• I started strength training in 2019 and was instantly hooked.
• However, a micronutrient test revealed I wasn't eating enough to keep up with my activity level.
• I adjusted my diet and noticed positive improvements.

The moment I picked up a barbell in 2019, it was love at first squat. In a matter of weeks, I had become a quintessential gym rat. I bought my own extra-padded barbell pads and creatine, and signed up for my very first strength-training program.

In short, I was locked in and ready to "get jacked." But in reality, it would take me years to see improvements in muscle tone because I didn't realize that my nutrition was my biggest blind spot, even though I believed the opposite.

When my hair started falling out, I knew something was wrong

I didn't eat ultra-processed foods. I ate fruits, vegetables, and healthy carbs, and made sure to have a protein shake after every workout. For years, I thought my lack of progress in the gym came down to a lack of effort. I was sure that it must be something besides my nutrition that was the problem, but by February 2022, I could no longer ignore that my hair had started to fall out.

If I had my hair in a ponytail, I started noticing that my hair had clearly thinned out, and every time I washed my hair, the drain would clog up. I had other symptoms too, like fatigue and feeling cold all the time. I knew something was wrong, and decided to take a micronutrient blood test. I ordered a test online and went into my local hospital to have my vitamin D, E, B12, magnesium, iron, copper, and selenium levels checked.

And the results? Not great. I had deficiencies in vitamin D, zinc, and copper — all micronutrients that explained my hair loss and fatigue. The doctor explained over the phone that it was most likely caused by my diet, and I needed to make changes if I didn't want my deficiencies to get worse and lead to more serious health concerns.

I had been unintentionally under-eating

From the beginning of my strength training journey, I never gave a second thought to the amount of calories I was consuming. I thought it was something people only did to lose weight, and because that wasn't my goal, I didn't need to worry about it.

After getting my blood test results, I began tracking my calories on FitBit. I wanted to understand where I was going wrong with my diet. On average, I learned that I was eating between 1200 and 1400 calories per day, barely enough for someone of my height and weight who was sedentary, let alone someone lifting four times a week. According to online macro calculators, my body burns roughly 1,457 calories a day just at rest, before any exercise. Factor in my workouts, and I need around 2,000 calories a day to maintain my weight. I wasn't eating nearly enough to build muscle or fuel my workouts, which led to nutritional deficiencies.

Using guidance from MacroFactor (which has a dynamic nutrition plan that adjusts diet recommendations to fit your metabolism), I started eating at least 2,000 calories per day and 120 grams of protein, which aligns with the recommended 1.6 to 2.2 grams per kilogram of body weight to maximize hypertrophy. And over the course of the next year, I began to notice changes. My hair was falling out less in the shower, I no longer felt cold all the time, and I gained more lean muscle mass.

I'm eating and training for longevity

Aesthetics is a lovely by-product of strength training, but it's never been my primary goal. Going to raves at 60, climbing Kilimanjaro at 70, and staying physically active for as long as possible is what motivates me to wake up for the gym at 6 am.

To keep up with my future self, I need muscle mass. After 30, women lose as much as 8% per decade, a process that accelerates between 65 and 80 years old. Now, that might not seem like a lot, but if I already lack muscle, the gradual loss will begin to interfere with daily activities like walking, standing up, or carrying groceries.

That's not a life I want to live. I want a body strong enough to carry me through the many, many decades of life I hopefully have on this planet. To get there, I need to invest in my health, starting with the amount of food on my plate.

• Bari Weiss was a controversial figure before she took over CBS News last year.
• Now she's become a very well known figure — especially after remaking "60 Minutes" by firing many of its top employees.
• CNN's Brian Stelter is sympathetic to Weiss' impulse to remake CBS News. But he thinks she's going about it the wrong way.

Over the last few weeks, CBS News boss Bari Weiss has fired many of the top correspondents and producers at her network's famed "60 Minutes." One of them subsequently accused her of tilting her coverage to please the Trump administration — which isn't the first time a "60 Minutes" employee has said that.

Weiss, and her stewardship of CBS News, has been a huge story for media reporters since she took the job last fall. But Weiss' recent decisions — including hiring Nick Bilton, a former New York Times journalist who has never worked in TV news — have kicked the narrative into overdrive. Some observers are wondering if Paramount owner David Ellison, who installed Weiss at CBS after buying her Free Press startup last fall, may have second thoughts.

Meanwhile, Ellison's Paramount is in the final stages of acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery, which means it would be buying CNN. And all of that is a particularly compelling story for CNN's Brian Stelter, who is both covering Paramount and may work for the company later this year.

I asked Stelter to assess Weiss' tenure at CBS, and why the story seems to mean something to people who never watch the network or its news programming. You can hear our entire conversation on my Channels podcast. The following is an edited excerpt of our chat:

Peter Kafka: Bari Weiss and Scott Pelley and "60 Minutes" and CBS News and David Ellison is a huge media industry story. Is it a story normal people care about?

Brian Stelter: It is. It is the rare media story that has broken containment. I see it in the most-read list on CNN.com. I see it in the engagement on Instagram. I also see it in my inbox, hearing from readers who I almost never hear from.

I think it's because "60 Minutes" is bigger than a single hour on television. It's an American institution. And what we've been covering in Trump 2.0 are American institutions under pressure.

It's also broken through because it's a boss versus employee or an employee versus boss story. A lot of people have fantasies about speaking up and speaking truth to power to the boss. And on one level, that's what Pelley did.

I think the broader reason this is breaking through is because there is anxiety about where news is coming from. Is news trustworthy? Are newsrooms under pressure? What's going on inside a place like CBS News?

"60 Minutes" is done making new shows until the fall. Will it be an entirely reimagined "60 Minutes" then, or will it look like "60 Minutes" was this year?

I think it will look mostly like "60 Minutes" this year. Bilton said to me when he was first hired, "The core of '60 Minutes' will remain '60.'" He said, "The Sunday show will not change."

Of course it will have to, to some degree, because he needs to hire correspondents. And Bari Weiss is excited about that part.

She wants to bring in new talent, new outside voices and energy. I think she probably wants to use some resources from The Free Press. But for the most part, it's still going to be three mini-documentaries every Sunday.

The real concern is about whether the show's going to go soft in some way. But Weiss has said to her friends she wants the show to go hard. She wants hard-hitting investigations, and Bilton has said he is green-lighting stories about the Trump administration.

Last week, Scott Pelley sat down with The New York Times for a pretty extraordinary interview. You don't normally see people do that after they've been publicly fired. What are your takeaways?

There are moments where he sounds self-indulgent. There were moments that I found hard to believe. [Like when] Pelley says he had never heard of Bari Weiss until she was hired.

That's impossible to believe. The fact that Bari Weiss was going to take over CBS News had been reported for a long time. Even if that's not the kind of thing you would normally pay attention to, you'd want to know about your new boss.

It also didn't make sense to me that he claimed he didn't think he was going to be fired after speaking up to the boss. Everyone was on firing watch, expecting him to be fired at any moment.

But overall, he made a really important point directly to Paramount. He said what many of his colleagues still at CBS feel. He said to the leadership, "This can be fixed." He said, "Bari Weiss is a lovely person who has been put in the wrong job. You can still land this plane."

Pelley also said he has evidence of Bari Weiss interfering with the news in a way that is politically motivated. That's the second time someone from "60 Minutes" has said that out loud.

In both cases, I think a fair-minded observer could say, "That sounds bad, but also I'm not 100% sure that what he says is political bias is necessarily political bias."

In Pelley's case, they did a story about federal agents killing Renée Good, and his interpretation is that Bari Weiss wanted that piece balanced in a way that benefited the Trump administration.

But I can imagine some nuance: "Look, are we covering all the angles? Are we dotting all the i's? And what we say in an email is not what we put out as a report."

You're hitting on this tug-of-war between one side saying it's political interference and the other side saying, "No, this is just how newsrooms work. We're just having editorial discussions. And there should be a push and pull." I understand why it was concerning to him. But I don't know if it adds up to a real thumb on the scale the way he says.

[I've asked Weiss for comment. A CBS News rep says Weiss' proposed changes "had no political motivation and were proposed solely to make the piece as strong, fair, and accurate as possible."]

There's now this idea that the "60 Minutes" controversy might be too much for Ellison to bear — either because it's embarrassing, or maybe it's a problem with regulators. But he's presumably going to own Paramount for decades, and if he wants to, he can have a very long view and not worry about what people like you and I are saying in the spring of 2026. Do you think there's any reason he says, "Actually, the Bari Weiss experiment is a failure or needs to be changed in some meaningful way?"

I don't know. I urge everybody to go back and reread his memo from October when he hired Bari Weiss and bought The Free Press.

He talked about how polarized the country is, how destabilized our politics feel, how the extremes are winning out, and how companies like Paramount have a responsibility to help people know what is real in the world.

He said a lot of really powerful things in that memo about restoring trust. Has Weiss restored trust in media? That's the fair question to ask nine months later.

In Pelley's interview, he notes that "60 Minutes" is still doing well. But Paramount is saying that "60 Minutes" needs to be blown up — that it's a melting ice cube, in Nick Bilton's language, and it needs to move to the future.

A successful broadcast television show that attracts millions of viewers is not nothing. Do you think it should be blown up? Or eased into something else?

I find it to be a very persuasive, compelling argument that "60 Minutes" — and I acknowledge this is mostly the Weiss camp saying this on background — that "60 Minutes" is really powerful, but it's out of date. It's archaic. It's too insular.

Weiss is clearly determined to make her mark at "60 Minutes" and not allow the historic insularity of "60 Minutes" to continue.

There are some really strong arguments for why you should evolve now — from a position of strength while the show is still highly rated — rather than wait for the ratings to erode. The line that Bilton and Weiss used internally was, "If you don't disrupt yourself, you will get disrupted."

I think the history of media shows that is true. But it always comes down to, not whether to do it, but how you do it. How do you execute on the plan? Isn't this the story we cover over and over again? People doing the right things, maybe in the wrong ways.

But doesn't this look like what David Ellison wanted when he brought in Bari Weiss — who has zero television experience and is an ideologue — and said, "I want you to run this news organization, including '60 Minutes,' and I want you to blow it up?"

There's a lot of truth in what you're saying. I have perceived from people close to Weiss that she looked around CBS News and was shocked by just how obsolete some of the operations were back when she arrived.

She looked around, and she said, "This place has been losing, so I'm not gonna be tethered to what you were doing for 10 or 20 years. It wasn't working."

And she had a lot of latitude, and does today, thanks to Ellison. But Ellison also said in his announcement the day that she was hired that "We're going to make CBS News the most trusted name in news."

We believe the majority of the country longs for news that is balanced and fact-based, and we want CBS to be their home." The issue now is a lot of these actions, a lot of these controversies, they have eroded trust. They have not built trust back.

[Ellison, in a Sunday telephone call to "60" correspondent Lesley Stahl, said he would respect the editorial independence of the program, Stahl told the Times on Tuesday.]

You're at CNN, reporting on the company that is likely to own CNN later this year. What's the vibe in the room?

Yeah. I'm covering the Paramount saga from inside the company that Paramount is trying to acquire.

I am very happy to say I have full autonomy to do so. No one is influencing my reporting. No one's reviewing what I'm saying on TV. I'm really blessed to have that autonomy.

So let's play this merger out for a moment. Let's say that Paramount does win all the necessary approvals, and CNN and CBS are owned by the same company. There are a lot of great opportunities. I see a lot of potential. It makes a lot of sense, as both a viewer as well as an employee of CNN.

But nobody knows how it's going to work. A lot of the news coverage this week has revolved around what that might look like. There were reports Tuesday morning about Paramount trying to bring in a business-side partner for Bari Weiss.

I think there are some reasons to be skeptical of those stories. But it just shows the amount of uncertainty that exists right now about what that post-merger landscape looks like.

• Use of PowerPoint has dropped sharply at McKinsey in the AI age, a top executive told Business Insider.
• One employee told us how he built an AI-assisted website to manage a consulting project.
• The site acts as a central project hub, replacing the need for a multi-slide PowerPoint.

Working on consulting projects has long involved creating slides — lots and lots of slides.

At McKinsey, AI has allowed consultants to pare back their reliance on PowerPoint.

Kate Smaje, McKinsey's Global Leader for technology and AI, told Business Insider that she's seen usage of PowerPoint drop massively within a couple of months as employees have begun vibe-coding with AI tools — both in the number of presentations they're creating and time spent using the program.

Beyond client presentations, consultants often use PowerPoint as a project-management tool: a working deck that serves as a running compendium of recent research and next steps, and is sent to clients at each week's close.

One McKinsey consultant has created a new approach: an AI-assisted website that acts as a central project hub for clients and the McKinsey team.

Louis-Charles Généreux, an engagement manager at McKinsey, built the website, which he calls the "client visualization hub," for his current project with a North American cable company.

The project involves about 70 people who need to stay informed in real time. Previously, Généreux would have managed that through the slide deck approach. But it wasn't without its problems, he said.

Once a deck was sent out, version control issues began. As updates were added and shared in email threads, multiple versions might circulate, leaving people working from different versions of the deck with varying understandings of the work.

Nor was scrolling through hundreds of PowerPoint slides the most cohesive way to find information.

"The traditional issue that I faced a lot, especially as an earlier engagement manager, was me being in a meeting and referring to it, and others having missed that," said Généreux.

The AI website fixes that by making the latest work more searchable, structured, and available in one place.

It has saved the team time and reduced the disconnect between engineering teams, product owners, and senior executives, said Généreux. "Everyone, irrespective of their knowledge or skills, sees the exact same thing."

Creating the website

To create the website, Généreux used Platform McKinsey, the consulting firm's internal self-service store for approved products. He found a deployment product that could host the site securely and keep it live.

The team had a repository of "dozens and dozens" of HTML files, including analysis, visuals, tables, and text that they used AI to help package into interactive web pages for the site.

It was then launched through a firm-approved system using McKinsey credentials on Cloudflare, which allowed access to be limited to those involved in the project.

AI also helps keep the website up to date. As the project evolves, the site is updated in real time, and at the end of the week, the system generates a podcast-style summary and a memo for people to consume.

PowerPoint has not disappeared, said Généreux, but it is now more of a final output — for a presentation, email, or memo — rather than the place consultants sign in for the day to work.

The real work, he said, is increasingly happening in AI tools — where consultants perform analysis, get challenged on their thinking, and then turn the work into whatever format is needed.

AI is the 'lifeblood' of consulting work

The consulting industry is at the center of the AI shift sweeping through workplaces. Leading firms like McKinsey, BCG, Deloitte, and IBM are advising companies on how to adopt AI while using the technology to overhaul their own work.

The shift is creating questions around consulting pricing models, talent, training, and where value is created — particularly as agents take on knowledge work once handled by humans.

Earlier this year, McKinsey's CEO Bob Sternfels said the firm's headcount comprises 40,000 humans and 25,000 AI agents. Five months later, Smaje told Business Insider that the number of agents is already "many multiples of that," and AI is becoming part of the "lifeblood" of how McKinsey works.

The shift isn't entirely new, she said, explaining that consultants' value has been more than simply producing research for a long time, and the profession has been changing since before the AI wave hit. Their value lies in judgment, pattern recognition, conceptual problem-solving, and helping clients act on their answers, she said.

What AI is now doing, Smaje continued, is shining a light on where and how value is really created for clients, and speeding up the whole process.

At McKinsey, AI has accelerated the early problem-solving cycle, turning what used to be a team's "week one answer" — the first hypothesis after a week of research and analysis — into an "hour one answer."

That frees up consultants to spend more time testing deeper parts of the issue tree rather than waiting days to get oriented, Smaje said.

In practice, Généreux said his team was using the added time by holding "dojo sessions or hackathons" a few times a week to explore ideas that back in the day would have been remote hypotheses.

"We now have the time to do that and the tools to very quickly determine whether or not that's worth exploring," he said.

Companies have been offered what looks like a golden ticket: Pour money into AI, and your firm will bubble over with productivity. Costs will go down; workers will produce more. It sounds almost too good to be true.

Right now, it kind of is.

On the one hand, there are people like software engineer Iren Azra Zou. She says that Anthropic's Claude Code has helped her complete software engineering tasks in a day that used to take as long as a week. "It saves an insane amount of time," said Zou, who works at the trucking logistics startup Double Nickel.

The company and economy productivity boost is less clear-cut. More code doesn't necessarily mean better products or features — though it can mean much more spending — and AI productivity gains haven't transferred to areas beyond coding as neatly.

For those like Amazon data scientist Sarthak Gupta, AI is actually creating more work, at least in the short-term. He's working longer hours as part of what he calls an "automation phase."

"That upfront investment is real," said Gupta. He's building out pipelines, integrating AI tools, and onboarding existing workflows into those new systems. "The bigger unlock isn't the speed on any single task, it's that the same pipeline keeps paying off every month, every quarter, every time the work repeats," said Gupta.

Gupta and Zuo's experiences point to a brewing AI productivity disconnect: Some workers are completing tasks more quickly, but researchers say AI gains have yet to consistently translate into greater company productivity, revenue, or profits. And, facing pressure to show that their massive AI spending is worthwhile, companies are racing to prove that individual efficiency can scale.

