than a person's waist size that goes into finding comfortable underwear, and All Citizens recognizes that.

Perhaps named after its inclusivity, All Citizens has underwear for almost every size and shape. Although I'm not very tall, I went with the longer fit because I hate when my underwear rides up, and I've come to like longer pairs from other brands.

My first impression was that they were substantially better quality than most other brands. They're pretty thick, but not to the point of being uncomfortable or hot. I could tell they'd be able to hold up well to countless washes and wears, and after several months, they've done exactly that.

All Citizens also takes support seriously with its Paradise Pocket. While all underwear brands are gradually becoming more concerned with support, All Citizens has arguably the most advanced system to keep your business in place. Most pouch designs are more or less two extra pieces of fabric, but the Paradise Pocket is a comfortable compartment that keeps you from hanging all over the place.

At $18, they're a bit more affordable than other premium men's underwear, and there's no compromise in quality.

I'd recommend these to anyone who wants an affordable option, but wants a bit more quality than a budget multi-pakck.

Best budget multi-pack: Hanes

Founded in 1900, Hanes, for all intents and purposes, pretty much invented modern underwear. Love or hate underwear, we'd have our work cut out for ourselves if we were to claim not to have some deep appreciation for this brand.

These days, Hanes offers every kind of boxer, brief, and boxer brief you could imagine with dozens of styles. You'll find everything from high-tech synthetic athletic materials to the good old-fashioned cotton the brand was built on. The standard Cotton Boxer Brief 1- Pack is our favorite choice if you're on a budget.

This brand is timeless and it's not going anywhere soon. Plus, as some of the most affordable options for the best men's underwear you can buy, it's a good way to fill out your drawer when a 10-pack of Hanes is still cheaper than single pairs from the popular direct-to-consumer startups on our list.

Best subscription: MeUndies

If you're tired of boring tighty whities (or other basic underwear options), MeUndies is the easiest way to liven up your underwear drawer with a subscription service.

Every month, you get to choose your preferred style, size, and whether you want designs that are Adventurous, Classic, or Bold. And if you and your partner want to match, you can find the same patterns and colors in a number of other styles.

The brand hosts frequent sales events, offering opportunities to save on the best men's underwear and the MeUndies loungewear we've tried and loved. With a membership, you gain early access to these kinds of exclusive offers. MeUndies isn't the most advanced when it comes to material and fit choices, but the options that are available are super comfortable.

Best novelty designs: Shinesty

Shinesty is making underwear more fun with bold colors and novelty patterns. The brand offers seasonal designs for holidays and other themed designs you'll love. Not only can you liven up your underwear drawer, but you'll also be able to do the same for your partner with match pairs.

While Shinesty is one of the best underwear brands to shop for uniqueness, they're also extremely comfortable. Thanks to the brand's proprietary Ball Hammock technology, you'll stay secure and comfortable all day long.

Shinesty offers styles to fit your preferences. You'll find everything from boxer briefs and longer boxer briefs to trunks and briefs.

Best sustainable: Organic Basics

Made with recycled nylon and elastane, Organic Basics estimates that compared with traditional methods using virgin materials, production of its "SilverTech" style conserves some 21 gallons of water and prevents 4.2 pounds of CO2 and one ounce of waste from entering the atmosphere and earth. We can't quite confirm this, but you can take a virtual tour of the brand's factories and learn more about its practices.

SilverTech, which we find to be Organic Basics' most interesting style of men's underwear, is in fact infused with silver, which is supposed to quell odor and bacteria buildup. In our experience, it helps a good bit, but maybe not quite as well as others we've tried. The real win here is the comfort these skivvies offer, and since I've had them, they've easily been some of my most-worn pairs. A more relaxed boxer brief, they hold everything more or less in place while sitting flush so I can wear them with just about any pair of pants.

Organic Basics offers a couple of fabrics beyond SilverTech, and unlike that line, they're much more on the organic side: Tencel (a wood pulp-based cellulose that's more breathable and less shrinkable and wrinkle-inclined than cotton), and organic cotton.

How we tested the best men's underwear

The best way to test underwear is to simply wear them in your everyday life. There's a long list of brands making men's underwear brands and for the last 8 years, I have been actively testing boxer briefs. My testing has become so in-depth, and sample units have become so abundant, that I have not had to purchase underwear myself.

I've taken into consideration important factors like comfort, performance, inclusivity, accuracy of sizes and fits, durability with wears and washes, and price. While most underwear on this list is more expensive than a basic 6-pack, you can rest assured they meet a certain level of quality and longevity in your closet.

• Billy Joel sold the last piece of his massive estate in Centre Island, New York, for $28.75 million.
• The property went on the market in 2023 for $49 million and was relisted in 2024.
• Altogether, the 26-acre estate has four distinct houses and over 2,000 feet of private beachfront.

Billy Joel is moving out.

The main piece of the "Piano Man" singer's Long Island estate just sold for $28.75 million, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Laffey International Realty, the home's realty company, announced in a post on Instagram earlier this week.

The 26-acre waterfront estate, known as "MiddleSea," in Centre Island, New York, first went on the market in 2023 after completing a five-year renovation project.

The original asking price for the whole property, which is comprised of four distinct houses, was $49 million. After going on the market in 2023, it was relisted in 2024 with additional renovations.

The estate's sale was eventually broken into pieces, with the gatehouse selling separately for $7 million last year. This sale, combined with the recent sale of the main house and two adjacent lots, totals $35.7 million, The New York Times reported.

It comes nearly a year after Joel had to step away from performing after being diagnosed with a rare brain disorder. The lifelong New Yorker is making progress, even offering a short surprise performance with a tribute band in January.

His now-former estate, MiddleSea, has quite the backstory. Joel first spotted the waterfront estate as a teenager while harvesting oysters to earn extra money to support his working-class family.

"I'll never live in a house like that," he thought to himself at the time, The New York Times reported in 2024.

He was wrong. Joel ended up purchasing the estate in 2002, fulfilling one of his lyrics written more than half a century ago: "I wish that I was back in Oyster Bay / Takin' it easy, oh yeah." Forbes reported in 2019 that his net worth was an estimated $52 million.

Take a look inside the waterfront property in Centre Island, New York.

The estate is located in Oyster Bay in the town of Centre Island, New York.

The collection of homes is nestled on 26 acres of pristine Long Island real estate.

Joel nicknamed the property MiddleSea due to its positioning in the middle of the sea, with Oyster Bay on one side and Cold Spring Harbor on the other, The New York Times reported.

He also named the property MiddleSea in honor of his favorite instrument.