A productivity surge

Leaders are eager to discuss AI and productivity. In an analysis for Business Insider, business intelligence platform AlphaSense compared how frequently the word "AI" (or a synonym) appeared in proximity to the word "productivity" in major companies' earnings calls. It found these words appeared together in 637 earnings calls in the second quarter, up about 25% from the same period a year ago.

Labor productivity, which measures worker efficiency across the economy, has boomed in recent years. Productivity growth in the US has risen above its pre-pandemic trend since 2020, and strengthened further after late 2022 — around the time ChatGPT was released.

But those gains aren't necessarily due to AI. Roughly 90% of firms actively using AI reported the technology had no impact on productivity over the prior three years, according to a February National Bureau of Economic Research working paper based on a survey of nearly 6,000 executives.

Researchers have pointed instead to other explanations for the recent productivity surge, such as remote work, elevated job switching in 2021 and 2022, and shifts in the workforce composition.

"So far the productivity impacts from AI appear to be small and haven't really moved the dial on aggregate productivity growth," Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody's, told Business Insider.

A new Wharton paper by Jessica and Jonathan Wachter finds that tech companies are spending as if they expect such a productivity boom to materialize, but that if it doesn't, "the current buildout will be the largest misallocation of capital in history." They warn that some major tech companies could risk bankruptcy if they don't quickly increase productivity.

Alexander Sukharevsky, a senior partner at McKinsey, said a "gen AI paradox" persists at many companies because they haven't figured out how to scale AI across their operations.

It's common for workers to report individual productivity boosts — and for companies to see promising results in pilot projects — but much harder to turn those isolated gains into companywide improvements. Part of the challenge, Sukharevsky said, is getting employees to both adopt the technology and learn how to use it effectively.

At Uber, for instance, COO Andrew Macdonald said last month there wasn't a direct correlation between increased AI use and "useful consumer features."

His comments have kick-started a tokenmaxxing reckoning: Workers burning tokens, the units of text data processed by AI models and how they're priced, aren't necessarily bolstering company productivity, but are instead racking up sometimes massive bills. Enrique Dans, a professor of technology and innovation at the business-focused IE University in Spain, said that it's a perfect example of metrics gone wrong.

"When a metric turns into a goal, it stops being a good metric," Dans told Business Insider, adding: "It's not about measuring people's productivity according to how many tokens they burn; that's absurd. The metric should be, 'what have you achieved? What have you been able to accomplish?'"

While many workers are still figuring out how to use AI effectively, Michael Feroli, chief US economist at JPMorgan, said the skills needed to use large language models may require less training than previous technologies, raising the possibility that AI-driven productivity gains could materialize sooner than they have in past tech cycles.

"I think there's a case that it could be quicker," he said adding, "that we could be looking at years, not decades."

The uncomfortable AI middle

AI's biggest evangelists have predicted a utopia where productivity abounds, the GDP booms, Universal Basic Income keeps humans afloat, and — forget the four-day workweek — work as we know it will have slipped away.

"There will come a point when no job is needed — you can have a job if you want for personal satisfaction, but the AI will be able to do everything," Elon Musk predicted in 2023.

We're clearly not there yet, and perhaps never will be. Instead, we're stuck in the uncomfortable AI middle. GDP is holding strong (but not going bonkers), labor force participation among prime-age workers is chugging along, and this article was written by human beings.

That's not to say AI isn't having an impact on the labor market. Companies have increasingly cited AI during layoffs or in hiring slowdowns. Some have said cuts are to fund their AI investments, or that they are in anticipation of productivity gains that haven't fully materialized.

"The AI productivity lift is going to happen over time, and slowly," said Zandi. He doesn't think we'll see a big boost from AI in economic data until at least the late 2020s, or early 2030s. "I don't think we're going to see mass layoffs or unemployment. We will see a lot of job loss in certain industries, but job gains in others. The net should be a labor market that hangs together reasonably well."

Companies are also making headcount decisions for reasons that have little to do with AI, such as overhiring during the pandemic and economic uncertainty related to inflation, tariffs, and the war in Iran.

Software engineering roles could be an early signal of how those dynamics could play out in other white-collar roles, especially because so many coding tasks can be offloaded to AI tools. So why, despite tech companies laying off employees left and right, aren't we seeing a massive decline lately in software engineer job postings?

One theory is that AI means companies are producing far more code than ever, and that this output still needs to be managed and fixed by software engineers.

"Someone has to understand what the thing is that got built, has to maintain it, has to fix security issues that come up, upgrade the systems beneath it, and so on," said Aaron Levie, the CEO of cloud storage company Box, in a June X post. "That's all jobs."

Similarly, David Sacks, the Silicon Valley investor, said that coding has been "AI's breakout use case," citing increased activity on the developer platform GitHub.

"The fact that it's increased demand for software engineers — rather than decreased it — should call into question the entire 'AI will cause mass job loss' narrative," he wrote on X.

AI's spreadsheet moment

Companies want to show AI is worth the investment; workers want to prove their worth. The continued bottleneck is that organizations are building new infrastructure on the fly, and, so far, the rules of business haven't been rewritten.

It's a moment reminiscent of when spreadsheets were first introduced to the workplace. Lotus 1-2-3, the predecessor of Excel, suddenly and radically changed how quickly accountants and bookkeepers could work when it launched in 1983.

"AI isn't yet the jobpocalypse some predicted. Like spreadsheets and email before it, the technology will ultimately make workers more productive," the outplacement company Challenger said in a report published in June.

Spreadsheets didn't become the backbone of the global financial system overnight, but it's unthinkable now to imagine a workplace without Excel. AI has the potential to become another foundational workplace tool; it just hasn't made the leap yet from novel software to procedural backbone.

"AI is not a mature tool that you can unpack, plug in, and start redefining your processes," IE University's Dans said. "This is something that is probably going to happen soon, but we are not there yet."

• University endowments across America have struck it big with investments in SpaceX.
• In some cases, the holdings have gotten too big, and investment offices are looking to reduce or hedge.
• The windfall is ironic, considering Elon Musk has called college "overrated" in the past.

While it's a great school, my undergrad alma mater — Washington University in St. Louis — hasn't always had a lot to cheer about when it comes to athletics.

When I was enrolled in the early 2000s, the women's basketball and volleyball teams were Division 3 national championship contenders. We had some elite swimmers. But it was far from the type of rabid environment you might find at a D1 school.

Given the recent exploits of the school's investment chief — specifically in relation to SpaceX — it might finally be time Wash U to announce a ticker-tape parade.

The grand marshall can be Wash U CIO Scott Wilson, who, according to Bloomberg, turned a $50 million investment in SpaceX into a position worth billions. Wash U's SpaceX holding now makes up more than 10% of the school's $17 billion in assets.

If they're going to celebrate at Wash U, they might as well make it a national occasion, since schools all across the US find themselves in a similar situation.

The University of North Carolina system — which includes 17 schools — has about 10% of its assets in SpaceX, while Stanford also boasts a "sizable" position, according to the WSJ. Vanderbilt, meanwhile, is sitting on a holding of about $171 million, Bloomberg found.

These schools all gained exposure to SpaceX the same way: through venture capital firms and private-market funds, which have grown in popularity in recent years.

While it's hard to characterize these investments as anything but a resounding success, there are a couple of key caveats.

First, it's possible that these SpaceX positions have gotten too big for the liking of university CIOs. The company's valuation compounded so quickly in the private market that it was like a runaway train. Sure, they'll take the gains any day. But they'll also likely look for ways to trim or hedge, to reduce concentration risk, ahead of what's expected to be a volatile public-trading debut for SpaceX.

Second, these are still just paper gains. Taking profit and using those proceeds freely is another story entirely, considering legal restrictions in place for school endowments.

But overall, investing in SpaceX has been an unabashed boon for universities, which is ironic considering CEO Elon Musk hasn't exactly been the biggest supporter of higher education. He said in 2024 that "college is overrated," and included a comment about how we need more electricians, plumbers, and carpenters.

So what will Wash U do with its SpaceX riches? Might I suggest bringing Taco Bell back to the student-center food court? An alum can dream.

• JPMorgan's David Kelly warns of a variety of threats are facing stocks.
• Income inequality and high asset values pose potential risks to market stability.
• He urged diversification, suggesting European and Japanese stocks, and 10-year Treasurys.

JPMorgan strategist David Kelly says a series of extreme divergences in markets and the economy are putting the stock-market rally at risk.

For investors, "the average path forward looks comforting, if boring, and capable of supporting further gains in financial assets," Kelly wrote in a note to clients on June 1.

"However, it is an average built of such divergent trends that there is considerable danger of 'something' going badly wrong from an economic, political or technological threat," he continued. "In such an environment, it is impossible to be sure what that most likely 'something' could be and so it is very difficult to hedge against it."

Kelly pointed out some major tail risks he sees, starting with income and wealth inequality in the US, which has steadily increased since 1980. One risk this could create for stocks is that it could lead to a left-leaning government taking power in both Congress in 2027 and the White House in 2029, he said, which could mean higher taxes on corporations, hurting earnings.

Second, wealth relative to income has grown to historically high levels also seen before prior stock-market crashes. The total value of household assets is now around 630% of GDP, up from 486% at the dot-com peak in 2000 and 435% before the 1987 decline. This is another variation on Warren Buffett's favorite stock valuation measure of market capitalization relative to GDP, which he uses to spot episodes of excess in the stock market.

Third, tech stocks, particularly the biggest names in the sector, now make up a huge portion of the stock-market's capitalization. The top 10 stocks in the S&P 500 make up 41% of the index, he said, and eight of them are in the tech sector. That makes the broader market potentially vulnerable to a pullback if the AI trade were to go sour.

And fourth, consumers are unhappy despite stocks hovering near records. Last month's University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey reading hit a record low.

On top of all of that, stock valuations are stretched. The S&P 500's 12-month forward price-to-earnings ratio is at 25, while its Shiller CAPE ratio — which looks at current prices relative to a 10-year rolling average of earnings — is at 39, approaching dot-com era peaks.

"If you pay at very exorbitant valuations, then you're asking for trouble," Kelly told Business Insider.

4 ways to hedge the risks

Kelly said broad diversification in investment portfolios is "more urgent than ever." In an interview with Business Insider, he highlighted a few concrete ways that investors can achieve diversification.

First, he said he'd look to invest in developed market stocks, specifically in Europe and Japan. That's because they have little exposure to the AI trade, whereas emerging-market funds tend to be tilted toward countries like Korea and Taiwan, which are heavily weighted in AI stocks.

"Today, people think that they are diversifying their US equity exposure by passively going into emerging markets, but if you actually look at what's driving the EM indices, it's the same stuff," he said. "It's basically a technology bet all over again."

Second, he'd look to alternatives like, global transportation infrastructure and real estate, which offer an income stream that is uncorrelated to stock returns.

Third, value stocks offer a diversification opportunity as major indexes are now growth-heavy. In the same vein, Kelly said to look beyond the largest 10 stocks in the S&P 500.

Finally, Kelly said 10-year Treasury yields at about 4.5% are an attractive diversifier.

"For much of the last few decades, I would have said interest rates are so low that you ought to be underweight bonds," he said. "I wouldn't say that anymore."

Examples of funds that offer exposure to these trades include the iShares MSCI Japan ETF (EWJ); the iShares Europe ETF (IEV); the SPDR Dow Jones Global Real Estate ETF (RWO); the Dimensional US Large Cap Value ETF (DFLV); the Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight ETF (RSP); and the iShares 7-10 Year Treasury Bond ETF (IEF).

• Fearn, a startup building tools for patent drafting, has raised $5.5 million in seed funding.
• Investors include Andreessen Horowitz, a prominent backer of Harvey, and Kindred Ventures.
• Patent law has quietly become a hotbed of startup activity in the fast-growing legal-tech sector.

Legal tech giant Harvey is racing to help lawyers work faster. Startup Fearn wants to help inventors get further before they ever call a lawyer.

The startup has raised $5.5 million to build AI software that lets inventors draft patents themselves. Fearn is betting that one of legal tech's biggest opportunities isn't serving law firms but helping companies do more legal work, including in-house patent drafting.

The company's investors include Andreessen Horowitz, one of Harvey's most prominent backers. Kindred Ventures led the seed round, with participation from Designer Fund and Essence Venture Capital.

Han Kim, Fearn's cofounder and chief executive, says the software lets any inventor, from a lone researcher to an enterprise research-and-development team, upload a technical document and create a patent draft with a click of a button. The software scores the quality and completeness of the material provided, creates patent drawings, and shows its sources.

Fearn promises to cut the time to draft from weeks to minutes and charges a flat $2,000 per patent draft. It says it is already used by companies across robotics, pharma, energy, and gaming.

Last year, Fearn's founders applied cold to Speedrun, Andreessen Horowitz's 12-week startup boot camp. Kim said he and his cofounder, Angela Gao, were first-time founders who did not know many venture capitalists and had not yet cracked Silicon Valley's startup networks. Still, they got in.

Investment in legal technology has surged in recent years, rising from roughly $1 billion in 2019 to more than $4 billion last year. Harvey, last valued at $11 billion, has become the clearest example of a now-dominant thesis in the legal industry: artificial intelligence will help lawyers do more work, faster.

But another group of startups is chasing a different opportunity: helping companies bring more legal work in-house and send less of it to outside counsel.

Some startups are building law firms that pair lawyers with software and promise clients quicker, cheaper legal work. Others, like Wordsmith and Sandstone, are building tools for in-house legal teams to run their departments.

Fearn is starting with patent drafting. After a user has drafted an application, they can file it with the patent office or send it to their outside counsel for review.

Kim said the idea came from his own experience prosecuting patents at the elite law firm Morrison Foerster, where he worked before starting Fearn.

In his view, patent drafting was a natural fit for automation for two reasons. First, patents are highly structured documents. Second, patent prosecution requires technical fluency. To prepare and negotiate an application with a patent office, a patent prosector needs to understand the science or engineering well enough to argue what makes an invention new.

That is why many patent prosecutors come from technical backgrounds, Kim said. You do not need a law degree to practice patent prosecution, though you cannot argue patent cases in court without one.

Kim said the standard process can leave inventors feeling like bystanders in the protection of their own work. They know the invention best, he said, but have to trust someone else to translate it into legal language.

"Their primary anxiety, in my experience, has been that the patent lawyer does not understand their invention. They're going to mangle it," he said. "But the inventor can't even tell because it's written in legalese."

Kim met his cofounder, Gao, at Caltech, where he studied computational neuroscience, and she completed a PhD in computer science under Katie Bouman, the scientist known for her work on the first image of a black hole.

Fearn is trying to wedge itself into one of legal tech's most crowded races.

The competition is not just other patent startups, like Patlytics and DeepIP. Patent professionals could use Harvey for parts of the drafting process, even though its chief executive has said patent drafting is not one of the company's strongest use cases.

Meanwhile, the general-purpose chatbots are getting harder to ignore. Last month, Anthropic announced that users of Solve Intelligence, another patent drafting startup, can access Solve inside Claude's app. OpenAI, too, is pushing deeper into legal tech, recently hiring the Ironclad founder to lead its work in the field.

Kim said many of Fearn's competitors came to patent drafting as outsiders chasing a "hot business problem." Fearn's advantage may be that one of its founders lived the problem.

"For me, it really started with: My old job kind of sucked," Kim said. "This really can be automated. It doesn't have to suck."

• Andy Kofoid, an executive at Databricks, shared the career advice he gives his adult kids.
• He said grads should focus on skills and "check" their passion, rather than blindly follow it.
• He suggested working in an office four to five days a week to build skills and a network.

Recent grads face a tough labor market, but there's rarely an ideal time to job hunt for the first time.

"People either out of school, or early in their career, are probably most vulnerable because they don't have the foundation of experience and skills," Andy Kofoid, Databricks president of global field operations, told Business Insider.

Kofoid leads worldwide sales, field engineering, marketing, customer success, professional services, and alliances. at Databricks, a data and AI company valued at roughly $134 billion. He has three children in their 20s, all who have graduated from college within the last seven years.

Kofoid earned his degree in electrical engineering from Purdue University and his MBA from Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management, and has spent his career in enterprise software since.

His message to his adult kids — and all graduates — is simple: Build a strong foundation early. He said that if workers can excel in their first three to 10 years in the workforce, they'll have the skills and network needed to navigate changes down the line.

Here are his three pieces of advice for young workers:

Check your passion

Many business leaders have long preached a familiar mantra: Follow your passion, and everything else will fall into place.

Kofoid isn't sold.

While he acknowledges that advice sounds "wonderful" in theory, he takes a more practical approach to choosing a job. Rather than centering early-career decisions on passion alone, he encourages young workers to focus on getting a job where you can build skills.

"Take your passion and check it for a minute," Kofoid said.

He cautions against the age-old advice to follow your passion, because if you don't have the necessary "pillars of expertise," in an area, it becomes difficult to "exploit your passion" and build success from it long-term.

Build your skills

The rise of AI is already reshaping the workforce, automating some roles and transforming others. While Kofoid believes job seekers should pay attention to labor market trends and signals when choosing a career path, he cautions against focusing on predictions about which roles will be eliminated or reduced in the future.

After all, those forecasts can change quickly. Just a few years ago, a computer science degree was widely viewed as a golden ticket to job security. Today, the field has become far more crowded, and competition for entry-level roles has intensified.

"Go find jobs that you think will help you build skills around the expertise of what you studied at university," Kofoid said.

The priority, he said, should be finding roles and employers that allow workers to hone their skills while learning to work effectively alongside AI.

Make connections IRL

While many companies have called employees back to the office, plenty of firms still offer remote roles.

Kofoid said that those jobs may offer flexibility and sound "cool," but they can make it challenging to learn or build networks, especially for early-career employees. He encourages job seekers to spend four or five days a week in an office.

"There's no better way to do that than being with people in person, lunch, getting a coffee, going for a beer after work, having a conversation, really getting to know somebody," Kofoid said.

The executive added that it's really hard to get a job in the first place from just submitting an online application. He said if job seekers can leverage their network, their odds of getting an initial conversation is much higher.

Not only does in-person work help employees grow their network, but it also builds a "good work ethic," he said. Kofoid added that showing up to work on time and staying until the end of the day "builds grit." While some people have a strong work ethic naturally, many don't at the beginning of their careers, he said.

Kofoid also said that "working in a bullpen" promotes learning. When employees sit next to their colleagues or boss, they can get live feedback.

"You get interaction," Kofoid said. "And I think that helps from a growth and development standpoint around skill."

• It's a new era for AI pricing, and companies are suffering from sticker shock.
• Coinbase, Deloitte, and others are testing new limits for AI spending, Business Insider learned.
• Executives and workers explain how AI has upended workflows and budgets.

If the winter of 2026 saw companies gorge themselves on all-you-can-eat AI, summertime is for counting calories.

Prices for some of the most popular tools have risen, and companies that previously asked employees to go all out on AI code are suddenly facing hefty bills. Executives and workers told Business Insider how this new era in AI's evolution has thrown their workflows and budgets for a loop.

Coinbase executive Rob Witoff is sitting front row on the roller coaster. After Anthropic's Claude launched its much-improved coding model Opus 4.6 in February, Witoff, who oversees the crypto exchange's infrastructure, said, "Our internal usage started to go parabolic across the company."

Now, with prices rising, Coinbase has instituted a sophisticated system of weekly price caps ranging from $500 to $5,000 based on each employee's job level and role.

"Once people understand what's possible, usage takes off on its own. Then the focus shifts from 'Are people using AI?' to 'Are they using it well?' That's where we are today," he said.

It's the latest whiplash on the AI frontier. Executives and developers are rethinking their rapacious demand of recent months by switching models, imposing limits, and prioritizing projects. As a result, AI juggernauts, including OpenAI and Anthropic, risk losing market share to cheaper models — at a time when they're racing toward stock-market-altering IPOs.

The high stakes are prompting scrutiny. Salesforce CTO Parker Harris told Business Insider that the company has fully opened the floodgates for spending on Anthropic tools, but that likely won't last forever. They'll have to find a balance that doesn't divert too much money to the rising startup.

"We gotta run a business, we're a public company," Harris said. "We can't tell our investors like, 'Yeah, sorry, we gave half of our upside this year to Anthropic so they can go public'."

Tokenmaxxing is out, restraint is in

Between February and June, OpenAI, Anthropic, and GitHub each shifted their pricing models. One by one, the companies began charging more customers based on their token usage — the units that measure AI's input and output — rather than with flat-rate billing.

The corporate world quickly changed course. Walmart placed usage limits on its internal programming tool. Amazon shut down an internal "tokenmaxxing" leaderboard. Accenture, IBM, Oracle, and JPMorgan Chase have backed a new "Tokenomics Foundation," meant to standardize AI budgeting metrics across companies. By April, Uber had already blown through its AI budget for the year, and executives said its glut of token spending hadn't translated immediately into useful releases.

Leaders have begun to view token waste as fiscally irresponsible, Niranjan Krishnan, the head of AI solutions at the IT consultancy FPT Americas, told Business Insider.

"The novelty has worn off, and hard-nosed utility has stepped in," Krishnan said. "That's 2026 for you. The magical thinking era is gone."

A March and April survey of 200 executives by Wakefield Research, on behalf of the AI accountability startup Lanai, found that 79% of respondents were slightly or very concerned that their AI budgets would be cut because the spending wasn't tied to new revenue or profits.

A senior software engineer at Deloitte said that the changes to GitHub's pricing model are "already wreaking havoc" on expectations for work, with developers quickly burning through their new monthly quotas, which took effect in June. The software engineer estimates that a single, highly detailed prompt, which could have a model working for hours, would now cost more than $100 under GitHub's new usage-based billing.

"The cheap 'AI buffet' days are over," the software engineer said. Developers will now need to use AI tools more deliberately, narrowing their prompts and breaking large jobs into smaller tasks instead of handing autonomous agents sprawling specifications to complete on their own, he said.

Coinbase's Witoff pointed to an extreme hypothetical example of AI use that may have been fair game in the olden days of winter, but would now require much more scrutiny: analyzing all of the company's code for bugs using one of the state-of-the-art AI models.

"At our scale, that might cost $50,000 to $100,000 a run," he said. "So if you've got a hundred people doing that independently, you're going to spend $10 million."

Some projects are worth it. Coinbase's system alerts users when they're approaching their limits, but they can apply for an exception, which Witoff said are often granted. The system is meant to make workers more mindful about how they're using tokens.

"We think constraints breed creativity," Witoff said. "We don't want people burning money just because they can, or creating the wrong incentives.

LogicMonitor is also imposing internal limits on token use and including them in some products it sells to customers. The IT company's head of AI, Karthik Sj, told Business Insider he is now less likely to leap to the priciest, most powerful AI tool to do a task, unless it's a marked improvement above the one they were using prior.

"We are in uncharted territory, and I think this is going to give a reckoning moment for many companies, many CIOs, many CFOs," Sj said. "How do we not dread this tokenmaxxing situation, and really focus on value? It's a good problem for the industry, I think."

Why AI subsidies had to go

OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, has heard the groundswell of concern. He said at a recent event that AI budgeting went from "at the beginning of this year, an issue that never came up — people were totally happy with the amount they were spending — to all of a sudden, a huge issue."

So why did prices rise? For OpenAI, Anthropic, and GitHub, the economic proposition has changed. Tokens have become cheaper thanks to Nvidia's chip innovations, but AI tools' popularity and new agent-based setups meant providers could no longer afford to subsidize heavy users.

Mario Rodriguez, GitHub's chief product officer, wrote in a post announcing the new pricing that under the company's old billing setup, a "quick chat question and a multi-hour autonomous coding session can cost the user the same amount." He said GitHub had been eating the costs, but it was "no longer sustainable." GitHub's move was met with a wave of complaints from developers, as some learned the shift to usage-based pricing would multiply their AI code expenses to thousands of dollars a month.

OpenAI and Anthropic have been taking steps to alleviate costs, promoting their newest model releases as more "token-efficient" than prior models. Both labs offer an option to complete non-urgent tasks slowly but at a lower price. They also offer prompt caching, which saves previous queries to use as reference points, cutting down on required computing power.

An Anthropic spokesperson told Business Insider that the company sees its new usage-based model as benefiting customers because it's more customizable — heavy users aren't cut off, and light users don't pay for capacity they don't use. OpenAI and GitHub did not respond to Business Insider's requests for comment.

Companies are making their own cost-cutting fixes. At the software startup Harness, use of Claude Code drove AI costs to "grow exponentially" from October through March, senior vice president Trevor Stuart told Business Insider. By training engineers and building internal tools, the company has managed to reel in costs over the last few months. Because of the pricing changes, Stuart said, "I think many teams are now having that same conversation."

All-you-can-eat out, regular ol' menu in

The AI coding craze, for all the twists and turns of 2026 so far, is still in its infancy. The "tokenmaxxing" uproar, the sticker-shock pricing, the see-sawing behavior by companies — these are all symptoms of a sudden paradigm shift, and companies are proceeding with caution.

Salesforce's CTO Harris said the company is spending "far more" than they'd planned on tokens for its 2026 fiscal year. For now, he said, they're seeing where the change takes them, trying to avoid "holding back on the gas."

In the meantime, Salesforce is rolling out measurements for both customers and internal engineers to better understand the tangible impacts of AI. Harris noted that the company could have been measuring software engineers' output more closely before, and said its new code-focused metric, called an Effective Output score, will help avoid further surprises.

"We have enough data now that we can forecast," Harris said. "And then it's just a question for the company: 'What's the return? What's the right spend for the return?'"

That calculus has some executives angling for cheaper AI. Some companies Business Insider spoke to, including Coinbase, have begun offloading basic work to less advanced AI models, either from American companies or from Chinese firms like Deepseek and MiniMax.

Ahmad Awais, the founder of the coding agent startup Command Code, told Business Insider his company gained 10,000 customers in a recent 30-day stretch, largely driven by demand for cheaper models.

For some of those businesses, using the most advanced — and expensive — models isn't worth it for everything. Stuart, the Harness executive, likened using a cutting-edge AI model for basic text-summary work to "taking the Ferrari to the grocery store."

Have a tip? Contact AI reporter Stephen Council via email at scouncil@insider.com, or over text, Signal, Telegram, or WhatsApp at 415-757-8198. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

• Tech stocks have dropped sharply in recent days, snapping a streak of strong gains.
• Some have flagged profit-taking as the motive, as traders pile up cash to buy SpaceX stock later this week.

The stock market has stumbled recently, with brutal sell-offs hitting tech shares on Friday and again on Tuesday, but the losses might be a bullish signal for the upcoming SpaceX IPO.

Iran war worries and an uncertain outlook for interest rates have been the drivers of recent stock losses, with the market's hottest trades battered in two of the last three sessions on Wall Street.

Another explanation, however, might be investors piling up cash to throw at SpaceX stock when it debuts later this week.

SpaceX will make its stock-market debut on Friday, following an IPO that's expected to raise $75 billion and achieve a valuation of $1.75 trillion.

The IPO is set to be the largest in history, fueling some concerns about the impacts of pulling that much cash from the market.

Michael Monaghan, a portfolio manager at Founder ETFs, isn't worried about a lack of liquidity in the market to absorb the IPO, and said that Tuesday's sell-off may reflect the excitement around the mega-offering.

"I think the reason stocks are going down is that everyone is so focused on the SpaceX IPO and how to position it that they're not doing work on other names," he said, explaining that investors are selling tech and there are fewer bids to buy the stocks when all eyes are looking toward Thursday's pricing.

"This whole setup is very good for first batch for the SpaceX IPO," Monaghan said, adding that the IPO is "so high profile" that the institutional players backing it work to get shares in the hands of investor that will hold them for the long term.

Futurum CEO, Daniel Newman, wrote that Tuesday's pull back amounted to "public market fund raising" ahead of SpaceX's trading debut.

BCA Research chief strategist Noah Weisenberger warned that the mega IPOs like SpaceX could weigh on current AI winners. Tuesday's market moves could embody this.

"While the supply-demand balance seems somewhat favorable to absorb the new shares, the bigger risk is within Tech, where new AI listings could reduce scarcity value and pull capital away from existing AI beneficiaries," the strategist wrote.

Vanda Research flagged cash hoarding head of the SpaceX IPO as a reason for more tepid post-tax-season retail flows this year.

"One potential explanation is that some investors are raising liquidity ahead of the anticipated SpaceX IPO. If SpaceX, OpenAI & Anthropic are viewed as the 'real deal,' one might imagine that we could see further selling in recent favourites and proxy AI trades as some retail investors look to raise capital in advance of these big IPOs," the firm said on Tuesday.

• Tiger Aesthetics, the maker of cadaver-derived filler alloClae, is fighting to get New York's health department off its back.
• The state health department says Tiger is smuggling the filler into the state without permission.
• State officials seized product from at least one doctor, but others have continued to inject it.

An injectable fat product that has become popular with high-end plastic surgeons and their well-heeled clientele is under investigation by New York state health officials, according to court filings.

Tiger Aesthetics began distributing alloClae, which is derived from sterilized cadaver fat and regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, to a select group of plastic surgeons in 2024. Some of them raved to Business Insider about its potential to smooth out hip dips and fill out breasts — with no general anesthesia or lengthy recovery needed.

Those lunchtime boob jobs may soon come to a halt, at least in New York.

State health regulators have said Tiger is distributing alloClae in the state without a license, according to a May lawsuit filed by Tiger and a letter from the state attorney general. At least one doctor had his supply of the product seized, while four surgeons' offices that Business Insider called said they're still offering it.

Tiger and its affiliates engaged in "a year-long scheme to smuggle their product, alloClae (derived from human adipose tissue), into New York State despite being denied licenses to distribute it here," a lawyer for the state said in a May 29 court filing about what it called a "confidential investigation."

Larry Wood, Tiger's chief legal officer, said in an email to Business Insider on June 8 that alloClae is "legally sold throughout the United States, including in New York." In a June 1 letter to customers, the company said it "has decided temporarily to pause" distribution of the product in New York, citing the lawsuit.

Many doctors still advertise the product, which can cost up to $100,000 per procedure, on their websites. ME Plastic Surgery, which has locations on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue and in Queens, calls the product "revolutionary" on its website — beneath a bold-text announcement that says "AlloClae is currently not approved by the New York State Department of Health." The practice declined to comment.

Another clinic told Business Insider in late May that it was still offering alloClae; a receptionist declined to confirm that when called a week later, citing the regulatory crackdown.

Tiger, the sole manufacturer and distributor of alloClae, said in its lawsuit that the Health Department took too long to decide on its distribution license. It added that the product isn't a "tissue" that New York can regulate, and that state law doesn't require licenses for sterilized products like alloClae. It is instead regulated by the FDA under rules that don't require premarket approval, the company said.

Hermes Fernandez, a lawyer who represents healthcare-industry clients in New York regulatory matters and is not involved in the dispute, said the case could go either way.

If no other state has taken issue with alloClae, as Tiger claims, that might give a judge pause, he said. If the company voluntarily submitted to the permitting process before distributing alloClae without a license, that could cut against it.

"Regulators tend not to like that," he said.

A 'lunchtime augmentation'

Soon after alloClae hit the market, patients and surgeons became enamored with its potential: a breast lift during a lunch break, a butt bump without going under the knife.

Fueled by the GLP-1 boom and greater acceptance of plastic surgery, demand for alloClae skyrocketed, outpacing supply and resulting in waitlists.

Dr. Tommaso Adonna, president of the New York Plastic Surgery Group medical practice, told Business Insider he thinks alloClae and similar products have potential, but said he will not inject it for breast treatments without further study.

He turned away a potential client who had seen social-media content about the potential for a "lunchtime augmentation," he said.

"I'm told — and I know the people at Tiger pretty well — the company itself is trying to do their due diligence," he said. Still, his practice won't stock alloClae because it has a tissue bank license issued by the Health Department that he doesn't want to put "at risk."

The American Society of Plastic Surgeons declined to comment on alloClae's regulatory status. The society's spokesperson said it encourages patients considering any procedure involving tissue products to consult with a board-certified plastic surgeon.

Tiger told Business Insider in 2025 that it planned to scale up production this year.

Tiger told customers in April that it was "aware of a recent circumstance involving the Department of Health and a particular physician in New York," according to a letter seen by Business Insider. That was a reference to a seizure of alloClae, a person familiar with the matter said.

Days later, Tiger offered at least one New York doctor a promotion for bulk purchases of alloClae, according to a memo seen by Business Insider.

Then, on June 1, the company circulated the new memo seen by Business Insider explaining its positions in the lawsuit and saying that it would cease distribution of the product in New York.

A judge ruled on May 29 that New York should not prevent the distribution of a separate tissue-derived wound treatment that Tiger has also feuded about with the state. The judge declined the company's request to halt the alloClae crackdown, though, calling for both sides to further flesh out the dispute in court filings and oral arguments. A hearing is scheduled for later this month.

The state health department wouldn't comment on specific cases but said that it follows the law to protect New Yorkers.

In an emailed statement, the co-CEOs of Tiger's parent company said it "strongly disagreed" with the state health department's actions but wouldn't get into specifics about the litigation.

They said Tiger is "routinely and successfully inspected by the FDA" and said alloClae is "regulated solely under federal law by the FDA."

Until this is worked out, New Yorkers interested in alloClae may have to look into taking the PATH train in between meetings.

• Beta Technologies wants to revolutionize air travel with the electric Alia 250 flying taxi.
• The aircraft can be fitted for passengers or cargo, and it costs $28 per hour in energy use.
• I saw it zip over Burlington in formation with its sister aircraft, the Alia CX300.

Commuting by air is largely a luxury reserved for the elite — but ambitious startups are betting that won't last much longer.

Aerospace companies have spent years and billions of dollars trying to make battery-powered flying taxis a reality, billed as a cleaner and cheaper alternative to helicopters.

One of the leading electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft is the Alia 250 from Vermont-based manufacturer Beta Technologies. I saw the five-motor aircraft in action last week as it buzzed over Burlington Airport at speeds over 130 mph.

The eVTOL was noticeably quieter than a helicopter and flew fast and steady despite its trunky appearance. Based on Beta's estimate that a one-hour flight costs about $28 of energy, the electricity consumed during the 30-minute demonstration flight would have cost only about $14. Or, roughly the price of a large movie-theater popcorn.

That doesn't necessarily translate into cheap fares — insurance, pilot pay, and maintenance still factor into commercial operations — but Beta's CFO Herman Cueto said during the event that the Alia 250 is "about 75%" cheaper than a helicopter to operate.