The Times reported that Joel also named the property after "middle C," the centermost C note on a piano.

"If it's not for me being able to take piano lessons, I probably would never have been able to afford a high-flying property like this. So, I named it after the first note which I learned on the piano, which was C," Joel said.

Joel's property was made up of four distinct homes, which were ultimately sold separately.

One problem with selling the home was its high taxes. The annual property tax bill had reached over half a million dollars, The Times reported, diminishing the property's allure to potential buyers.

The sale was made easier by selling the estate in pieces, and ultimately, the entire property sold for $14 million below the 2023 asking price.

In its entirety, the property is made up of four distinct homes — the main house, the beach house, the guest house, as well as the gate house, which sold last year. A maintenance house also sits on the property.

The property's main house is a 20,000-square-foot red-brick mansion.

The home has five ensuite bedrooms and a primary suite with two full bathrooms and a private balcony that overlooks the water.

The foyer features black-and-white marble tiling, a chandelier, and 30-foot ceilings.

The grand staircase leading up to the rest of the property is also made from white marble and features an ornate wrought-iron railing.

The main kitchen has two large islands and art deco-style light fixtures.

The islands are made with Calacatta Caldia Marble.

The kitchen's appliances are similarly high-end, from the Waterstone faucets and bronze-and-gold farm-style sink to the Officine Gullo Firenze Oven, which can cost upward of $20,000, and Sub-Zero refrigerator.

There's also a chef's kitchen with stainless-steel appliances and surround backsplash.

The chef's kitchen provides ample space for cooking and accommodating large groups of guests.

The "Scenes From an Italian Restaurant" singer once said he "makes a great pasta" and "it's probably my favorite food," Page Six reported.

There's also a formal dining room with a large white marble fireplace.

The formal dining room has large paned windows that overlook the property and crown molding on the ceiling.

The main house's backyard has a waterfall feature and access to a floating dock and a boat ramp.

The main house's manicured lawns overlook the water.

The guesthouse has three bedrooms and five bathrooms.

The guesthouse is 3,839 square feet, has an attached four-car garage, and was newly renovated before the property was relisted in 2024.

The living room has a fireplace and French doors that overlook the bay.

The guesthouse is smaller than the main house but features some of the same classic details, like the fireplace and molding around the ceiling.

There's also a private two-lane bowling alley in the basement.

There's a lot of extra space for entertainment, including a large family room over the attached garage.

The gatehouse was sold separately last year for $7 million.

The five-bed, four-bath house is a self-sufficient property. The home has its own driveway, security gate, and swimming pool.

The home has two kitchens, a media room, a screened-in patio, and a first-floor primary ensuite.

In addition to its main gourmet kitchen with a Viking oven and Sub-Zero refrigerator, there's also a chef's kitchen in the back with its own fireplace.

A stone patio surrounds the free-form heated gunite swimming pool.

The Long Island Sound can also be seen from the pool.

The beach house sits on a strip of pristine beachfront.

It has three bedrooms, three bathrooms, an eat-in kitchen, and a large stone patio with pergolas.

Its kitchen features custom Ciuffo cabinetry and Calacatta quartz countertops.

Other luxury appliances in the kitchen include a side-by-side Sub-Zero refrigerator, a Wolf oven, and a Miele dishwasher.

The living room has French doors that open onto the beachfront.

The home is noticeably more water-friendly than the other properties, thanks to the porcelain tile flooring that makes it easy to transition from indoor to outdoor living.

The house also has its own gunite pool.

A stone's throw away is a helipad for helicopter arrivals and departures, a floating dock, and over 2,000 feet of waterfront beach.

The maintenance house doubles as a garage that can hold up to six cars.

The second floor of the maintenance house also has a working office or break room.

Editor's note: This story was first published in November 2024. It was updated in March 2026 to reflect the sale of the property.

• A top Pentagon official detailed how the Defense Department's talks with Anthropic collapsed.
• On Thursday, the Pentagon said it had taken the unprecedented step of effectively blacklisting a US company.
• Emil Michael, the Pentagon's R&D chief, said it was scary how much power Anthropic wielded.

The Pentagon's R&D chief said the Department of Defense was "scared" about Anthropic shutting off access to its AI during a critical moment.

During an appearance on the "All-In Podcast" posted on Friday, Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Emil Michael detailed two pivotal moments that culminated in the Pentagon formally designating Anthropic as a supply chain risk, effectively blacklisting one of the nation's largest AI companies.

One of those instances, Michael said, was when Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei suggested that the impasse over how the Pentagon could deploy the AI startup's models could be bridged with a phone call, even if it came during "a decisive moment."

"I was giving these scenarios, these Golden Dome scenarios, and so on," Michael said on "All-In Podcast," describing President Donald Trump's signature missile defense initiative.

"And he's like, 'Just call me if you need another exception.' And I'm like, "But what if the balloon's going up at that moment and it's like a decisive action we have to take? I'm not going to call you to do something. It's not rational."

It's not entirely clear what Anthropic would object to in the hypothetical Michael said he posed, though the implication is that some Golden Dome systems could have autonomous modes that fire weapons.

In the current US missile defense system, AI's role is to provide rapid situational awareness and recommendations for human operators. AI could rapidly assess whether a detected launch poses a threat and recommend weapons to destroy it. Decisions on whether to listen to the recommendations are then made by air defense commanders.

Elsewhere in the interview, Michael said that part of the impasse with Anthropic is that he "can't predict for the next 20 years what all the things we might use AI for."

Michael, who was previously a top executive at Uber, said the department's concerns about Anthropic began to escalate after the US conducted a targeted raid on Venezuela to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The assault raised major questions about sovereignty, and congressional democrats questioned the decision not to seek approval for the deployment of US forces.

In the wake of the raid, Michael said that an unnamed Anthropic executive called a Palantir executive to ask whether Anthropic's AI models had been used to carry it out. The Pentagon accesses Anthropic's AI models through a government cloud that is operated by Amazon Web Services and then run by Palantir, Michael said. (On February 27, President Donald Trump ordered federal agencies to stop using Anthropic's AI, though that directive came with a six-month phase-out period.)

Michael said Palantir officials were so alarmed by Anthropic's questions that they alerted him.

"I'm like, 'Holy shit, what if this software went down, some guardrail kicked up, some refusal happened for the next fight like this one, and we left our people at risk," Michael said, alluding to the US's current war against Iran.

As talks grew heated, Michael said he felt like Anthropic turned the discussion "into a PR game" by publicly raising concerns about how the terms the Pentagon sought would not adequately account for potential misuse. Amodei has confirmed that Anthropic was particularly worried about the risks posed by fully autonomous weapons and how powerful AI models could be abused to spy on American citizens.