The end goal is to fly these air taxis on city-to-airport routes to bypass road traffic. Think New York-JFK to Downtown Manhattan or Long Beach to Burbank Airport. The dawn of the new aircraft has even fueled visions of a Jetsons-like future of air taxis to get to work.

Beta president and CEO Kyle Clark said the Alia 250, which has racked up hundreds of test flight hours and is participating in a Transportation Department program to fast-track eVTOLs, is expected to be certified over the next few years.

Beta is using a stepwise certification approach based on its sister aircraft, the Alia CX300, an electric airplane categorized as a conventional takeoff and landing, or cTOL, that needs a runway rather than a vertiport. The CX300, which flew in formation with the Alia 250, is expected to be certified by late 2027.

Both aircraft use mirrored technology and systems, with the Alia 250's engine and other components tailored for vertical lift. Clark said the pragmatic approach makes eVTOL certification easier: "By the time you get the cTOL certified, you effectively have 80% of the requirements for the eVTOL."

Beta, which trades on the New York Stock Exchange as BETA, is also betting that the Alia 250's flexibility to carry cargo or passengers will expand its market beyond air taxis into the broader urban air mobility market, like medical missions.

Electric flight still faces myriad obstacles, including infrastructure, certification, public acceptance, and affordable fares. Here's a closer look at the Alia 250 eVTOL.

The Alia 250's rotors are fixed.

The Alia 250 takes off and lands vertically using four top-mounted rotors, then transitions to forward flight via an aft propeller. By comparison, Joby and Archer engineered their aircraft with six rotors that physically tilt to perform both vertical and forward flight.

Beta's aircraft was designed with simplicity in mind and constructed with as few complex systems as possible, Clark said.

He added that Beta has built everything in-house, including the engine, batteries, and propellers, a vertical integration strategy that gives it more control over costs and quality.

Its engine is fully battery-powered.

The eVTOL is powered by five battery packs, giving it a range of roughly 290 miles. Its five electric motors are built with multiple layers of redundancy, meaning the aircraft can continue flying safely even if one motor fails.

Beta said the Alia 250 fully recharges in less than an hour via giant charging cubes. The company also sells its charging infrastructure to other operators for hundreds of thousands of dollars to secure revenue outside aircraft sales.

One pilot and up to 5 passengers.

Clark said the eVTOL cabin, airframe, avionics, and powerplant all mirror the Alia CX300.

I sat in the front on a CX300 flight, and the view of the lakes and mountains below was incredible; I can imagine that'd be a treat over Manhattan, Miami, or Los Angeles. It's a small aircraft, though, where turbulence is more noticeable and could cause motion sickness.

These zero-emission flights cost just tens of dollars to operate, according to Beta. A Cessna turboprop or a Sikorsky helicopter can cost hundreds of dollars per hour in fuel, a difference particularly notable after the US war in Iran sent oil prices soaring.

The Alia 250 can also be a freighter.

The Alia 250 can carry up to 200 cubic feet of cargo; imagine Amazon boxes, humanitarian aid, or organ transport. It's a different approach than Joby and Archer's primary focus on passenger eVTOLs; they have said they aim to certify as early as this year.

Instead, Clark said Beta is working its way up: "We're ready to go today with cargo cTOL aircraft," he said. "Tomorrow it's going to be passenger cTOL aircraft, then cargo VTOL aircraft, then passenger VTOL aircraft."

Reuters reported that Beta has 890 firm orders for its aircraft, of which a majority are for the Alia 250. Customers include UPS and the New Zealand Air Ambulance Service.

Beta still faces several hurdles.

The company's demonstration flights are part of an effort to show the public that electric aircraft can become an accessible and affordable way to commute.

But exactly how affordable remains unclear. Fares that are merely cheaper than a helicopter could still be out of reach for many travelers.

And safety remains a key challenge, as the company must demonstrate that the aircraft is reliable enough for routine passenger flights, while scaling will depend on regulatory approvals and raising capital.

The company also faces growing competition from Joby and Archer as they race to commercialize their own eVTOLs and capture a share of the emerging urban air mobility market.

• AWS CMO asked staff to help fill open roles, including by recruiting recently laid-off Meta workers.
• AWS is hiring aggressively despite the company's mass layoffs earlier this year.
• AWS's marketing team wants to enhance collaboration, and move away from a siloed operating model.

Amazon wants Meta's castoffs.

Months after Amazon's own job cuts, Amazon Web Services' marketing chief asked employees to recruit recently laid off Meta workers, saying the organization is understaffed and scrambling to fill open roles.

During an internal staff meeting late last month, AWS Chief Marketing Officer Julia White was asked about attrition in her organization and whether the company was considering compensation changes to improve retention.

White said hiring was the bigger challenge. AWS's marketing unit had roughly 160 open positions at the time. "That's a lot," she said, while stressing that accelerating hiring was one of her top priorities.

"If you have friends and family or colleagues — or I know Meta just laid off 8,000 people — any of those great people you know, ping them," she said. "We have jobs and we need top talent here." Business Insider reviewed a recording of the meeting.

The comments highlight a tension inside Amazon as some parts of the company cut jobs while others are competing aggressively for talent.

Amazon spent much of the past year conducting one of the largest layoffs in its history, eliminating more than 30,000 jobs across multiple rounds of cuts, including positions within AWS marketing. Smaller layoffs have continued across parts of Amazon's retail and robotics organizations in recent months.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy previously said his company's layoffs were intended to address organizational and cultural issues. The job cuts have unfolded as Amazon is on pace to deploy a record $200 billion on capital expenditures this year.

An Amazon spokesperson said the company has been working to reduce management layers and bureaucracy while continuing to hire in key areas. When announcing layoffs in January, Amazon said it would keep investing in "strategic areas" critical to its future.

"We're focused on hiring and developing the best talent at AWS and across Amazon's range of businesses," the spokesperson said in a statement.

'It's a hot market'

White said attrition within AWS's marketing unit remains higher than she would like, though it has stabilized and is beginning to trend lower.

"It's a hot market," she said. "Our talented people are in high demand."

White said compensation is one of the factors that comes up in exit interviews and that AWS is "trying to take the right compensation actions to make sure that people feel fairly compensated." Amazon's pay model has been flagged internally as a headwind in the competition for top talent, Business Insider previously reported.

But she said pay is not the primary reason employees leave.

"Compensation is one of the things, but it's not the top one," White said, adding that employees also cite lifestyle considerations, career growth opportunities, and other factors.

The Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider the company's compensation philosophy is "intended to attract, retain, and motivate the highest-caliber talent, and we regularly evaluate our compensation to make sure it's competitive."

'Deeply siloed'

In January, White internally announced the departures of two of the organization's most senior leaders: Leah Bibbo, a longtime product marketing executive who helped build AWS's US public relations organization, and Jen Hartford, the veteran marketing leader who helped launch and grow AWS's annual re:Invent conference.

The leadership changes were accompanied by a reorganization that consolidated several marketing functions under Tim Hoppin, Steve Sloan, and Kristin Shaff.

During last month's internal staff meeting, White said the team needs to move from a "deeply siloed operating model" to a "much more collaborative one." The transition has created growing pains as teams learn new ways of working together, she added.

"We have too many handoffs and not enough handshakes," she said. "We're in that refinement curve of making sure it's efficient."

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• Wall Street institutions tend to recruit from so-called target schools, like Harvard or Stanford.
• Some non-target students have found another route to the big leagues: Wall Street Oasis.
• The platform charges $7,000 for access to courses, coaching, and a professional network.

If you want to get a job on Wall Street, there are two words that can go a long way towards determining your success: target school.

Think Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Duke, Penn, Columbia, and MIT — elite schools where the Wall Street recruiters come to them, trusting that they'll be provided with reliably bright young candidates.

That means students who attend less prestigious schools may have a harder time getting their foot in the door of the world of high finance. It doesn't doom their chances altogether, but a confluence of factors can weigh on job prospects: their résumé is less likely to stand out; fewer recruiters, if any, are coming to campus; faculty members may not have a network to draw on; or the right finance and accounting classes may not even be part of the curriculum.

However, some of these non-target students have found an alternative path to the big leagues through an online platform called Wall Street Oasis.

For a $7,000 — or a higher fee of $11,000, which guarantees a job placement or your money back — Wall Street Oasis customers get access to its "Academy," a series of courses on how to build various financial models. They can also set up mock interviews with Wall Street pros who give them feedback on how to improve their performance. Further, the platform gives you access to a vast network of over 3,000 mentors that you can reach out to.

Founded in 2006 by former banker Patrick Curtis, Wall Street Oasis is perhaps best known for its discussion forums, which give both established and aspiring bankers a place to discuss topics ranging from Wall Street culture to AI use to thoughts on certain stocks.

But the company's biggest money maker is its Academy, Curtis said, and its customers have largely been successful in finding jobs. Eighty-eight percent of students who finished at least 90% of the courses get hired for a role within 12 months of starting the program, he said.

The company's mission of helping students break into Wall Street careers is something personal for Curtis.

"When I joined investment banking at Rothschild back in 2002, I knew I had no idea where I was going. I was a liberal arts major, didn't have the finance background or anything like that," he told Business Insider. "There should be a community or a place that people could speak to learn more about these careers and what the actual good path might be for them."

According to WSO customers who spoke with Business Insider, the fee is well worth it — if only for the networking benefits alone.

Lucius Nguyen, a student at Georgia State University, said WSO helped him land an investment banking internship at Wells Fargo for next summer. He said he connected with a former Wells Fargo managing director through WSO, who told him about the job and what he'd be looking for in an employee if he was hiring.

Another student who used WSO to land a full-time investment banking gig at Bank of America said he was also able to set up chats with people at the bank during his job search.

"I've probably spoken to like 10 or 15 people at Bank of America before I went through the interview process," they said.

Even those who have used WSO to transition out of banking have found the platform's network useful. Kshitij Galav, a former Nomura banker who attended the University of Wisconsin and now works as a finance associate at a tech startup, said he joined WSO to get coaching for his specific path.

For example, WSO mentors who had taken a similar career path helped him narrow down the types of startups he could look for opportunities at, then pick out who to reach out to at each company, and how exactly to reach out to them.

While buying access to a huge network of bankers is helpful, some have found the academic portion of WSO's offering particularly valuable — especially if they feel they need to brush up on their financial knowledge, or if they don't have much to begin with.

Dylan West, who now works at an investment bank, said he studied political science and economics and used WSO to land his first job at an M&A valuation firm.

"I did not take a single finance class," West said.

• Meta laid off thousands of workers last month.
• Managers and engineers made up more than half the cuts in California and Washington, records show.
• Meta is pushing small teams and greater AI use across the company.

As Meta pours billions into AI, it's laying off two roles the most: developers and managers.

Last month, Meta cut about 8,000 jobs. Business Insider obtained public filings revealing the job titles of 4,665 employees affected by Meta's mass layoffs in California, the state where Meta is headquartered, and Washington, where it has one of its largest offices near Seattle.

Managers were by far the hardest-hit group, making up more than 1,400 of the layoffs identified in the filings — nearly one-third of the total. Almost half of those cuts were software engineering managers. Individual software engineers were the second-most affected group, with nearly 1,000 layoffs.

The data paints a tough picture for two groups that have long been central to the tech industry.

Software engineers have been bearing the brunt of AI this year. Companies such as Block and Coinbase have used recent advances to justify sweeping layoffs, although hiring for software engineers is picking up again.

It's also a difficult time for middle managers as companies embrace small teams and expect bosses to produce their own output.

Middle managers have been the target of Meta's layoffs since 2023, when Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he didn't want a culture of "managers managing managers."

"The changes we are implementing vary by team and include layoffs, open role closures, and moving thousands of employees to business-critical priorities across the company," a Meta spokesperson told Business Insider.

Other highly affected roles in the layoff disclosures included data scientists, with 419 people laid off, and product management, which saw 301 cuts. Other job types were less affected. For example, fewer than 100 people in marketing and fewer than 50 people in sales roles were cut.

These layoffs came as Meta embraced AI internally, calling some of its employees "AI builders," reorganizing them into small "pods," and holding "AI Weeks" for staff. In April, Zuckerberg attributed the layoffs to the need to offset AI spending, not automation itself.

The disproportionate impact on developers and managers is no surprise given Big Tech's shifting priorities, Jason Schloetzer, an associate professor at Georgetown University's business school, told Business Insider.

Tech firms care more about revenue per employee now than in the past, when companies bragged about their engineering talent pool, he said. Big Tech firms also used to hoard talent to keep them away from competitors.

Now, unprecedented spending on AI makes it harder than ever to justify those hires, he said. It's also easier to have fewer engineers thanks to AI tools.

"The AI bill is coming due," he said.

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• Geoffrey Hinton says he has changed his stance on AI's role in warfare because of Russia's war in Ukraine.
• Hinton told NBC News that the relationship between AI and the military is "more complicated" than he used to think.
• Hinton has for years warned against military applications of the technology.

Geoffrey Hinton, the computer scientist often called the "godfather of AI," said Russia's war in Ukraine has changed how he thinks about the use of artificial intelligence on the battlefield.

"I think it's more complicated than I used to think," Hinton told NBC News in an interview published on Tuesday.

Hinton has for years warned against military applications of AI and previously pushed for an international ban on lethal autonomous weapons.

"I used to think that we should try very hard to prevent lethal autonomous weapons, but if you look at what's happening in Ukraine, it becomes much more complicated," Hinton said in the interview.

Hinton said that the pivotal role of drones, including AI-enabled ones, has played in Ukraine's defense against invading Russian forces made him more receptive to the military use of the technology.

"Ukraine is surviving because of drones," Hinton told the news outlet. "If that's what modern warfare is all about, it's very hard to argue that one country should refuse to do it."

While Ukraine has used AI-powered drones against Russian targets, its defense relies on the large and constant production of munitions, including drones that are largely piloted and directed by humans.

Despite acknowledging the value of AI-driven systems on the battlefield, Hinton said he's still uneasy about the technology's role in modern warfare, calling it "a mess."

Combat in Ukraine has fueled visions of future warfare, like machine gun turrets that select their own targets or flying drones that hunt down human beings. By removing human direction and decision-making, AI offers the possibility of killing more people much faster.

As AI capabilities continue to advance, Hinton said the public must stay engaged in the development of the technology.

"The only thing that's going to rein in those big AI companies is public pressure," Hinton said, adding, "I see my mission as educating the public, so they understand the dangers of AI, as well as understanding the good things."

Hinton was unavailable for further comment, his assistant told Business Insider in an email.

Over the past decade, employees at tech companies including Google and Microsoft have pushed back against defense-related projects, including some involving AI.

Last week, President Donald Trump signed a directive aimed at accelerating the development and use of AI for national security purposes.

AI, the National Security Presidential Memorandum reads, "will be among the most transformative technologies to national security in the history of the United States."

"When adopted appropriately, AI can help protect our warfighters during peacetime and on the battlefield, enable precise operations that minimize harm to civilians, and ensure the United States continues to maintain technical overmatch against our adversaries and strategic competitors," the memo says.

The Trump administration has pushed for unfettered AI use for national security. The Pentagon took the unprecedented move of labeling the US company Anthropic a supply chain risk after it requested that its Claude AI not be used on autonomous weapons, and it gutted an office meant to reduce harm to civilians during war.

A pair of tickets to see the Yankees play the Red Sox on Saturday, June 6 — Section 217, Row 13, Seats 1-2 — would have cost you $424 on StubHub if you tried buying at 10 in the morning a couple of days before the game.

Or $435.

Or $446.

Or $450.

Or $486.

Or $490.

Those prices weren't for different seats or different listings. They didn't come from different ticket platforms or resale apps. They were the exact same tickets, viewed at the same time on the same site by different people. If no one was comparing notes, it would have gone unnoticed.

Most consumers are accustomed to doing some level of comparison shopping. We see if Aldi or Walmart has better deals on steak, or check if a clothing brand is offering lower prices in-store or on its website. Dynamic pricing is annoyingly pervasive across the economy.

But even in an era of constantly shifting prices, event tickets are a particularly confounding black box. Prices are sky high, funny business abounds, and it can feel as though nothing would surprise anyone at this point. Despite the general expectations for chaos, our endeavor was still eyebrow-raising — and should tell consumers the answer to how much something costs is increasingly, "It depends, and maybe by a lot."

I recently fell down the rabbit hole trying to understand the modern ticket-pricing model, so the other day I decided to bring four of my colleagues with me for a little experiment. The five of us got onto a video call, fired up StubHub on our phones and computers, and were able to put the exact same tickets for the aforementioned Yankees-Red Sox game into our carts at the same time. During our trial, we were quoted six different prices, and no individual was offered the same price on their phone as on their laptop.

The difference wasn't in the ticket price itself, which was $183 apiece across the board — it was in the fees. My colleague, Juliana, had a $60 fee tacked onto each of her tickets when she shopped from her desktop in the Business Insider office. Our other coworker, Jacob, beaming in from his computer in Chicago, was charged only $28. His fees went up when he used the mobile browser on his phone. Juliana's fees went down when she looked from the app.

This resulted in some pretty significant variation in total costs. From her laptop, my colleague Callie would have paid $490 total, 14% more than our coworker Jack, who was also cruising the web via big(ger) screen. I was signed into my StubHub account on both my laptop and the mobile app. The former quoted me $490, the latter $446 — $44 is a lot of hot dogs and beer. (OK, at current stadium prices, some hot dogs and beers.) In many instances, StubHub's design suggested we were getting discounts, with the quoted price next to a crossed-out higher "original" price.

When I reached out to StubHub to ask what gives, I was met with a shrug. "In this economy, we regularly test deals to balance fan access and a competitive price," a spokesperson said in an email, adding it's been "standard practice" across e-commerce for years across retail, travel, and ticketing. They said our little experiment showed "randomized, anonymous testing, which helps us explore pricing options to get the most fans to events."

Sure, dynamic and variable pricing have been around for a long time — we've all gotten cheaper drinks at happy hour or paid through the nose for last-minute plane tickets. But technology has unleashed a new beast: Companies have the ability to set special, just-for-you prices, and it's often not clear to consumers when it's happening, how, or why.

Much of the concern around algorithmic pricing is that instead of a fixed model, companies may use our personal characteristics to target each individual with a precise number, leveraging our data to determine exactly what we're each willing to pay. A 2025 Federal Trade Commission report found that retailers increasingly have the capacity to engage in surveillance pricing, though it didn't nail down how widespread the practice is.

I tried to find a rhyme or reason for the variation in StubHub. Did it know some of us were more inclined to make big purchases on the big screen? Was there something about gender or location? Or was it a case of good or bad luck? When it comes to these types of price swings, specific explanations may not matter — and may not even exist, says Katie Wells, the author of a 2025 report from progressive think tank the Groundwork Collaborative and publication Consumer Reports that found Instacart was charging different customers significantly different prices for the same food from the same stores. It might not be the case that characteristic A leads to the company charging price B, especially in the age of AI.

"It could be true that it's random on one day, and it could be A/B testing the next day, and it could be a combination of a third of using personal data," Wells says. "We don't know."

Lindsay Owens, the executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, tells me the widespread acceptance of dynamic pricing lets platforms get away with this. We've grown accustomed to prices for concerts and sporting events rising and falling based on supply and demand, so it's easier to add in and tinker with surcharges that will go unnoticed. Everyone just assumes the prices platforms offer will be all over the place, so they don't look under the hood to see why.

"They have more room to run, and they clearly have chosen to tuck their head, grab the football, run down the field," says Owens, the author of the coming book "Gouged: The End of a Fair Price—and What That Means for Your Wallet."

Ticket platforms have to use "all-in pricing" nowadays, meaning fees are included in the cost from the get-go when fans start searching. That only solves part of the fee problem, though — it's often not clear what this money is going toward, and platforms can move surcharges around however they feel.

StubHub isn't the only platform where prices for the same tickets bounce around at the same time. As I journeyed further down the rabbit hole, I found that Ticketmaster quoted me different fees on the same resale tickets for a Bruno Mars show in August — a $390 base ticket had a $74.10 fee added on my phone and $66.30 on my computer. On Vivid Seats, another popular resale platform, the base ticket prices varied on top of the fees.

A Ticketmaster spokesperson told me that fee fluctuations occur only on their secondary-market tickets, never on primary-market tickets, and that they're not personalized or tied to specific behavior. They said service fees can generally be "discounted" by 2-3% to help listings be more competitive, and they're working on ways to make it clear at checkout. A Vivid Seats spokesperson told me that its app prices are intentionally lower.

Alexander Mackay, an associate economics professor at the University of Virginia, tells me that some experimentation by these companies should be expected, because correctly determining price sensitivity can be tricky. All events are unique, and they're competing against a multitude of other things people could do with their time —hence why some acts overshoot how much they can try to charge.

I reached out to a New York-area ticket broker to see what he makes of all this. It's hard to feel too bad for scalpers, but he tells me this isn't a good deal for them either — sellers don't see any money from the extra fees consumers are forking over, they just get the proportion they're entitled to from the base ticket price.

"I know, like everyone wants to say, 'Oh, brokers, we're the bad guys,'" he says. "No, I actually agree, I don't care if we make less money. I want all-in pricing. I want transparency. I don't want this bullshit either. I feel like it just gives a bad name to the entire industry."

When it comes to prices, it's easy to feel like we're all trapped in an endless game of Whack-a-Mole. After Instacart got heat for charging different prices to the same people for different items, it said it was simply running tests and then eventually promised to stop. Uber Eats basically brushed off our reporting this year that it was charging disparate fees for the same McDonald's orders. Delta and Wendy's have faced consumer backlash over toying with algorithmic pricing.

Regulators and legislators are trying to do something about it, but personalized pricing is often hard to detect: there aren't a lot of laws around it, and even where there is proposed legislation, businesses may be able to find loopholes.

Mark Tremblay, an assistant economics professor at the University of Las Vegas, Nevada's Lee Business School, has spent the past six months studying ride-share data from Uber to try to figure out how its booking fees are calculated. Like StubHub, most of the variation in total prices isn't in the actual ride itself — which is often a pretty simple time-and-distance formula — but in the fees, which Uber made variable in August 2021. "Distance appears to matter, time appears to matter, but there's a lot of other things we don't observe that seem to matter," he says. "We can't explain how."

Tremblay's concern is that much of this legislation on personalized pricing will focus only on the base price for the ticket, ride, etc., leaving companies free to turn the fee dial as they wish. "If all those regulations are specific to the price and not the fee, then the laws won't actually do anything," he says.

For consumers, the modern American shopping experience is a constant battle that no one signed up for and no one can win. The answer to this tickets conundrum is to open up a bunch of browsers and devices to compare fees and prices to try to get the best offer. Nobody wants to do that — they just want to go heckle a Red Sox player at Yankee Stadium on a warm June afternoon.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

• Alex Imas, a Google DeepMind economist, said there's little evidence of broad AI-driven job cuts.
• But he warned AI panic could trigger a "cascade effect" of layoffs.
• It comes as executives face pressure to show they're adapting to AI.

Alex Imas hasn't yet seen evidence that AI is driving job losses.

During an interview with the "Dwarkesh Podcast," the director of AGI economics at Google DeepMind and a professor of economics at the University of Chicago was asked if he's seen any evidence of a white-collar jobs apocalypse. He said no.

Still, he warned of a hypothetical scenario that could trigger a "cascade effect" of FOMO-driven job cuts.

"Let's say we get into a narrative where if you're a firm and you're not laying people off, then you're seen as not adapting AI enough," he said. "That's super worrying, where the firm might actually be worse off after the layoffs than before the layoffs, but it's just doing the layoffs to have the perception that, 'Look, we're not behind the times. We're using AI.'"

A Google DeepMind spokesperson said Imas appeared on the podcast in a personal capacity and reiterated that the scenario he discussed was hypothetical. The spokesperson said Imas' broader point was that current data does not show evidence of a white-collar bloodbath.

The spokesperson also pointed to previous comments from Google DeepMind's CEO, Demis Hassabis, who has said AI could make workers more productive and create new jobs.

Imas' comments come as executives across industries are under pressure to show investors and employees that they are adapting to AI. Some companies — like Jack Dorsey's Block and Snap, the maker of Snapchat — cited AI when announcing workforce cuts. Meanwhile, leading AI voices, including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, have warned that the technology could eliminate large swaths of entry-level white-collar work.

Imas said he hasn't seen evidence of broad AI-driven job losses.

"A lot of people are looking at it," he said, adding that "even looking at software engineering, the most exposed sectors, there's just not really anything going on."

Instead, he said AI could still make some jobs more productive by automating parts of a role, letting workers focus on tasks machines cannot do.

"Let's say the AI automates nine out of ten tasks. One task is not automated," he said. "If that person can now focus in on that task, the job will become more productive."

For now, Imas said, the broader jobs apocalypse has not arrived.

"Right now, we don't really have any evidence of a white-collar bloodbath," he said.

Imas did not provide additional comment to Business Insider.

• Our 15-year-old wanted a summer job, but they are hard to come by where we live in New York.
• A family member in Minnesota offered to ask around and scored a Zoom interview for our son.
• He worked at an ice cream shop for the summer while my wife worked remotely and visited with family.

As adolescents, my wife and I both had summer jobs. In Iowa, she pushed a cart around the library, reshelving books. In Oregon, I pushed a mail cart through the antiseptic-laced hallways of the hospital where my mother worked. I also collated and stapled thick packets of photocopies by hand and alphabetized hundreds of files.

Though technology has taken over those particular tasks, that first job taught me other, more lasting lessons. I gained independence by mastering new skills without a parent or teacher's guidance. There was also something special about seeing my labor transformed into a check and then cash in hand. This earned money had a different value to me.

Finally, I learned — almost immediately — that I did not want to spend the rest of my working years alphabetizing files. As I watched the clock's slow-moving minute hand tick toward my lunch break, it dawned on me that the surest path away from this sort of tedious, repetitive work was getting into college — and that my GPA was going to have long-lasting, real-world consequences. That's the sort of feeling I wanted my son to experience, too.

A summer job was hard to come by where we live

My wife and I agreed that a summer job was a formative teenage experience that we didn't want our kids to miss out on. When we asked our then 15-year-old what he wanted to do for the summer, he simply replied, "work."

This presented a challenge. Here in New York City, job opportunities for younger teens like mine are limited, and many kids apply for them. We did know a place, however, where seasonal positions were plentiful, and teens were welcome to apply.

My wife's family hails from the north shore of Lake Superior, in Minnesota, and her cousin now owns a small business in a town that swells with tourists in summer.

This generous cousin asked around, and my son soon had his first formal job interview, via Zoom, with the owner of a local ice cream shop. Soon, he had a job offer.

While our younger daughter and I stayed in the city to work and attend camp, my wife drove herself and Max 1,300 miles to the north shore. She worked remotely from an inexpensive sublet and visited family while Max clocked in at his first job.

The job provided a great learning experience

Our son said his first-day nerves quickly dissipated once he arrived at the shop and was assigned a task.

"I got into the flow of washing dishes and bussing tables, and I liked it because it was kind of meditative," he told me, demonstrating a much more positive attitude than I had toward my early filing duties.

He also said he enjoyed the human interaction with his coworkers and customers, and even though he wasn't scooping, he knew he was developing customer service skills that would come in handy down the line.

This plan worked out so well that he'll be returning to the same ice cream shop this summer. This year, he's been promoted to scooper, and I couldn't be prouder.

• Lance Bass says there's one part of the day he looks forward to as a dad of twins.
• "My favorite time of day is that hour before bedtime, and we're in their room playing games or reading books," he said.
• Besides reading, Bass has his children journal about gratitude and the day's ups and downs before bed.

Lance Bass, 47, says his favorite part of the day as a dad is the hour before his twins' bedtime.

In an interview with Business Insider, Bass said routines are key to keeping family life running smoothly despite his busy schedule.

"The main thing is our nightly routine. It just really ends their day the same way. About 7 o'clock is when everything turns off. They've already eaten, and we brush our teeth, we get our pajamas on, we go to their room," he said.

"My favorite time of day is that hour before bedtime, and we're in their room playing games or reading books," he said.

Bass shares 4-year-old twins — a son and a daughter — with his husband, Michael Turchin. They married in 2014 and welcomed their kids via surrogate in October 2021.

The NSYNC member said fostering a love of reading is a major priority in his household.

"I want to make them very obsessed with reading, and they are. So they're always wanting to read four to five different books a night," Bass said.

Along with reading, Bass said he wants to instill a habit of journaling in his children.

"At the end of the day, we just write down the three things that we were grateful for, some funny things that happened, some things that maybe didn't work out that day," Bass said.

Having his children recount the day's events helps them process what happened and settle down before going to sleep, he said.

"I feel like it just regulates them a good bit and gets them tired," Bass added.

Reading and journaling have been linked to a range of benefits, from strengthening literacy skills and vocabulary to encouraging reflection and self-expression.

Carla Marie Manly, a clinical psychologist, previously told Business Insider that setting aside a specific time each day to journal can make the habit easier to maintain.

Bass isn't the only celebrity to discuss the importance of teaching children positive habits and life skills from a young age.

Kate Hudson has said she tries to model accountability for her kids by apologizing when she makes mistakes.

"Sometimes in conflict, you go too far, and you need to say you're sorry, instead of teaching them that you doubled down," Hudson said. "And what you find in going to your kids and saying, 'I could have handled this better' or 'I made a mistake' or 'I'm sorry I didn't trust you' — whatever the scenario — is that connection becomes stronger."

Mia Threapleton has said her mother, Kate Winslet, tried to instill body confidence in her from a young age, including when she was insecure about showing her shoulders while swimming.

"My mom said: 'No, this is strong. So many people would love to be able to swim the length of the pool the way you do — think of it as a positive thing,'" Threapleton said.

• Soaring oil prices are making Russia richer, even under Western sanctions.
• High crude prices are boosting Russia's exports, government revenue, and cash inflows.
• However, labor shortages and weak productivity are keeping growth stuck below 1%.

Sanctions-hit Russia is raking in more money from high oil prices, but that doesn't mean its economy is about to take off, according to Goldman Sachs.

International benchmark Brent crude futures were trading around $92 a barrel late Tuesday — about 30% higher since the Iran war started. That's a boon to Russia, the world's third-largest oil producer and exporter after the US and Saudi Arabia.

Unlike many other oil exporters, Russia doesn't rely on the Strait of Hormuz for oil shipments. That has made the energy giant one of the few beneficiaries of the recent disruption to global oil markets.

The problem is that Russia's economy has little room to expand, limiting how much the oil windfall can translate into faster growth, Clemens Grafe, an economist at Goldman Sachs, wrote in a Tuesday note.

"Despite the weak growth and funding being available to boost the economy, we do not forecast a demand-driven acceleration," Grafe wrote.

Goldman expects Russia's economy to grow just 0.9% this year. That's a slowdown from the 1% and 4.3% growth recorded in 2024 and 2025, respectively.

Even so, the country's oil windfall is substantial.

Goldman estimates Russia's current-account surplus — a broad measure of trade and income flows with the rest of the world — will nearly double to 3.2% of GDP in 2026 from 1.7% in 2025.

Government finances are benefiting, too. Every $10 increase in Russia's oil export price adds roughly $21 billion in budget revenue, according to Grafe.

Yet the extra cash isn't translating into faster growth.

"There is no meaningful spare capacity in Russia," he wrote.

The labor market remains extremely tight, with unemployment near record lows. Productivity growth has weakened, while 2 million workers are no longer available because of military service, casualties, or emigration amid the war in Ukraine, Grafe estimates.

As a result, pumping more money into the economy is unlikely to produce significantly more goods and services. Instead, Russian policymakers are likely to view the oil windfall as more of an inflation risk than a growth opportunity.

"Higher energy prices will not remove the binding constraints on growth," Grafe wrote.

In April, Russian President Vladimir Putin rebuked top officials following the country's economic contraction earlier this year. He demanded proposals for "additional measures aimed at reviving ⁠growth."

In January, Putin ordered a "significant increase" this year in tax collection and compliance as the economy came to a standstill.

• Sophie Steiner has been living in Shanghai for over a decade, and has traveled to nearly every province in China.
• Her favorite dining cities include Hangzhou, Shangri-La, and Guiyang.
• In contrast, the subdued flavors she tasted in Nanjing left her disappointed.

After a decade of exploring China's culinary landscape — from the shifting-sand deserts of western Xinjiang to the tropical rainforests of southern Yunnan, I've indulged in an ingredient lineup that would fit in the script of "Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern."

My journey began in 2015 with a curiosity to explore regional Chinese cuisine. It has evolved into an obsession with the unparalleled gastronomic offerings of this vast country. From street snacks to fine dining, my palate has undergone an epic odyssey.

Here are three Chinese epicurean destinations worth the trek, and one that fell flat.

Hangzhou, Zhejiang

About an hour by high-speed rail from Shanghai, where I've been living for over 10 years, Hangzhou is best known for its UNESCO-listed West Lake, tea plantations, and one of China's most refined regional cuisines.

Beyond the classics — like braised and lacquered pork, shrimp stir-fried with hyper-local Dragon Well tea leaves, beggar's chicken, and West Lake fish in vinegar sauce — the cuisine encompasses an array of dishes passed down for generations.

Wandering the backstreets near West Lake on a recent trip, I came across Wuzi Mianguan, a humble noodle shop with Michelin recognition. Here, hand-pulled noodles are wok-fried with toppings like oil-splash eel, river shrimp, and sautéed pork liver or steeped in a fragrant broth with mustard greens and bamboo shoots.

On the high end of the dining spectrum, Song at the Four Seasons Hotel is a sanctuary for all things Zhejiang comfort food, including the signature crispy pigeon leg, laced with a citrusy nip of Sichuan peppercorn heat

Shangri-La, Yunnan

In 2020, during my second visit to Yunnan province, I traveled five hours north by train from Kunming to Shangri-La, the high-altitude region along the Tibetan border. Here, the food shifts as dramatically as the scenery.

China's most diverse province, home to the country's highest number of minority groups, blends Tibetan, Yunnanese, and Sichuan influences into hearty dishes featuring yak meat and highland barley, shaped by the rugged landscape.

Dining in Shangri-La is rooted in community. After a 14-hour hike through village-dotted mountains I was welcomed to my guesthouse owner's family table for bubbling yak hotpot captured Yunnan's warmth and hospitality.

My days often began with sweet highland barley pancakes and creamy Tibetan milk tea, followed by spiced yak dumplings for lunch and a communal dinner of cumin-flecked lamb ribs and wild mountain fungi.