During the heated back-and-forth, Michael publicly called Amodei a "liar" with "a God-complex."

On Thursday, the Pentagon said it formally notified Anthropic that it was declaring the company and its products to be a supply chain risk, the first time in history that label had been applied to a US company.

Amodei responded that his AI startup had "productive conversations" with the Pentagon in recent days, but Michael later said that no discussions were ongoing.

Anthropic has suggested it will challenge the designation in court, especially since Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said it prevents any defense contractor from doing business with Anthropic.

Asked about why the Pentagon went so far, Michael said the designation was not "punitive."

"If their model has this policy bias, let's call it, based on their constitution, their culture, their people, and so on," he said. "I don't want Lockheed Martin using their model to design weapons for me."

Earlier this week, a Lockheed spokesperson said it would follow Trump and the Pentagon's direction on whether it would continue to use Anthropic's products. Michael also called out Boeing, describing how the airplane manufacturer could use Anthropic's AI for non-defense tasks.

"So, Boeing wants to use Anthropic to build commercial jets — have at it," he said. "Boeing wants to use it to build fighter jets. I can't have that because I don't trust what the outputs may be, because they're so wedded to their own policy preferences."

While Michael was critical of Anthropic, he praised xAI and Elon Musk for agreeing to the department's terms, allowing it to deploy AI "for all lawful uses."

Michael also praised OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, for working with the Pentagon to quickly stand up another AI system capable of operating in classified settings, so the department can phase out Anthropic.

Altman and OpenAI have received significant blowback online for agreeing to work with the Pentagon. Altman publicly urged the department not to label Anthropic a supply chain risk.

"To his credit, I called him and said, 'I need a solution if this thing goes sideways. I need multiple solutions. I'd like you to be one of them," Michael said. "And he's like, 'Okay, well, what can I do for the country?' I was like, 'I need to get you up running as soon as I can.'"

I love fluffy bedding, so I gravitate towards down pillows. The best down pillows are soft and breathable, with a feel that reminds me of sleeping on a cloud or waking up at a five-star hotel. Down pillows have a reputation for being unsupportive, but that's not always true — in my experience, there's a down pillow for every person and every sleeping position, even if you prefer extra support from a pillow.

After multiple rounds of testing, we chose the Brooklinen Down Pillow as our top pick. It's a super soft, supportive pillow that retains its shape and doesn't require daily fluffing. For side sleepers, we recommend the Parachute Down Side Sleeper Pillow. It has a wide gusset to give the pillow the extra height that side sleepers require.

Our top picks for down pillows

Best overall: Brooklinen Down Pillow - See at Brooklinen

Best value: Quince Premium Down Pillow - See at Quince

Best for side sleepers: Parachute Down Side Sleeper Pillow - See at Parachute

Most supportive: Boll & Branch Chamber Pillow - See at Boll & Branch

Best hotel-style: FluffCo Down Feather Pillow - See at FluffCo

Best goose: Continental Bedding Siberian Goose Down Pillow - See at Amazon

Best overall

This pillow is so good, I sleep on it every night. If you're a down pillow skeptic, the Brooklinen Down Pillow might just turn you into a believer. It's one of our favorite pillows of all time — and for good reason. It's soft and cushy like any down pillow should be, but it's also supportive for all sleep types. Brooklinen reformulated its down products in early 2026, but the new version is just as good as ever. Out of the pillows I've ever tested, it's the one that stays on my bed every night.

You can choose from three firmnesses. The soft is filled only with down clusters for maximum softness, while the mid-plush and firm options incorporate both down clusters and feathers with a dual-core construction for increased support. The medium pillow is an excellent middle-of-the-road option for all sleep types, including combination sleepers. With a middle-of-the-road feel, the medium density is the best down pillow for back sleepers. Side sleepers might prefer the firm, while stomach sleepers will gravitate toward the soft option.

I only have to fluff it once a week. Unlike other down pillows that require regular fluffing, the Brooklinen Down Pillow retains its shape night after night. I only have to fluff it about once a week. That said, the pillow doesn't compromise on softness. I'm a stomach sleeper, so I like having a squishy pillow to keep my spine aligned throughout the night. I love how my head sinks into Brooklinen's pillow, staying cradled and comfortable all night.

I don't overheat when sleeping on it. I'm also a hot sleeper, and I've never overheated when using this pillow. Its down interior is especially breathable, so there's plenty of airflow and heat doesn't get trapped.

We've noticed a down scent and some loose feathers. One of our testers from a few years prior noticed that the pillow had a noticeable down smell, and it took a few cycles in the dryer to get rid of the scent. I've noticed a few loose feathers escaping the shell, too. Otherwise, we have nothing negative to say about this pillow. If you're looking for a versatile and comfortable down pillow, this is the one.

Read our full Brooklinen Down Pillow review.

Best value

This is the best down pillow under $100. Down is a premium material, so it's difficult to find a quality down pillow that's under $100. Thankfully, Quince, which specializes in luxury goods at affordable prices, sells an excellent down pillow made with responsibly sourced down in the US or Canada that starts at just under $80. Quince compares its products to premium bedding brands like Matouk and Sferra, where down pillows start at over $200.

There's an option for everyone. The Quince Premium Down Pillow is available in three firmnesses: soft, medium, and firm. Since I'm a stomach sleeper, I tried the soft version. It wasn't the most supportive pillow I tried, but I felt comfortable all night. The medium and firm versions of the pillow have the same down construction, but have a higher fill weight based on firmness, ranging from 15 ounces for the soft to 24 ounces for the firm.

I love stacking two of these pillows. Since they're so soft, these pillows are also excellent for stacking. If you need a little extra support, I recommend using the Quince pillow on top of another pillow for an equally plush and supportive sleep.

It requires nightly fluffy. When unboxing Quince's down pillow, I did notice that some down had come free of the cotton shell. After using it for months, though, I haven't noticed any other down shedding. You'll also have to fluff it regularly, as it has a habit of getting compressed in the morning.

Best for side sleepers

Side sleepers need a little extra support. In my personal experience, a firmer memory foam pillow is the best pillow for side sleepers. If you're dead set on sleeping on a cushiony down pillow, the Parachute Down Side Sleeper Pillow has enough structural support so you can sleep comfortably on your side while enjoying a plush feel.