An unexpected staple is yak-milk cheese, ranging from firm, Parmesan-like wedges to soft curds. It's best paired with a glass of Shangri-La Cabernet.

Guiyang, Guizhou

Then there's Guiyang, Guizhou's capital, a city rich in minority heritage in southwest China. During my first visit in 2021, I discovered its food strikes the perfect balance of punchy sourness and spice.

Sitting on a tiny stool in a smoke-filled room echoing with the clink of Tsingtao bottles, the hiss of sizzling woks, and the cheers of inebriated patrons, I slurped my first sour fish soup — a staple that has become the province's signature dish, and for good reason.

The addictively fermented tomato broth is seasoned with floral peppercorn, coriander, lemongrass, and ginger. A buttery river fish simmers within it, surrounded by everything from leafy greens and sliced bamboo to tofu and mushrooms.

After sunset, the city transforms into one sprawling night market, with plastic tables and chairs lining Quanlin Pedestrian Street. A nightly feast often involves laoguo, a form of dry pot that pairs perfectly with a frothy beer. While this quintessential street-dining culture is becoming rarer in China's major cities, it's alive and well in Guiyang, drawing me back year after year.

Nanjing, Jiangsu

In Nanjing, one of China's ancient capitals, the food left me underwhelmed.

While the food culture there is sophisticated, with a deep devotion to duck, I found the flavors to be muted. The city's famous salted duck is cured, poached, and served cold, lacking the punch and crunch I crave.

Similarly, many rave about the duck blood vermicelli soup, a signature dish of the city, yet the textural symmetry between jelly-like coagulated duck blood cubes and soft vermicelli noodles I find mushy and bland.

Nanjing's cuisine emphasizes gentle, savory flavors, but for someone accustomed to the bold spices of other regions, it feels flat and, at times, overly sweet, leaving me longing for the robust tastes I have come to love in other parts of the country.

• Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 model has advanced safeguards that can be triggered by mundane requests.
• The Mythos-class model is blocked or reverts to Opus 4.8 when flagged by safety classifiers.
• Anthropic said the safeguards were necessary to release the model to the public.

If you try asking Anthropic's new Claude Fable 5 model a simple question about cybersecurity or biology, you may find it's not up to the task.

That's because the underlying "Mythos-class" model is so powerful that, in order to release it to the general public, it required broad safeguards that can mistakenly flag benign requests, Anthropic said.

After some users online said they had triggered the safeguard response with basic prompts about cancer or security, Business Insider put it to the test.

I tried asking Fable 5 some simple questions about cancer, like how misinformation about cancer spreads online, and to break down some of the different types.

Claude swiftly switched from Fable 5 to Opus 4.8 and notified me of the change before it responded.

"Fable 5 has safety measures that flag messages on most cybersecurity or biology topics. They may flag safe, normal content as well. These measures let us bring you Mythos-level capability in other areas sooner, and we're working to refine them," the pop-up said.

Anthropic released Fable 5 on Tuesday and said it was as powerful as its Mythos 5 model, only with added safeguards. The release came two months after the company said Mythos was too powerful for a broad release due to cybersecurity concerns. Instead of being released to the public, Mythos was made available only to a small group as part of a cybersecurity project.

Anthropic said the safeguards were necessary in order to release the model to the general public.

"With the launch of Claude Fable 5, our first Mythos-class model, we believe models now have a greater ability to accomplish real-world scientific tasks and for malicious actors to potentially use our models for highly risky biological research," an Anthropic spokesperson said in a statement to Business Insider. "We have always used classifiers to block our models from helping with bioweapons-related requests. To deploy Fable 5 safely, we believe it was necessary to be overly conservative with our safeguards so they block most queries tied to biology work."

The company said there are three categories of requests that could get flagged by its safety classifiers: cybersecurity, biology and chemistry, and distillation of Fable 5's capabilities.

When the safeguard is triggered, Fable 5 will either be blocked from answering or the model will revert to Opus 4.8 before responding, depending on the user's preference.

Anthropic said it was conservative with the safeguards and plans to improve them

Anthropic said in its announcement that the safety measures could result in safe, normal content getting flagged, but that their early data showed over 95% of Fable sessions did not fall back to Opus.

"To release the model both safely and quickly, we've tuned these safeguards conservatively," Anthropic said, adding it's working on improving the safeguards to reduce false positives.

"We intend to make Mythos-class models available without these safeguards to the broader biology and life sciences community so these capabilities can be used to accelerate biomedical research and drug discovery," the Anthropic spokesperson said.

The release came about a week after researchers at Anthropic said AI is advancing so fast that frontier labs may need to slow down or temporarily pause so society could keep up.

David Kasten, head of policy at Palisade Research, said it's "very clear" from Anthropic's public statements that the company is worried about the risks posed by increasingly powerful models.

While he views these safeguards as a good-faith attempt by Anthropic to de-risk, he said historically, "people eventually find a way to get around security restrictions."

"It's always a bit of a cat and mouse game between attacker and defender," he said, adding that there is still some risk involved with releasing the more powerful model.

He also said that having Anthropic's most powerful model frequently revert to a less capable model could cause a gap in the public's understanding of just how powerful AI models are becoming.

"That gap in understanding could be really dangerous for causing policymakers, or for that matter the public, to not fully understand the risks that these models pose in terms of the capabilities they offer," he said.

• Kalshi will now check its users' employment status before allowing them to bet.
• This is the prediction market's latest guardrail to weed out insider trading and bad actors.
• Prediction markets facing strong scrutiny by lawmakers in the country.

Kalshi will now ask you where you work before you can start betting.

Kalshi's enforcement and legal counsel, Bobby DeNault, wrote a blog post on the company's website on Tuesday outlining how it is clamping down on insider trading on its platform.

DeNault wrote that the New York-based prediction market will start requiring traders to complete employment verification before they can trade, an effort to "screen potential insiders."

"This lets us identify presumptive insiders — people who have material, non-public information about a market's outcome — and screen them out before a trade is ever placed," he wrote.

Per a screenshot of the employment verification tool embedded in the blog post, Kalshi will ask users for their current employer's name, industry, and job function.

Representatives for Kalshi did not respond to a Business Insider query about how long the verification process typically takes, and whether this verification will apply to traders already on the platform.

In his post, DeNault outlined two other steps that Kalshi is taking to weed out bad actors.

The first is "risk scoring," in which the company assigns a score to each new market added onto its platform, ranging from "niche social or hobbyist markets to critical-scale markets with national or geopolitical reach."

This will be done to determine if the market is particularly susceptible to manipulation.

And the second is "whistleblower enhancements," which allows users to report suspicious behavior. DeNault called Kalshi users the "natural first line of defense against abusive behavior."

These measures work on top of Kalshi's existing guardrails, which include preemptively blocking elected politicians, political candidates, and people in college and professional sports, from trading.

Kalshi's new guardrails come as prediction markets like itself, and Polymarket, are facing strong scrutiny from lawmakers in the country, many of whom have proposed bills to ban or stringently clamp down on their activities.

For instance, in May, Minnesota became the first state to propose a blanket ban on the markets, with Gov. Tim Walz signing off on it.

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates Kalshi and Polymarket, filed a lawsuit against Minnesota and Walz, arguing that Walz cannot criminalize the markets under state law.

• Mid-range drones are giving Ukraine a way to attack supply routes and command posts in Russia's rear.
• But drone pilots are also having to spend time testing new entries to the up-and-coming drone class.
• Some arrive at the front lines riddled with issues, one test pilot told Business Insider.

To Spring, some of the new drones blunting Russia's momentum first arrived so glitchy they were practically cursed.

"In every sortie, everything that could go wrong went wrong," the drone pilot, with the Ukrainian National Guard's Typhoon unit, told Business Insider of the first system she tested in early 2025.

The fixed-wing drone's camera feed would stop working, or its software would stall before takeoff. Controls sometimes became unresponsive after a few minutes, or the batteries failed, she said. And that's after it was already sent to the front for combat use.

Spring, identified by her call sign for security purposes, declined to name the specific system. But she said she's tested over 10 types of mid-range strike drones for Typhoon, most of them Ukrainian-made. Their use is growing rapidly on the front line, and more manufacturers are sending in their entries of this drone class for frontline troops to fly.

Though considered "finished" drones, their quality can vary greatly, with some encountering severe issues before they clear testing ranges, she said. In combat, such failures can be costly for Ukrainian units, requiring drone pilots like Spring to now juggle time at the front lines with meticulous testing of the fixed-wing systems.

Part of the recipe to Ukraine's success is that these drones, developed at breakneck speed by many manufacturers, are tested by experienced combat pilots, a trial-and-error process that is time-consuming but helps weed out faulty systems. Spring mixes her time on the southern front with several days at practice ranges, conducting up to 11 daily flights that last 30 to 80 minutes each. Drones that start experiencing issues get rigorously tested.

"If a manufacturer is not responsible, I do everything possible to prevent their system from reaching combat crews in our unit," Spring said.

Troubleshooting while at war

Mid-range strike drones are typically classified as fixed-wing systems that can fly between 18 and 180 miles. Analysts say they've provided a critical advantage to Ukraine, allowing it to consistently attack logistics, command posts, and transports in rear areas that Russian commanders had considered safe.

Spring mostly specializes in drones that can fly between 40 and 60 km, and has been testing them since early last year. After clearing a drone at a test range, she brings it to the front lines for further trials before it can be deemed combat-ready. Some drones perform well enough on delivery that they only take a few tests for approval, while others are so problematic that they require dozens of flights, she added.

A key aspect she assesses is their reliability against Russian jamming after flying long distances. Some mid-range drones are equipped with AI targeting that keeps them flying and continues seeking out their quarry after losing connection to the pilot's control station.

The drones must be able to strike targets reliably at 25 miles away and beyond, a capability that's disrupted Russia's way of fighting and contributed to a net loss of territory for its forces in the last few months. Russia advances by sending waves of foot soldiers against entrenched positions, and any gains they make must be rapidly reinforced with fresh troops, ammo, and artillery. By attacking these assets in the rear, the mid-range drones can hamstring Russian gains.

Broadly, the drones that Spring tests cost between $1,000 to $15,000 each, she said. A failed mid-range drone strike not only wastes her unit's money, but can also consume about an hour of flight time due to the distance required to reach the target, she added.

There's also a risk that the failed drone falls intact into Russian hands, allowing Ukraine's enemies to reverse-engineer its tech.

The cost of a failed strike can be human, too. Ukraine uses many of these drones to hit outposts for Russian first-person-view drone pilots, who in turn are attacking Ukrainian troops.

"If the enemy is not stopped, it's a risk to the lives of our people," Spring said.

An open-market war industry

While testing, Spring said her team stays in close contact with manufacturers and provides feedback on their products.

The first mid-range drone she tested, for example, has undergone so many changes since early 2025 that it's now considered a new system.

"But that drone is now producing results on the battlefield in the hands of other pilots," Spring said.

Mykola Bielieskov, a drone analyst for Ukraine's biggest war crowdfunding organization, ComeBackAlive, told Business Insider that Ukraine's weapons manufacturers compete in a direct-access market with frontline units, where they must maintain their reputations in real time.

"The better you respond to data accumulated on the front line, the more guarantees that your UAV will be procured, because units now have separate budgets to procure on their own," Bielieskov said.

Mid-range strike drones typically look like small aircraft, with a wingspan of about 6 to 8 feet and roughly the size of a solo kayak. Most are launched by a rail or catapult system and then fly with a propeller on the nose or wings, carrying roughly 20 to 40 pounds of explosives — though there are outliers such as the Fire Point FP-2, which was reported last month to be designed to carry a 440-pound payload for over 100 miles.

One of the best-known mid-range drones in Ukraine is the Hornet, produced by US-based company Perennial Autonomy. Equipped with an AI targeting system, it's supposed to carry an 11-pound warhead for about 93 miles, and was used repeatedly in May by Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces to harass Russian logistics highways behind the southern front.

Live testing from troops has helped create the rapid innovation cycle that Ukraine is known for. But George Barros, director of Innovation and Open Source Tradecraft at the Institute for the Study of War, said the system also exposes Ukraine's front lines to redundancies from companies competing for profit.

"There's a tremendous amount of benefits," Barros told Business Insider. "There's also hidden costs, which are, of course, market inefficiencies, tremendous amount of companies that don't deliver effective or good solutions."

Troops like Spring have to spend time filtering them out, though Ukraine also mitigates the issue with a government-run marketplace, Brave1, that rates prototypes based on their reliability.

The MRAP 'on steroids'

Still, Barros said NATO allies could consider systems that enable troops to gather and provide more direct frontline feedback for manufacturers. The US, for example, introduced the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle program during the Iraq war as an emergency response to roadside bombs killing troops in Humvees.

But what Ukraine is doing is the MRAP program "on steroids," Barros said.

"That's not something that Americans do. And I think we have to do something closer to that, especially if we were to get involved in a near-peer or a peer adversary war because the adversary will be innovating progressively against us," he said.

Gil Barndollar, a non-resident fellow for military analysis at the think-tank Defense Priorities, said Ukraine's "constant, extremely fast feedback loop" benefits from minimal interference from its defense ministry.

The US could also learn from that system, said Barndollar, though he cautioned that Ukraine fights on home soil with better access to its industrial base. Washington is building to fight expeditionary wars.

"Would we mimic some of their approach in the event of a major war?" Barndollar said. "Perhaps. I think we would move far faster, and perhaps accept more of a 70% solution mindset."

"But that line often speaks to Silicon Valley consumer software, not people who have had to send people to war with their products in hand," he added.

Translation by Maria Dubarets.

• Anthropic's new Mythos-based models purposely limit AI research outputs.
• AI experts are criticizing Anthropic for these subtle limitations on user assistance.
• The move reignites debate over why Anthropic delayed Mythos earlier this year.

Anthropic's powerful new models deliberately become less helpful when they detect users are working on AI research, according to technical disclosures that are already sparking controversy across the industry.

In a system card for Mythos 5 and Fable 5 published Tuesday, Anthropic said it limited the models' usefulness for tasks related to developing frontier large language models.

The company said the measures stem from concerns that advanced AI systems could accelerate the development of competing models without equivalent safety protections.

Unlike safeguards used for cybersecurity, biology, or chemistry-related risks, Anthropic said these interventions are intentionally invisible to users. Rather than refusing requests or switching to another model, Mythos may subtly modify its responses through techniques such as altering user prompts.

The move was swiftly criticized by some AI experts on Tuesday, especially the idea that Anthropic designed models that purposely withhold information or provide degraded assistance without users' awareness.

"Anthropic's latest model will NOT help you if it thinks your ML research/ML engineering is interesting, and/or will secretly degrade its IQ so that the average engineer won't notice," AI research firm SemiAnalysis wrote on X on Tuesday, referring to machine learning, a type of AI.

"We are already seeing Anthropic's latest model's moderation filters our GPU inference research and programming," the firm added.

"mythos will be bad ON PURPOSE on ai 'frontier llm research' tasks, this is very very sad for the research community," Elie Bakouch, an AI model training expert at startup Prime Intellect, wrote on X. "Also the fact that this is on purpose not visible to the user is crazy."

"It won't just not help you, it will lie and purposefully give you bad info," another AI developer wrote. "The 'ethical AI' company with the most brazenly unethical LLM, on purpose."

Mikel Artetxe, the cofounder of AI startup Reka, posted that Anthropic's move is akin to Big Tech companies interfering with users' work: "Apple randomly reboots your Mac if you're building competing tech, Gmail silently edits your email if you mention rival platforms, and Tesla Autopilot swerves if it detects you're working on self-driving cars."

Anthropic didn't respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

This adds more fuel to the fiery debate over why Anthropic didn't immediately release Mythos when it announced the model earlier this year.

Broadly, there have been three theories:

1. The official reason: Anthropic held Mythos back because it was too dangerous, and it needed to give cybersecurity researchers time to prepare for the new model.
2. The compute theory: Mythos is a huge, expensive model to run. Anthropic didn't have enough compute to release it fully. It has since struck huge new compute deals, which may have helped it release Fable 5 and Mythos 5 on Tuesday.
3. The competitive theory: AI companies increasingly worry about something called distillation. When a frontier model is released, rivals can collect its outputs and use that data to improve their own systems. Anthropic may have wanted to keep its best capabilities out of competitors' hands for as long as possible, especially from open-source rivals and fast-moving Chinese AI labs.

Now that Anthropic has baked these AI research limitations into its official Mythos launch, this third theory is looking a lot more believable.

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

After a dominant first two games on the road, plus a huge winning streak in the playoffs overall, the New York Knicks finally dropped a game last night on their return home against the Spurs to add some extra life into the championship series. We've gathered everything you need to know about where to watch the NBA Finals, including worldwide live streaming info, a series schedule, and more.

If you don't want to scroll anymore, we've got you covered. You can live stream all NBA Finals games on ABC via ESPN Unlimited or a live TV service in the US, Prime Video in the UK, and the NBA League Pass in most other countries around the world. Keep reading to learn more about global streaming options, so you can make sure you're able to tune in no matter where you are.

Where to watch the NBA Finals in the US

Game 4 of the NBA Finals, along with all other games in the series, will air on ABC in the United States. The game is scheduled to tip off on Wednesday at 8:30 p.m. ET, but ABC's coverage will begin at 8. If you have cable or an antenna, there's a pretty good chance you'll be able to get the network, but cord-cutters will need a streaming option to access the game.

ESPN Unlimited is ABC's direct sports streaming counterpart. The service costs $30 a month and unlocks full access to all of ESPN's linear channels, along with ESPN on ABC events and exclusive streaming-only ESPN Plus content.

If you're interested in checking out a service with other channels beyond those found in the ESPN family (or you'd like an app with a free trial), one of the best live TV streaming services we've evaluated might be of interest. Our top ABC-friendly options are DirecTV and Fubo.

DirecTV's MySports package is a one-stop shop for sports fans. The plan carries around 20 popular sports channels, like ABC, and unlocks access to ESPN Unlimited. Subscriptions cost $65 a month, but new users can get $15 a month off their first two months after a five-day free trial.

Fubo's Sports + News package is another popular sports-focused option with ABC. Subscriptions cost $56 a month, but new customers can get $10 off their first month after a five-day free trial.

How to watch the NBA Finals from anywhere

It's good news for NBA fans outside the United States. Live streams of the NBA Finals are pretty accessible around the world, especially this year. Notably, Prime Video will live stream the Finals in the UK, Ireland, France, Spain, Mexico, Argentina, and several other countries. Subscription prices vary by country, but Prime Video often has a free trial for new users. Fans can also live stream the NBA Finals through the NBA League Pass in most regions outside the US and Canada. Subscription prices vary by region.

If you find yourself traveling through an area where you're unable to access your usual streaming options, you can still keep up with them with the aid of a VPN. VPNs, or virtual private networks, are easy-to-use tech tools that allow people to temporarily change their virtual locations. Virtual private networks are also handy ways to upgrade cybersecurity and online privacy, even from home. The services we've recommended today require country-specific payment methods, so this option will work best for those who are simply traveling abroad right now.

NordVPN is one of the best VPNs we've tested. It's fast, user-friendly (even for beginners), and has a 30-day money-back guarantee if you find that it's not what you're looking for. Thanks to a special NordVPN deal, you can use our exclusive code INSIDER for extra savings on one and two-year plans (until June 9).

Where does Game 4 of the NBA Finals take place?

Like Game 3, Game 4 will also take place at Madison Square Garden in New York. Now we know there will be a Game 5, the series will head back to San Antonio on Saturday. Potential Games 6 and 7 would take place in New York and San Antonio, respectively.

Which famous people are attending the NBA Finals?

The NBA Finals have been a star-studded affair so far. Timothée Chalamet, Ben Stiller, Spike Lee, and Tracy Morgan (all frequent fixtures at Knicks games) have been some of the most famous people spotted at the NBA Finals so far. President Donald Trump also attended Game 3 at MSG.

Who won the first three games of the NBA Finals?

The New York Knicks won the first two games of the NBA Finals, despite San Antonio's home-court advantage. The Knicks won Game 1 105-95, but Game 2 was much tighter. The Spurs almost clawed their way back in the fourth quarter, but the Knicks ultimately pulled off a 105-104 win. All hopes of a sweep were dashed on Monday, though, when the Spurs won at the Garden 115-111.

Who is favored to win Spurs vs. Knicks?

The New York Knicks are currently the favorites to win both Game 3 and the overall NBA Finals. Ahead of Game 4 (at the time of writing), DraftKings has the Knicks as 1.5-point favorites and -125 on the moneyline, while the Spurs are the +105 underdogs.

NBA Finals schedule

• Game 1 on Wednesday, June 3 at 8:30 p.m. ET
• Game 2 on Friday, June 5 at 8:30 p.m. ET
• Game 3 on Monday, June 8 at 8:30 p.m. ET
• Game 4 on Wednesday, June 10 at 8:30 p.m. ET
• Game 5 on Saturday, June 13 at 8:30 p.m. ET
• Game 6 on Tuesday, June 16 at 8:30 p.m. ET
• Game 7 on Friday, June 19 at 8:30 p.m. ET

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

• The FDA just approved bemotrizinol (BEMT), a popular ingredient in European and Asian sunscreens.
• This is the first time the FDA approved a new sunscreen ingredient since 1999.
• For decades, US sunscreen lagged behind other countries' in effectiveness and smoothness.

You no longer have to haul French sunscreens home from your vacation — or pay exorbitant shipping fees — to get your hands on the good stuff.

The FDA just approved bemotrizinol (BEMT), an ingredient used in European and Asian sunscreens for over 20 years. It's the first upgrade to US sunscreen this century.

BEMT is a chemical UV filter that absorbs both UVA and UVB rays, and doesn't break down easily when exposed to sunlight, making it more effective at protecting against skin cancer and preventing wrinkles.

Due to regulatory differences, the US's sunscreen formulas have remained notoriously old-fashioned, lagging behind other countries like the UK, South Korea, Japan, and Australia, which have been proactive in approving new, advanced UV-blocking ingredients.

As a result, sunscreens sold in these countries offer better protection against both UVA and UVB rays while also providing smoother application.

That's about to change — but consumers will have to wait over a year to get their hands on these new and improved American products.

The biggest FDA filter update since 1999

The FDA treats sunscreens as non-prescription drugs — meaning each ingredient has to go through a lengthy regulatory approval process. While this sounds good in theory, it's led to slow-moving sunscreen advancement; the FDA hasn't approved a new UV-blocking filter in decades.

It's not to say that US sunscreens are completely ineffective. According to Dr. Ellen Gendler, a dermatologist practicing in New York City, US sunscreens are "very good" at blocking UVB rays — the ones that cause sunburn.

However, she said we only have only one ingredient approved for UVA blockage: Avobenzone, which she described as "not very stable" and in need of other ingredients to make it effective. UVA rays are deeper-penetrating, which is why you can still get a tan while wearing US sunscreen — something Gendler noted might be "even more harmful to the skin" than the damage done by UVB rays, because UVA rays are known to cause skin cancer.

SPF also isn't an indicator of protection against UVA. "I have patients use Neutrogena all the time, and they say, 'I'm using an SPF 70', and they're still tan," she said. "That's because they're not well protected against ultraviolet A."

The search for a sleeker formula

Unlike in the US, sunscreens in other countries are classified as cosmetics and not non-prescription drugs, making them subject to more lax regulations and faster innovation.

Beyond being more effective at protecting the skin, they also cause less of a white cast and feel less greasy.

Gendler advises her patients to layer chemical and mineral sunscreens with zinc oxide for better protection — but even that "doesn't afford them the same broad spectrum as the European products do."

For example, her favorite international sunscreen is La Roche Posay's SPF 50 Anthelios UVMune 400 sunscreen, which comes in multiple formulas such as "invisible" and "tinted." It uses Mexoryl 400, an advanced version of Mexoryl, which has been considered one of the best UVA-blocking ingredients since 2005.

However, the FDA has only approved some forms of Mexoryl in limited formulas. That means La Roche Posay's US versions of the same sunscreen don't include Mexoryl. In the US, the only La Roche Posay product with Mexoryl is an SPF-15 moisturizer.

Bemotrizinol can make for stronger, smoother sunscreens

Besides offering more UV protection than some other sunscreen ingredients, bemotrizinol is also supposed to allow for a more seamless, streak-free application.

Still, it'll take a while for new sunscreen formulas to include the ingredient. DSM Nutritional Products, which filed for FDA approval of bemotrizinol as a sunscreen ingredient in 2024, will have exclusive rights to sell their proprietary BEMT formulation in the US for 18 months, according to Vox. After that, other cosmetic companies will likely follow suit.

In the meantime, if you have a vacation abroad coming up, you can always leave some extra room in your luggage on your way back home. Or, you can always call in a favor.

"If your friends are going to Europe, instead of bringing you back a scarf, tell them to bring you back sunscreen," Gendler said.

The HSBC Championships are always exciting grass tournaments ahead of Wimbledon, but this year's event has catapulted to WTA must-watch status with the ongoing return of tennis icon Serena Williams. We've rounded up everything you need to know about where to watch Queen's Tennis, including free and global streaming options.

If you don't want to read any further, the Queen's Club Championships will be available to live stream for free through BBC iPlayer in the UK, via the Tennis Channel and live TV services in the US, TSN/DAZN in Canada, and beIN Sports in Australia. You can access streaming from anywhere with the help of a VPN. Keep reading to learn additional worldwide viewing options.

Serena Williams' return to tennis sees her partner up with the incredibly talented Victoria Mboko in the doubles, and they're already through to the next round on Thursday. Queens tennis has more of the world's biggest names in attendance this week, including emerging teen sensations Iva Jovic from the US, and Alex Eala of the Philippines (those two meet in the next round). Elena Rybakina looms large as the favorite. Sorana Cîrstea has been making trouble for everyone this year in her supposed final year of the tour and will be a strong test for Emma Raducanu ahead of the Brit's return to Wimbledon.

Where to watch Queen's Tennis in the UK

Broadcast coverage of the Queen's Club Championships will be available free on the BBC for UK fans. Early matches will air on BBC Two, and later matches, including the final, will be on BBC One. All coverage will be available to live stream for free through BBC iPlayer. Viewers will just need to create an account if they don't already have one.

How to watch Queen's Tennis from anywhere

Tennis fans who will be away from the UK during any notable matches are in luck. They can still access their free streaming service with a VPN. Short for virtual private networks, VPNs are handy tech tools that let people temporarily alter the location on their electronic devices. They're especially popular among those hoping to keep up with their usual apps and websites while traveling abroad or looking to upgrade their cybersecurity.

NordVPN is one of the best VPNs on the market. It's fast, user-friendly (even for beginners), and comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee, so it's no sweat if you find it's not helping you.

Where to watch Queen's Tennis in the US

In the US, coverage of the Queen's Club Championships will be available through the Tennis Channel and Tennis Channel 2 (T2). You can live stream coverage directly with a subscription through the Tennis Channel website or via a live TV service. Some of the best live TV streaming services we've tested (with Tennis Channel and T2) are DirecTV, Fubo, and Sling TV.

Fubo carries Tennis Channel and T2 in its Sports + News plan, which costs $56 a month ($10 off the first month after a five-day free trial for new customers). DirecTV carries Tennis Channel in its MySports plan, which costs $65 a month ($15 off the first two months after a five-day free trial). T2 is available for free through a MyFree DirecTV account.

Sling TV also offers T2 for free through its Sling Freestream plan -this won't feature the bigger matches, though, and we've seen that the Serena William match has been confirmed for the main channel today. To watch that Tennis Channel, you'll need a base plan and then the Sports Extra add-on. Sling TV prices vary by plan, and whether you're opting for a monthly plan or a short-term Sling Orange pass with the Sports Extra add-on.

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

• OpenAI announced on Monday that it had taken the first official step toward an IPO.
• OpenAI's entry now means that three major AI companies are in the process of going public, potentially the same year.
• Financial analysts portrayed the IPO rush as yet another front in the AI race.

The next phase of the AI race is on.

With OpenAI's Monday confidential S-1 filing following in the footsteps of Antrhopic's, the two premiere AI labs are now officially in the IPO race. SpaceX, which includes Elon Musk's xAI, has a head start, and goes public later this week.

While OpenAI left the door open on its timing, warning that "it may be a while" before it actually publicly lists its shares, the AI labs are moving from an era of closed-door tinkering as a private companies into the world of public earnings calls, financial disclosures, and the regulation that comes with being a publicly traded company.

Is it a telling signal of just how much cash they're all burning? A chance to reward loyal employees who hold shares and help retain key AI talent? Something else?

Here's what smart voices across Wall Street, tech, and the wider business world make of the ChatGPT maker's latest move:

Aravind Srinivas, CEO of Perplexity

Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas said his AI company is still targeting 2028 for its IPO.

"Agnostic of these two companies, we were planning for something in 2028, so that still remains the case," Srinivas told CNBC.

Srinivas said how OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX's IPOs fare will matter to the broader industry.

"I certainly think there will be ripple effects if they don't go well, like there is no sugar coating on that," he said.

Dan Ives, tech analyst at Wedbush Securities

Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said OpenAI's filing shows "the floodgates for the IPO market are officially open."

"While both OpenAI and Anthropic have recently raised significant amounts of capital, both are racing to get to market as quickly as possible to beat one another out due to the significant amount of capital both firms are looking to raise," Ives wrote in a note.

Ives said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman "continues to face competitive pressures from competitors like Anthropic to show that growth continues to accelerate and will maintain its current aggressive pace through the next decade."

Dan Niles, founder and portfolio manager at Niles Investment Management

Dan Niles said he views Anthropic more favorably than OpenAI.

"I think Google wins in consumer, they have the complete stack," the portfolio manager told CNBC. "I think they win in AI overall, but then in corporate, you have Anthropic."

Niles said that Anthropic reached profitability in Q2 "and their revenues are ramping like nothing you've ever seen in history for a company of that size."

"I think OpenAI is stuck between the two," he said. "So for me, those are the two winners."

Michael Fertik, founder of Verdict Capital

Michael Fertik, founder of Verdict Capital, said he hopes SpaceX's IPO on Friday opens the door "to a gushing torrent of liquidity."

"I'm rooting for Elon Musk. I'm rooting for the IPOs. I'm rooting for the OpenAIs and Anthropics," Fertik told CNBC.

Fertik said that companies debuting strongly would help the US stay ahead in the generative AI race. He also said that many companies have been relying on private markets for so long that it's time for retail investors to share in the AI moment.

"I hope that it does encourage companies that have been getting ready to file, to file," he said of SpaceX's debut.

Gregory Allen, founder and CEO of Decision Tree Research

Gregory Allen, CEO of Decision Tree Research, said OpenAI's valuations, along with those of SpaceX and Anthropic, are really extraordinary.

"These companies are in the ballpark of a trillion dollars valuation," Allen told CNBC, adding that in annuity terms, that is akin to "an annuity that kicks out $45 billion a year every year forever."

Allen said even though companies like OpenAI are going to lose money this year, "the gross margins in these businesses are extremely favorable."

"The question is, can they time the investments correctly, to make these, hundreds of billions of dollars in capital expenditure investments and ride the wave of revenue growth properly, such that they don't run out of cash and go bankrupt, which is the big risk here," he said.

Gary Marcus, AI researcher and professor emeritus at New York University

Gary Marcus, an AI researcher and author known for his critical views of the AI industry, suggested buyers should be aware of where the AI industry stands.

"i used to be the only person saying the emperor was wearing no clothes," Marcus wrote on X, quoting a tweet about SpaceX's valuation. "those days are over. the only people buying SpaceX and OpenAI at list price will be the stragglers who still can't see it."

Nate Elliott, principal analyst at EMARKETER

OpenAI "is filing to go public at a precarious moment," said Nate Elliott, a principal analyst at EMARKETER, a sister company to Business Insider.

"The company is just about to lose its strong early leads in both consumer and enterprise AI," Elliott wrote in an email to BI. "Anthropic has generated incredible momentum in the enterprise market, and EMARKETER forecasts that Google will overtake ChatGPT in terms of US AI users by early 2027."

Elliott said OpenAI "doesn't have a lot of other places to look for the enormous capital required to support its costs."

"The company has taken almost $200 billion in funding across more than a dozen private rounds," he wrote. "It certainly can't count on its consumer business becoming self-sufficient anytime soon."

Joshua Achiam, OpenAI's chief futurist

It wouldn't be a full OpenAI news cycle without someone taking a shot at Anthropic.

Joshua Achiam, OpenAI's chief futurist, framed the discussion as a choice between two very different goals of the now rival companies.

"Should a loving ensouled machine God watch over humanity? Vote Anthropic," he wrote on X. "Should humanity be entrusted with the tools of its own progress and destiny? Vote OpenAI."

Achiam dismissed the analysis that focuses on the differences between the two leading AI companies' business models.

"If your lens for analyzing this is 'consumer v enterprise business' your ability to understand what's going on is unfixably borked," he wrote.

• Iran shot down a US Army Apache helicopter in the Middle East, President Donald Trump said on Tuesday.
• The US military used a new naval drone, a Saronic Corsair, to rescue the two crew members, a defense official said.
• The drone's participation appears to be an operational first for the US military.

The US military used a new naval drone to help rescue two American soldiers after Iran shot down their Apache helicopter off the coast of Oman.

US Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, said on Tuesday that American forces had rescued two US Army AH-64 Apache crew members after their helicopter went down while patrolling regional waters.

The soldiers were rescued within roughly two hours and are in stable condition, CENTCOM said in a statement, adding that the cause of the aircraft loss was under investigation.

Later on Tuesday, President Donald Trump said on Truth Social that Iran "shot down" the Apache while it was patrolling over the Strait of Hormuz, vowing the US would "respond to this attack."

US forces began launching "self-defense strikes" against Iran several hours later, the military said, calling it "a proportional response."

Navy Capt. Tim Hawkins, a CENTCOM spokesperson, identified the drone that assisted in the Apache rescue mission as a Corsair uncrewed surface vessel operated by Task Force 59, a Middle East-based unit focused on integrating cutting-edge technologies into maritime operations.

Hawkins said the naval drone picked up the soldiers and moved them to another location on the water, where they were then lifted into a helicopter for further transport.

He said that "the task force began fielding these drones in theater in late March."

The drone's participation in the rescue mission appears to be an operational first for the military and comes amid a broader Pentagon push to integrate uncrewed systems into operations.