The lofty design is best for side sleepers. It has a tall, 3.5-inch gusset, which is the extra material in the middle and side panels that gives the pillow a boxier shape. This design prevents your head from sinking in too much and keeps your spine aligned while you sleep. At the same time, it's not so tall that your neck is uncomfortably strained.

It's thick, fluffy, and luxurious. Because it's thicker and more supportive than non-gusseted pillows and filled with fluffy white down, my sleep experience felt extra luxurious and comfortable. It doesn't flatten as quickly as non-gusseted pillows and fluffs up easily by hand or in the dryer.

Parachute offers 60-day returns. The only way this pillow could be unsatisfying is for side sleepers who are used to more firm support. Thankfully, Parachute has a 60-day return policy, so you'll be able to determine for yourself.

Most supportive

The most supportive down pillows have a chamber construction. The Boll & Branch Down Pillow incorporates a chamber design construction, meaning it has different compartments to hold different types of filling, which keeps fill evenly distributed, prevents clumping and maintains a consistent loft, all while enhancing the support the pillow can provide. Chelsea Nightengale, the former general manager of The Restoration Hotel in Charleston, South Carolina, also recommended choosing a chambered pillow, which "will alleviate the aggravation of any fill bunching in certain areas of the bedding throughout the night."

The fill bounces back into place. Boll & Branch's three-chambered soft pillow has down in all three sections, meaning it's luxuriously cushiony and the filling stays evenly distributed through the night. The two firmer versions have more supportive feather and down in the inner chamber, and is wrapped in a layer of soft down to make them more suitable for back and side sleepers. It'll compress without going flat.

The soft density is perfect for stomach sleepers. The softest version is incredibly soft and squashes down the instant your head touches it. It has the least density, making it the best down pillow for stomach sleepers. We found it very flexible, and we were able to mold it and fold it in various ways to make it plumper or flatter, based on how we were lying.

It's backed by third-party certifications. Boll & Branch also prides itself on the sustainable materials used in its down pillow, making it a great choice if you're looking for a down pillow that is ethically made. Boll & Branch partners with farms in the United States to source its cruelty-free down that is also Oeko-Tex Standard 100 and International Down Standard certified, which means it's using the safest and cleanest materials. Even the outside cotton cover is organic. The down is also triple-washed, which exceeds the US standards and makes for cleaner, fluffier fill.

Best hotel-style

If you always sleep better at hotels, check out this pillow. Working with manufacturers who make pillows for hotels, FluffCo has unlocked the secret formula for a fluffy, travel-worthy pillow at home. Filled with duck down in the exterior and duck feathers in the interior, the FluffCo Down Feather Pillow was one of the plushest that I tried.

I suggest the firm density. It comes in two firmnesses: soft and firm, differentiated by the volume of filling. I tried both. While the firm is supportive, the soft version fell short in terms of support. This wasn't a huge deal for me, since I'm a stomach and side combination sleeper, but I definitely recommend that side and back sleepers opt for the firm pillow. The pillow includes a pillow protector to fight off spills, dust, or damage.

I had to fluff it every night. For ultimate fullness, be sure to fluff this pillow daily. I found that it squished easily, so there were mornings when I would find it compressed against my bed frame. Once fluffed, it pops right back into its inviting, full shape.

I wish there were better return and warranty policies. FluffCo's return policy is a bit unclear, offering 30-day returns for unused pillows, citing the personal nature of bedding and hygiene reasons for its lack of a sleep trial. However, it also says that in order to receive a refund, items must be in a donateable condition, suggesting gently used pillows may be eligible for return. Buyers are responsible for return shipping. They also have a 10-year warranty, but you'll have to buy it separately for $20. It covers spills, stains, accidental damage, and fabric wear-and-tear. At only $99, this pillow is still a great value.

Best goose

This pillow is stuffed with premium goose down. Its design gives it a super light and fluffy feel. Even better, it's goose down, which is more premium and harder to find than duck down. I could certainly feel the difference — this pillow was noticeably lighter and the most compressible of all the pillows I tested.

It's softer than other pillows we tried. Unfortunately, side sleepers will have to skip out on this pillow since there's not much support, and it's pretty soft. However, for anyone who wants to feel like they've just climbed into a hotel bed after a long day out sightseeing, the Continental Bedding provides a dreamy escape.

It's expensive, but it comes from a long-beloved brand. It'll cost you to invest in this luxe pillow, but you can trust in the brand's expertise and history. It's been making down bedding products for almost 100 years.

Our top picks, compared

What to look for in a down pillow

The best down pillows are worth the investment, as they are fluffy and low-maintenance. Naturally breathable, down and feathers are also very soft and comfortable. The material conforms to body movements well so that you can shift positions at night with little disturbance. That said, there are several factors you should consider when shopping for a down pillow:

Loft and sleep position

Consider your preferred sleeping position when choosing between different lofts and firmness levels. Here are the lofts and firmness levels you should look for based on your sleep position:

Ethical certifications

Down comes from birds that have been raised for food, so it is a sustainable byproduct, but there are concerns about animal welfare. The Responsible Down Standard (RDS) certifies responsibly sourced down. Similarly, the International Down Standard (IDS) certifies down based on human and animal welfare.

Down vs. feather vs. down alternative

Down is the fiber on the underside of a bird, while the feathers are quilled and found on the back and wings. In general, down pillows are softer and more expensive, but feathers offer more support. It's not uncommon to see pillows with both a feather core and down exterior, as offered by brands like Brooklinen or Boll & Branch.

While down is natural, down alternative, which is usually made with from synthetic material like polyester fibers are more affordable and hypoallergenic. PrimaLoft is a popular, premium brand of down alternative that mimics the lightweight feel, insulation, and comfort of down.

Goose vs. duck down

In terms of insulation and durability, goose and duck down perform the same, though duck down is generally cheaper. If you want the lightest and fluffiest pillow with the most warmth, and you're willing to pay a little more, go for goose down.

How we tested down pillows

Our testing procedures

To pick the best down pillows, we tested the following:

Comfort: I slept on each pillow for three consecutive nights. I also rotated the pillows through three family members (one back sleeper, one side sleeper, and one with mixed sleeping positions), who slept on each pillow for at least two nights and provided feedback.

Support: I evaluated how supportive each pillow felt, how well it held its shape, its softness and coolness, and the quality of stitching and seams, including whether any down or feathers poked out. I also noted the pillow fit inside a standard-sized pillowcase.

Durability: I put each pillow on the air fluff setting in the dryer to see how well it fluffed back up. I will continue rotating through all the best picks to evaluate long-term comfort and durability.

Return and warranty policies: I scanned through each brand's return and warranty terms. Since it can be challenging to determine whether you'll really like a pillow until you try it, I only considered brands with a minimum return policy of 30 days.

Meet the experts behind the guide

Connie Chen, former senior reporter: I'm a home textiles expert who has spent years testing pillows, sheets, and comforters. I cover all sorts of bedding for Business Insider.

Kinsley Searles, associate home editor: I cover sleep products, including pillows. As a stomach sleeper, I have a special affinity for down pillows. I'm devoted to fair, rigorous testing and integrating products into my bedding rotation.

Down pillow FAQs

What is down?

Down is the fluffy fiber from the underbelly of a duck or goose, located under the bird's feather layer. It's shaped in fluffy clusters. You'll usually find down in bedding and clothing because it's insulating, yet lightweight and breathable.

How long do down pillows last?

Down pillows should last between five and 10 years. You'll know it's time to replace your down pillow if it stays flat even with fluffing or if it doesn't pop back in place after being folded in half.

Can you wash a down pillow?

It depends on the brand. While some down pillows are machine washable, many brands advise against machine washing. You might be better off spot cleaning your pillow instead.

If your care label says the pillow is safe to wash, you'll want to wash it on the delicate cycle with a gentle detergent. You can also dry clean your pillow or leave it in the sun for a few hours for a refresh.

For more on caring for your pillows, read our how to wash pillows article.

Can down cause allergies?

While people can certainly be allergic to down and feathers, it's actually not the most common cause of pillow allergies. "People can be allergic to feathers, although it is not very common. Much more common is a dust mite allergy," said Tania Elliott, MD, an allergist. If you're concerned about dust mites, we recommend using a pillow case made from tightly woven 100% cotton.

Are down pillows ethical?

Each pick on our list is certified by the International Down Standard (IDS) or Responsible Down Standard (RDS). These organizations prohibit live plucking and require the ethical treatment of animals. The IDS also ensures ethical business practice for workers.

What's the vegan alternative to a down pillow?

The best vegan alternative to down is a down alternative pillow. Down alternative mimics the fluffy, soft feel of down using microfiber and polyester blends. In addition to being vegan friendly, they're also cheaper and suitable for those with allergies.

Many of our favorite down pillows also offer a down alternative option, notably Brooklinen's Down Alternative Pillow and Quince's Down Alternative Pillow.

Is goose down or duck down better?

Goose down clusters are larger and fluffier, usually feeling more luxurious. Duck down is much more common and affordable. Most of our picks are filled with duck down.

• Drones struck three Amazon data centers in the Middle East during the war in Iran, causing outages.
• Iran's state media said the attacks were deliberate, underscoring a new reality of war.
• Data centers have become the new critical infrastructure for the global economy.

As Anthropic and the Pentagon clashed over how the military should use AI, another new reality of warfare emerged several thousand miles away: data centers are now targets.

This week, Amazon said that three of its data centers in the Middle East — two in the United Arab Emirates and one in Bahrain — had been damaged by drone strikes during the US-Iran war.

Amazon Web Services, its cloud division, evacuated staff and closed access to at least one data center due to "structural damage" and flooding caused by the Sunday attacks, according to an internal document reviewed by Business Insider.

The two UAE data centers were "directly struck," while the Bahrain site was damaged by a drone strike "in close proximity," Amazon said Monday.

On Wednesday, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps took responsibility for strategically targeting one of the Amazon sites due to the company's support for the US military activities, Iran's state media said. Business Insider could not independently verify this information.

It is the first time that Big Tech data centers have been directly targeted by military strikes, and it brings a new threat to the doorstep of companies that have invested heavily in the region to keep pace with the AI boom.

The Middle East has around 4.5 gigawatts of data center capacity, with an additional 1.7 GW in the pipeline, DC Byte, a data center intelligence company, told Business Insider. Most of the planned capacity right now is for Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the firm added. 1 GW is roughly equivalent to the power needed to run the homes of a midsize city like San Francisco.

The IRGC also claimed responsibility for targeting a Microsoft site in the Middle East.

A Microsoft spokesperson said the company had no indication of any attack and that its data centers in the region were operating as normal.

Neither Google nor Microsoft's data centers have shown any outages in the region this week, according to their service pages.

As of Friday, service at the damaged Amazon data centers remains offline or heavily disrupted. The company has recommended that customers "enact their disaster recovery plans."

The outages underscored how dependent much of the world's technology is on data centers. Mudassir Sheikha, CEO of the Dubai-based ride-hailing and food delivery app Careem, said earlier this week that some of its services were "impacted by an external AWS UAE outage" and had since been restored. Various banking apps also saw disruptions throughout the week.

An Amazon spokesperson pointed to the AWS Service Health Dashboard for the latest updates. A Google spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

Defending data centers

Data centers are typically designed to be resilient, with workloads often distributed across different regions to limit the impact of a single location being knocked offline.

However, as the AI boom clashes against turmoil in the Middle East, the billions of dollars being poured into data centers come with more risk as a new warfare strategy emerges.

"Data centers have become the new infrastructure for economies," said James Lewis, senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "If you think about how people are going to build infrastructure, before it was railroads and steam engines. Now it's data centers and fiber optics."

The outages experienced by some services this week further highlighted how data centers could be considered a key infrastructure target in warfare.

Lewis cited the Russia-Ukraine war as another recent example in which data became central to the conflict, as Ukraine took steps to prevent Russia from accessing data stored on the country's servers.

"The thing that has changed now in the Gulf is that people need to think about 'how do we defend them?'" said Lewis.

Data centers emit a big heat signature that makes them difficult to hide, Lewis said.

"You're not going to be able to hide them. The question is, can you harden them? Can you defend them? That's what people haven't thought about because we didn't have to before," he added.

Saudi Arabia is moving quickly to expand its data center capacity and position itself as a major global player in AI. The country last year launched Humain, a new company designed to build a full-stack AI ecosystem from data centers up to the models. Humain has also struck partnerships with Nvidia and AMD to build out data centers with their chips.

Meanwhile, tech giants are pledging to invest more in the region. In November, Microsoft said it plans to have invested $7.9 billion in the UAE by 2029, while Amazon pledged more than $5 billion as part of a strategic partnership with Humain last year.

There's a new Disney Plus and Hulu bundle deal on the market, and it comes right in time for a fresh slate of spring programming. The latest offer can help you save over 60% on your first three months of ad-supported service, just in time to catch the new seasons of the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives and Daredevil when they premiere later in March.

The Disney Plus and Hulu bundle is already one of the best streaming deals on the market, even before the limited-time discount. The bundle allows you to get ad-supported Disney Plus and Hulu for $13 a month — just $1 more than it costs to subscribe to only one of the services. The new deal knocks your first three months of service down to just $5 a month, after which subscriptions revert to their then-standard prices (although users can cancel at any time). That's almost 62% off the bundle sticker price and about 79% off what it would cost to subscribe to the two services separately right now.

This is the best Disney Plus and Hulu bundle discount we've seen so far this year, surpassing an earlier promo. The percentage off matches what we saw on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, although that offer discounted an entire year of monthly service. You can explore everything you need to know about the deal below, including the end date, eligibility rules, and the programming available on each streaming service. Or check out the offer directly at Disney Plus.

FAQ

When does the Disney Plus and Hulu bundle deal end?

The Disney Plus and Hulu bundle deal ends on March 24, 2026. The offer officially concludes at 8:59 a.m. PT or 11:59 a.m. ET, so you won't have until the end of the day to take advantage of the savings.

Who is eligible for the Disney Plus and Hulu bundle deal?

The deal is available to new and eligible returning subscribers who are 18+ US residents. Current Disney Plus, ESPN, Hulu, and bundle subscribers aren't eligible for the offer. If you're not sure whether you can get the deal, you can start the sign-up process with your MyDisney login and see what's available to you. Your MyDisney login is the email and password combo you've used if you've ever had a Disney Plus, Hulu, or ESPN subscription.

A note to any of you who may have picked up ESPN access as part of a deal with a cord-cutting service like Fubo: the email you may have used to sign into the ESPN app can't be the same one used to sign up to this deal (despite the deal not including ESPN at all!). We had this exact issue when trying to rejoin Disney Plus around Black Friday. However, a different email address and payment card helped navigate this annoying inconvenience.

What's on Disney Plus and Hulu

Disney Plus carries a massive selection of programming for the whole family, including new and classic shows and movies from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, and more. Hulu offers a slightly broader selection of content, including an impressive back catalog of network TV shows, popular films, and original TV series. New episodes from ABC and FOX TV shows typically land on Hulu the day after their airdate.

You can explore all deals and plans directly on the Disney Plus website. Follow our Instagram page and WhatsApp channel for more deals and buying guides.

• Daniel Mazur is joining Izzy Englander's $86.3 billion hedge fund, Millennium.
• Mazur has traded stocks for Ken Griffin's Citadel since 2016.
• A person close to Citadel said the firm recently liquidated Mazur's portfolio.

Daniel Mazur's near-decade-long run at $66 billion hedge fund Citadel is a lifetime in the cutthroat hedge fund world, but his time is finally up at Ken Griffin's firm.

A person familiar with the move told Business Insider that Mazur, a stockpicker for Citadel's Global Equities unit since the summer of 2016, is joining Izzy Englander's Millennium as a senior portfolio manager.

Citadel and Millennium declined to comment.

A person close to Citadel told Business Insider the manager liquidated Mazur's portfolio earlier this year and promoted two people under him — Brad Gemberling and Greg Fitter — to portfolio manager roles.

Mazur is based out of Chicago and spent close to 12 years at San Francisco-headquartered Harvest Capital Strategies before joining Citadel. He did not immediately respond to several requests for comment.

It's unclear what Mazur's deal from Millennium will pay him. The war for investing talent, particularly among the big four multistrategy firms, Millennium, Citadel, Point72, and Baylasny, has ramped up the costs across the industry.

PMs typically receive guaranteed payouts in their contracts, but if an individual a firm wants to cut instead resigns and joins another firm, they forfeit that compensation. Often, the firm that hires the PM will take into account the compensation forfeited and make the individual whole with a sign-on bonus or another form of payout.

Millennium, which has more than 6,600 employees and hundreds of investing teams, continues to add to its roster. The firm poached Goldman Sachs' cohead of global equities, Erdit Hoxha, last month to join its Office of the CIO, which oversees its legions of trading teams.

Citadel's Global Equities unit, run by Justin Lubell, lost two top talent recruiters last year: first, Alex Topkins, and then Laura Sterner. Sterner had only been at the firm for two months, Business Insider previously reported.

Still, the unit has brought on fresh investing talent this year, the person close to the Miami-based firm said. Global Equities poached Spencer Washburn, a former analyst at Millennium, to manage a book. His LinkedIn states he started in February in the firm's New York offices as a portfolio manager.

• Christine Romeo's daughter, Abbey, runs two small businesses and is on reality TV.
• Christine says she had to put aside her ego as she made decisions for Abbey.
• She thought outside the box to create opportunities for Abbey to succeed.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Christine Romeo, mother of "Love on the Spectrum" star Abbey Romeo. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Sometimes I look at pictures of my daughter Abbey when she was 3 or 4. She was just so, so cute. But I think — was I present for that? Did I enjoy that time, or was I too obsessed with therapies and my worries about her future?

It's normal for anyone, especially parents, to fret about the future, but for parents of kids with disabilities, those worries can be overwhelming.

Abbey is now 27. When she was diagnosed with autism 25 years ago, I couldn't have imagined that Abbey would be running two small businesses or appearing on reality TV. But along the way, we both learned to think outside the box, and that's helped Abbey grow so much.

I put Abbey in a vocational program in 8th grade

Abbey went to one of the best schools for autism. She had moderate setbacks, but her curriculum was still focused on academics. She was learning what typical kids were, like tectonic plates and world history, just at a slower pace.

I could see that wasn't what she needed. It's not helpful to learn Western Civilization if you can't remember what you did yesterday. I would rather Abbey focus on life skills that could help her cope with her autism, like visual clues to help her access her short-term memory.

When Abbey was in eighth grade, I switched her to a vocational program that focused on job and life skills. I had to set my ego aside and do what was right for Abbey. She didn't need a high school diploma — she needed skills to help her live her life.

I realized as a parent you don't get to order who your child is

There were moments throughout Abbey's schooling when I knew I had made the right decision. One time, the teacher sent me a picture of Abbey rewiring a light. I was blown away.

Another was when I came in to see Abbey weaving in the textile program. She was operating this big machine with foot pedals and a large swatch of fabric, and it was regulating her. I had to leave the room, because I was crying.

With Abbey and her brother, who's a year younger, I realized that as a parent, you don't always get what you order. I'm determined to help both of them be who they are and be as successful as they're meant to be.

Entrepreneurs inspired me to not take no for an answer

Abbey excelled at weaving, and I realized selling her creations could be a job. I believe it's important for everyone to have a sense of purpose, and Abbey had expressed that she wanted a "real job."

I spoke with her school about creating a program to allow kids to sell their art and crafts. The teacher loved the idea, but the principal didn't. When he said no, I thought about one of my favorite shows, Shark Tank, and how entrepreneurs don't take no for an answer. I was determined to find a solution for Abbey, even when the system said there wasn't one.

The teacher ended up coming to our home on Saturdays to teach Abbey advanced weaving. Soon, her business, Hats by Abbey, was born. She also has another business shredding people's paperwork, which they pay for by the bag.

Using cash helped Abbey learn about money

Today, Abbey has control over her days. She often makes hats from 9 to 12, then walks the dog before her voice lesson. She has the sense of purpose that we all need.

For a while, it was difficult for Abbey to connect with the idea of money. I found it helped when she could see cash. I started putting cash in her money box, and if she wanted to order something online, she had to give me the bills.

The first thing Abbey ordered with her profits was a $160 stuffed lion. It challenged every fiber of my being to let her order that, but she had earned the money, and she got to decide how to spend it. Seeing the glee on her face when she opened the box was worth every obstacle we've had to jump over.

Abbey continues to grow so much. I've created opportunities, and she's taken them. It's been the most beautiful, amazing experience.

A good night's sleep isn't a luxury; it's the foundation of your health, mood, and productivity. Finding the best sleep products for you can make the difference between restless nights and truly restorative rest, which is why we've dedicated hundreds of hours to rigorously testing mattresses, pillows, pajamas, sleep tech, and more. Here, you'll find all our expert-backed guides to help you build your best night's sleep.

The best Sleep Week deals in 2026

This year, Sleep Week begins on Sunday, March 8, which coincides with daylight saving time. If you're already dreading the lost hour, we've got you covered with the best Sleep Week deals on everything from mattresses to eye masks.

The best list

Looking to build a better sleep setup? These standout picks deliver quality and comfort you'll notice as soon as your head hits the pillow.

Our top budget finds

Our top budget picks prove that you don't have to spend a fortune to sleep well.

Invest in the best mattress you can afford

If you can't remember the last time you replaced your mattress, it might be time to get a new one. After testing more than 100 models, we found the best for every sleep position and need, from hot sleepers to those with back pain.

Your perfect pillow is out there

We used to think a one-size-fits-all-pillow didn't exist — until we tested the Coop Sleep Goods Original Pillow, which lets you customize loft and density to match your sleep style. We've also found plenty of other options for side, back, and stomach sleepers.

The most comfortable bedding

From sheets to comforters, the way your bedding feels matters just as much as how it looks. Whether you refresh your bedding seasonally or are looking for a new everyday set, our guides will help you find the perfect fit.

The best solutions for hot sleepers

If you sleep hot or struggle with night sweats caused by menopause, the right products can make a noticeable difference. Our top picks feature breathable fabrics and lightweight layers that can help you stay cool and comfortable all night.

Useful sleep aids and tech

Sleep hygiene goes beyond your mattress and sheets — your bedroom environment plays a major role, too. From air purifiers and blackout curtains to alarm clocks, sleep headphones, and sleep trackers, the right tools can help you wind down, stay asleep, and wake up feeling refreshed.

Wind down with the coziest pajamas

We're pretty serious about our loungewear, from cooling pajamas to spa-worthy robes. Because what you wear to bed can make a bigger difference in your sleep quality than you might think.

More sleep upgrades to consider

Small upgrades can make a big difference in your sleep quality. From mattress toppers to sleep masks, these add-ons help fine-tune your setup for even better rest.

• The McDonald's CEO is getting roasted for an awkward taste test of the new "Big Arch" burger."
• Do you think you could really do so much better, huh, tough guy?
• Take our fun quiz to see if you really CAN do a better job as McDonald's CEO.

Poor Chris Kempczinski. What should've been a joyous occasion — the launch of the new "Big Arch" burger — has turned into a public drubbing for the McDonald's CEO.

An Instagram video Kempczinski posted, where he takes a bite of the Big Arch, has been roundly mocked — with people saying his small bite of the burger showed he didn't really like McDonald's food, which he also referred to as "product."

The memes flowed like ketchup.

To make matters worse, other fast-food CEOs piled on, posting their own versions of the video and enthusiastically tasting their own burgers.

When you've got a bunch of adults performatively chomping down burgers in an effort to roast you … let's just say things probably aren't working out the way you'd hoped.

McDonald's hasn't returned my requests for comment. I've been asking to interview Kempczinski. I've been watching his Instagram Reels for months now, fascinated by how the McDonald's CEO talks directly to his audience.

So, you think you could do a better job at McDonald's?

It turns out, enjoying a burger is easy. Running a company is hard. McDonald's stock is up more than 6% so far this year, far outpacing the broader market, which is down by more than 1.3% — but even so, lots of people on social media are saying they think they can do a better job than Kempczinski.

Oh yeah, peanut gallery?! Prove it! (Just kidding. This literally proves nothing.)

Take this quiz to answer a bunch of questions to see if you really could do a better job than the current McDonald's CEO:

Apple makes some of our favorite tablets, but figuring out which iPad is actually the newest can get confusing fast. Unlike iPhones, iPads don't follow a simple, easy-to-track numbering system, so model names alone don't always tell you much. That's where this guide comes in. We've broken down Apple's current lineup, highlighting the latest iPads and what each offers.

The newest Apple iPads are the M4-powered iPad Air models, which launched in March 2026. Other current models include the M5-powered iPad Pro and the 11th-generation iPad with an A16 chip, which were both released in 2025. Apple also still sells the iPad Mini, which launched in 2024. When you factor in different sizes, that adds up to six iPad models currently available. Below, we've listed them all from newest to oldest to make comparison easier.

• iPad Air 13-inch, M4 (2026)
• iPad Air 11-inch, M4 (2026)
• iPad Pro 13-inch, M5 (2025)
• iPad Pro 11-inch, M5 (2025)
• iPad: 11th-generation, A16 (2025)
• iPad Mini: 7th-generation, A17 Pro (2024)

Below is a detailed rundown of the newest iPads, along with an overview of what makes each one stand out. For more buying advice, check out our guide to the best iPads.

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The newest iPad Air models

Apple updated its iPad Air lineup in March 2026, announcing new 11-inch and 13-inch models powered by the M4 chip. The new tablets are available to preorder now and will be released on March 11.

Compared to the previous-generation models, the 2026 iPad Airs make the jump from the M3 to the more powerful M4 chip. Apple says this latest model is up to 30% faster than the 2025 iPad Air. Most notably, the company says the M4's improved speed and GPU capabilities should enable better performance for editing and gaming. It also has faster memory bandwidth, which should help optimize AI applications.

Like the brand's latest iPad Pro tablets, the new iPad Air models also use Apple's C1X modem for faster cellular speeds, and Apple's N1 wireless chip to enable WiFi 7, Bluetooth 6, and Thread support.

With the same starting prices as last year's M3 models — $599 for the 11-inch model and $799 for the 13-inch — the M4 iPad Airs also retain the same Liquid Retina LED displays, Touch ID, landscape-oriented 12MP front camera, 12MP wide rear camera, and compatibility with the Apple Pencil (USB-C) and the newer Apple Pencil Pro. The Pencil Pro features a "squeeze" sensor and a gyroscope, enabling a suite of exclusive functions. Storage options for both sizes range from 128GB to 1TB.

The newest iPad Pro models

Apple's latest high-end iPad Pro arrived in October 2025. Both the 11-inch and 13-inch iPad Pro models received a major under-the-hood upgrade. Instead of the M4 chip found in the 2024 models, these new Pros run on Apple's M5 processor.

The M5 is the most powerful chip ever used in an iPad, built to deliver noticeable gains in AI and 3D performance over the M4. That makes these tablets a better match for power users who run demanding apps, advanced AI workflows, or high-end games. Apple has also improved memory bandwidth and storage, which should help with smoother multitasking and faster read and write performance.

On the outside, Apple didn't mess with a good thing. The new iPad Pros keep the ultra-thin design of their predecessors, measuring just 5.3mm thick for the 11-inch model and 5.1mm for the 13-inch. Each model also sticks with Apple's Tandem OLED display, introduced on the previous-gen iPad Pros, which offers better contrast and sharper clarity than standard LED screens.

There are a few notable connectivity upgrades, too. The 2025 iPad Pro models with cellular now use Apple's C1X modem, which the company says can deliver up to a 50% boost in data performance compared to the M4 versions. Apple has also added its new N1 wireless chip, which supports WiFi 7, Bluetooth 6, and Thread.

The 2025 iPads are also compatible with Apple's Magic Keyboard, Apple Pencil (USB-C), Apple Pencil Pro, and Smart Folio. Pricing remains the same as the last generation, with the new 11-inch iPad Pro starting at $999, and the 13-inch iPad Pro starting at $1,299.

The latest 11-inch iPad Pro model numbers are A3357 for the standard WiFi model and A3358 for the WiFi + Cellular model. The model numbers for the 13-inch iPad Pros are A3360 for the standard WiFi model and A3361 for the WiFi + Cellular model.

The newest standard iPad

Apple released its newest standard iPad, the 11th-generation iPad, featuring an A16 chipset and an 11-inch screen, in March 2025.

The new entry-level iPad is solely an internal upgrade from its predecessor, the 10th-generation iPad from 2022. Apple says the new tablet's A16 chip is nearly 30% faster than the previous model's A14 Bionic processor. However, the A16 processor is almost three years old, and that does lead to some limitations. Most notably, the 2025 iPad is the sole tablet in Apple's current lineup that's incompatible with Apple Intelligence.

The only other upgrade from the 10th-generation iPad is that Apple increased the base storage of the 11th-generation iPad from 64GB to 128GB, while maintaining the same entry-level price of $349. The company also added a 512GB storage tier, new to the standard iPad.

The 11th-generation iPad retains the same design and features as its predecessor, including Touch ID, USB-C, a landscape-oriented 12MP front camera, a 12MP wide rear camera, and support for the Apple Pencil (USB-C) and first-generation Apple Pencil.

The 11th-generation iPad's model numbers are A3354 for the standard WiFi model and A3355 for the WiFi + Cellular version.

Visit our guide to the 2025 iPad launch for more information.

The newest iPad Mini

Apple released its latest iPad Mini, the seventh-generation iPad Mini (A17 Pro), in October 2024.

Starting at $499, the seventh-generation iPad Mini is a midrange option between the standard iPad and the latest premium iPad Pro and Air models. It's a great pick if you want an iPad that perfectly balances portability and performance.

The latest iPad Mini continues Apple's modern tablet design with narrow borders and flat edges. It features the same 8.3-inch Liquid Retina display as its predecessor, the sixth-generation iPad Mini from 2021.

The seventh-generation iPad Mini is powered by the A17 Pro processor, introduced in the iPhone 15 Pro models, making it the least expensive iPad model that can run Apple Intelligence. The capable processor also runs apps and games quickly and smoothly, whether basic or intensive.

Upgrades from the previous sixth-generation iPad Mini include support for Apple Pencil Pro, though the new tablet has lost its predecessor's support for the second-generation Apple Pencil. The seventh-generation iPad Mini also supports the Apple Pencil (USB-C). Base storage has also been upgraded from 64GB in the previous generation to 128GB, and it is now available in 256GB and 512GB options.

The seventh-generation iPad Mini's model numbers are A2993 for the standard WiFi model and A2995 for the WiFi + Cellular model.

How to figure out which iPad you own

All of Apple's latest iPads share a similar design, making it tricky to tell them apart at a glance. Fortunately, every iPad has a model number that reveals exactly which version and generation it belongs to.

As noted in bold at the end of each section above, an iPad's model number is a short code that begins with a letter and is followed by four digits. For example, "A2995" identifies the WiFi + Cellular version of the seventh-generation iPad Mini.

If you're not sure which iPad you have, you can check by opening the Settings app and navigating to General > About. In the top section, you'll see either the model number (e.g., A2995) or a part number formatted with letters, numbers, and a slash (like XXXXXXX/A). If you see the latter, tap it to reveal the true model number.

You can also find the model number etched on the back of most iPads, though note that the newest M3 iPad Air models don't include it there.

Note that specific iPad models support different iterations of the Apple Pencil. For a comprehensive list of Apple styluses and compatible tablets, see our guide to Apple Pencil compatibility.

Will there be new iPads in 2026?

Apple announced new iPad Air models in March 2026. Although not confirmed, rumors suggest that additional models are in development for later this year. Most notably, the 2024 iPad Mini is due for an upgrade as it's the oldest model in Apple's current lineup. According to a report by Bloomberg, the next iPad Mini is expected to feature an OLED screen and a more water-resistant design.

Do iPads go on sale often?

Apple almost never discounts iPads on its own website or in its retail stores, but that doesn't mean deals are hard to find. Retailers like Amazon regularly put iPads on sale, often knocking about $50 off the price throughout the year. And during big shopping events like Prime Day or Black Friday, discounts can jump to $150 on select models.