In its earlier statement, CENTCOM said that rescue efforts were led, in part, by the Army's 82nd Airborne Division, an elite conventional infantry division that specializes in parachute-assault operations and rapid crisis response.

Thousands of soldiers from the 82nd deployed to the Middle East earlier in Operation Epic Fury, which began at the end of February, as the Trump administration weighed sending troops to conduct ground operations in Iran.

CENTCOM said that the Apache crew rescue mission was also supported by the US Air Force and US Navy.

The involvement of Corsair — a 24-foot-long surface drone developed by Texas-based Saronic Technologies — in Tuesday's rescue mission is a significant development for Task Force 59, which was established in September 2021 and has been experimenting with uncrewed capabilities.

The US military has lost dozens of aircraft — including fighter jets, refueling tankers, helicopters, and combat drones — in the Middle East since the start of the Iran war; however, the latest incident marks the first Apache loss in the region since the conflict began.

These well-known attack helicopters, flown by the American military and several US allies, can be armed with AGM-114 Hellfire missiles and have been used to target Iranian small boats around the Strait of Hormuz.

The loss comes amid a fragile, monthslong ceasefire between the US and Iran that has been stressed by exchanges of fire. The two sides have repeatedly traded fire in recent days, despite Trump's insistence that a deal is near.

On Friday, for instance, the US military said it carried out strikes on Iranian radar sites after intercepting Iranian ballistic missiles and drones launched toward the Strait of Hormuz and Gulf states. And on Monday, Israel and Iran traded strikes, further testing the ceasefire.

• The AI data center buildout is driving a historic surge in electricity demand.
• General Motors proposes leveraging personal EVs to help balance the power grid.
• A GM executive told Business Insider this program could result in lower utility bills.

General Motors wants to use the parked EV in your garage to power the energy grid and potentially lower your utility bills.

The legacy automaker is pitching EV batteries as a power source that could help utility companies manage surging electricity demand, as households see rate increases and the US sees historic levels of energy consumption amid the AI data center build-out.

In an open letter to utility executives and energy lawmakers on Tuesday, GM called on utility agencies, regulators, and automakers for a "public-private collaboration" that could make it easier for EV drivers to send power back to the grid. Stakeholders would work out logistics like customer enrollment, incentives, and rate structures, the company said.

"The growth and consumption of electricity in the US has been at historic highs," Kurt Kelty, GM's vice president of battery and sustainability, told Business Insider. "We've never had such a high growth rate in electricity for probably a hundred years or so. That's partly being driven by the AI data center growth."

The US Energy Information Administration said in January that it expects electricity use to rise 1% this year and 3% in 2027, marking the strongest four-year stretch of demand growth since 2000. The agency said "demand from large computing centers" was behind the surge.

A Business Insider analysis of US data center permits found that if all facilities permitted through 2025 came online, they could consume between 224.3 terawatt-hours and 358.8 terawatt-hours of electricity a year. At the midpoint, that's more than the total electricity use by any US state outside Texas in 2024.

To ease grid demand, GM said it could leverage bidirectional charging technology, which allows power to flow into and out of the EV. The company said it has more than 250,000 bidirectional EVs on US roads and is committed to building that capability across its entire EV portfolio.

With a quarter of a million EVs, GM said that amounts to power for about 120,000 homes for up to one week or all of San Francisco for one day.

Kelty described the future customer experience as a kind of "buy low, sell high" scenario for electricity.

A driver could come home from work, plug in, and let the EV discharge power during peak demand times, such as late afternoon or evening. Then the car could recharge later at night, when electricity is cheaper.

Kelty added that this process wouldn't happen every day and that utility companies may only need the extra support 20 or 30 days out of the year. The EV would also not be fully discharged each time.

"It's not that much extra wear and tear on the battery," he said, adding that the battery would still be covered under warranty as long as customers followed a GM-specific program.

Whether customers will see returns through credits, lower utility bills, or a cheaper EV at initial purchase is all on the table, Kelty said.

The idea is still in its early phases. GM said it's now testing "vehicle-to-grid" programs with utility agencies, including PG&E in northern California and DTE Energy in Michigan.

Tesla has a similar concept with Powershare, which allows Cybertruck owners to use the truck's battery to power a home and, in some regions, support the grid. However, the technology is currently only centered on the Cybertruck.

"The big thing we're looking at is we want to sell more EVs," Kelty said. "We want to reduce fossil fuel consumption. That's the direction we want to go."

The Vegas Golden Knights lead the Stanley Cup Finals 2-1 over Carolina, but tonight's Game 4 gives the Hurricanes the chance to fight back and even the score. If you're hoping to stream the game, you've come to the right place. Keep scrolling to learn how to watch the Stanley Cup Finals, no matter where you are in the world.

It's ABC's turn to host the best-of-seven series in the US, meaning a subscription to ESPN Unlimited or a month-to-month cable alternative will help you stream all the action online. CBC and Sportsnet are sharing the coverage in Canada, while NHL.TV on DAZN has the rights to show the 2026 Stanley Cup Finals in more than 200 other regions around the world.

This is all familiar territory for the likes of Mark Stone, Jack Eichel, Shea Theodore, and Adin Hill, with the core of the Golden Knights' title-winning side from 2023 still producing the goods this postseason. Add the creativity of playoff MVP candidate Mitch Marner and the nous of John Tortorella, who stewarded the Tampa Bay Lightning to glory in 2004, and you can see why the Las Vegas franchise has made it this far. But the Hurricanes have their own fairytale to contend with — the 20th anniversary of their first (and only) Stanley Cup win and Rod Brind'Amour's narrative arc taking him from captain to coach.

With the form of Frederik Andersen and Taylor Hall, is destiny on Carolina's side? Or will the Golden Knights set another stone on their path to franchise dynasty less than a decade since it was formed? You can find out by watching Stanley Cup Finals action — no matter where you are in the world, thanks to a VPN — with the help of our dedicated guide.

How to watch Stanley Cup Finals in the US

This year, ABC will exclusively carry the main TV feed of the Stanley Cup Finals on TV, while hockey fans will also be able to watch online via the ESPN app. You'll need its comprehensive ESPN Unlimited plan, which includes everything that ABC and the various ESPN channels have to offer (e.g. NFL, NBA, college sports, WWE, La Liga soccer) and costs $30 a month.

Anybody without an antenna or who has cut the cord can get access to ABC through a month-to-month streaming service like DirecTV. Its MySports plan offers local ABC channels, access to ESPN Unlimited, and an array of premium sports channels including FS1/FS2, NBA TV, NFL Network, Golf Channel, USA, and TNT. It costs $65 a month, with a $15 discount off each of your first two months, all after a five-day free trial for first-time customers.

Fubo is another comprehensive cord-cutting service. Its Sports + News package is the most reasonable way to get access to Stanley Cup Finals streams, costing $56 a month (with a $10 discount for your first month). Its 25+ channel line-up includes ESPN, CBS, and FOX's sports channels. There's the option to try before you buy with its five-day free trial.

How to watch Stanley Cup Finals in Canada

Sportsnet and CBC will simulcast every game of the 2026 Stanley Cup Finals series on TV in Canada. Although the Stanley Cup Finals will be shown on CBC, the network has confirmed that it will not be broadcasting it for free online through the CBC Gem platform. So to watch on your laptop, smartphone, tablet, or streaming device, you'll need a Sportsnet+ subscription, costing from $30 a month or $250 a year. Right now, there's a discount on its four-month plan, currently down to $90.

How to watch Stanley Cup Finals in the UK

NHL fans in the UK have two choices for where to watch Golden Knights vs. Hurricanes. The first is NHL.TV on DAZN, which is available to stream on a wide variety of streaming devices and currently costs a one-off fee from £15 for the 2026 Stanley Cup Finals. The second option is the more wide-ranging Premier Sports, which includes live NHL streams among its offerings and costs from £13 a month.

How to watch Stanley Cup Finals in other countries

NHL.TV on DAZN will show 2026 Stanley Cup Finals live streams in more than 200 countries around the world, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. It includes the likes of the UK, Ireland, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, India, and Japan — but not, notably, the USA or Canada. You can see the complete list of countries covered here, with prices varying from region to region.

How to watch Stanley Cup Finals from anywhere

If you're overseas when the Stanley Cup Finals are on and try to watch the games through your usual NHL streaming service, you'll find that your stream is blocked. Rights restrictions mean that you can't generally watch the platforms you're used to when out of the country — or, at least, not without a VPN. This clever software fools your streaming devices (e.g. laptops, phones, Fire Stick, etc) into thinking it's back at home, allowing you to stream like normal.

NordVPN is our recommendation for the best VPN you can download right now. It's brilliant at unlocking streaming services that would otherwise be geo-blocked, combining that with rapid speeds, enhanced cybersecurity, and user-friendly apps. Plus, you can give it a try without risk thanks to its no-quibble 30-day money-back guarantee.

Stanley Cup Finals schedule

• Game 1: at Carolina on Tuesday, June 2 — 8 p.m. ET
• Game 2: at Carolina on Thursday, June 4 — 8 p.m. ET
• Game 3: at Vegas on Saturday, June 6 — 8 p.m. ET
• Game 4: at Vegas on Tuesday, June 9 — 8 p.m. ET
• *Game 5: at Carolina on Thursday, June 11 — 8 p.m. ET
• *Game 6: at Vegas on Sunday, June 14 — 8 p.m. ET
• *Game 7: at Carolina on Wednesday, June 17 — 8 p.m. ET

*Denotes 'if required'

Who is favored to win the Golden Knights vs. Hurricanes?

At the time of writing, DraftKings lists Carolina as the favorite to win Game 4. The sportsbook has the Hurricanes listed as 1.5-point favorites and -115 on the moneyline, while Vegas is at -105. The Golden Knights are the overall favorites to win the Stanley Cup (-185), while the Hurricanes are underdogs at +150.

Who won the first three games of the Stanley Cup Finals?

The Golden Knights won Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals 5-4, but the Hurricanes were able to fight back in Game 2, winning 4-3 in overtime. Game 3 went into double-overtime, but the Golden Knights ultimately pulled off a 5-4 win. Overall, the Stanley Cup Finals have been a pretty close series.

Where is the Stanley Cup Finals Game 4 being held?

Game 4 of the Golden Knights vs. Hurricanes Stanley Cup Finals will be held at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. The series will return to the Lenovo Center in Raleigh, North Carolina, for Game 5.

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.

• Salesforce laid off employees in a new round of cuts this week.
• An internal document shows Salesforce's standard severance offer for U.S. employees.
• Employees receive severance based on level, tenure, and age.

As Salesforce begins another round of layoffs, the company's standard severance plan appears to offer employees a softer landing than many of its Big Tech peers.

Internal documents reviewed by Business Insider show that eligible U.S. workers can receive up to 30 weeks of severance, a package that appears more generous than those recently offered by companies including Oracle, Amazon, and Block.

Salesforce on Monday started notifying employees about layoffs, according to people familiar with the matter and a regulatory notice in California. The layoffs come amid concerns that AI tools and agents could replace traditional software, including the company's main customer relationship-management offering. Salesforce's stock is down more than 30% this year.

Salesforce's severance policy states that employees receive severance payments based on level, tenure, and age.

Senior directors and director-level employees receive 13 weeks of base pay, while senior managers and below receive 9 weeks. Employees ages 60 and older at any level get an additional four weeks.

Employees also receive an additional three weeks of service per year. A partial year counts as a full year. Employees receive six months of COBRA coverage, or 12 months if they are 60 or older.

The combined total of level- and tenure-based is capped at 26 weeks, or 30 weeks for those 60 and older.

Salesforce's package appears larger than other recent Big Tech severance offers. Oracle recently offered laid-off US employees four weeks' base salary, plus one week per additional year of employment, up to 26 weeks, as severance. Block, which laid off nearly half its employees earlier this year, provided them with 20 weeks of salary, plus one additional week per year of tenure.

Amazon's package for laid-off employees in January included full pay and benefits for 90 days, plus an additional severance package.

Salesforce did not respond to requests for comment.

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at astewart@businessinsider.com or Signal at +1-425-344-8242. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

Why we love this OXO deal

OXO is the standard for kitchen tools that streamline tedious tasks, look good, and more. This stainless steel coffee maker is a favorite among coffee lovers, beloved for its easy operation, delicious brew, and programmable schedule. Even though the official Prime Day deals are still weeks away, it's down to a mind-blowing low as a teaser for what's to come.

This Prime Day preview deal isn't the first time it's dropped in price, but it is the first time it's gone this low. At only $150, it's a full $100 less than its list price — an incredible deal for a capable model that users across the internet love. I've been lucky enough to sample a few cups from a friend's OXO Brew in the past, and I'm honestly considering jumping on this deal myself (even though I already have a fully functional machine).

OXO Brew 9-Cup Coffee Maker — $250 $150 at Amazon

Why you'll love it

With so many different coffee makers on the market, the OXO Brew stands out because it makes the task as effortless as possible. It won't blow the socks off of your barista friend, but it will earn its keep when you roll out of bed, bleary-eyed, to a fresh hot pot of coffee ready to be poured on your countertop.

If you're not the type to plan ahead, the OXO Brew is still a dream to use in the moment. It preheats water to speed up the process and features a double-walled stainless steel carafe to keep your coffee at the temperature at which it was brewed. The rainmaker shower head evenly disperses water over your grounds for better overall flavor. If you're hustling your way out the door, you can even pause mid-brew to top up your tumbler.

Read our full guide to the best coffee makers for more great rigs. Keep tabs on our Prime Day coverage to prepare for the huge deal event.

Follow our Instagram and WhatsApp channels for more deals and buying guides.

LG is well known for its OLED TVs, which routinely deliver some of the best picture quality on the market. That said, not every LG display is created equal. I review TVs year-round, so I know exactly what separates a good display from a mediocre one. To make shopping easier, I've rounded up the best LG TVs you can buy right now, with picks for different budgets.

The LG C5 OLED is my top choice for most people. It's a midrange model that balances price and performance beautifully, delivering great picture quality without the higher cost of LG's flagship sets. But if you're building a serious home theater and want an even better image, the LG G5 OLED is my upgrade pick. It's one of the most impressive-looking TVs I've tested, offering a brighter picture than the C5.

LG also offers cheaper TVs that use basic LED backlights, but they're generally beaten by alternatives from other companies. Based on my extensive testing across TV brands, LG really stands apart with its OLED models, which is why I've focused on OLEDs in this guide.

Our top picks for the best LG TVs

Best overall: LG C5 OLED 4K TV - See at Amazon

Best high-end: LG G5 OLED 4K TV - See at Amazon

Best budget OLED: LG B5 OLED 4K TV - See at Walmart

Best overall: LG C5

What we love: It's the best LG TV for overall value, balancing price and performance better than any other model in the brand's lineup, and it's available in many sizes.

Drawbacks: It's not as bright or colorful as some competing OLEDs.

The C5's image quality is fantastic for the money, delivering pixel-perfect contrast and deep black levels thanks to its WOLED panel. Other panel types are prone to uneven brightness, which can lead to elevated black levels and halos around bright objects. But the C5 is completely free from any backlight inconsistencies. It boasts an infinite contrast ratio, resulting in exceptional image quality with inky shadows that disappear into a dark room. You can learn more about OLED technology in our OLED vs. QLED comparison.

Peak brightness is good, though not as high as pricier models. Our reviewer measured a max of around 1,174 nits, which is enough to deliver solid impact in specular highlights (such as explosions) when watching high-dynamic-range (HDR) content. The C5 can produce a wide range of colors, but very bright colors aren't as vibrant as they are on some competing Samsung OLED TVs.

The C5 offers wide viewing angles, so contrast and colors shift only slightly when viewed from off-center positions. This makes the C5 a great choice for rooms where you can't always sit directly in front of the TV.

It's also a good gaming TV thanks to its 144Hz refresh rate, which provides smooth motion. However, some TVs can support a higher 165Hz refresh rate, which could be beneficial for dedicated PC gamers.

Note: A 2026 version of this TV, the C6, is also available. The new model is very similar, except for the 77- and 83-inch sizes. Those larger sizes use a noticeably brighter screen. You can learn more in my LG 2026 OLED TV roundup. While it's in stock at a lower price, the C5 is the better value for most needs.

Read our full LG C5 4K TV review.

Check out our guide to all of the best smart TVs.

Best high-end: LG G5

What we love: It's one of the best premium OLEDs I've reviewed, with nearly unmatched image quality, a fast 165Hz refresh rate, and the ability to hang flush on your wall.

Drawbacks: It's pricey and doesn't include a traditional pedestal stand, and the 97-inch size uses a dimmer panel.

The G5 has a much brighter screen than cheaper LG OLEDs, helping it deliver some of the best picture performance on the market. It achieves this boost in quality by using a more advanced OLED panel that LG calls "Tandem" or "four-stack" OLED. I measured a peak brightness of around 2,400 nits using an industry-standard 10% test pattern. That's one of the highest readings I've ever recorded on an OLED TV, enabling the G5 to deliver exceptional HDR performance that surpasses dimmer models like the C5.

The G5's higher brightness is impressive, but it only matters when watching certain content. Many modern movies and TV shows are mastered at a peak of 1,000 nits. Since the step-down C5 can handle 1,000 nits, that kind of material won't look much different on the G5 than it would on the C5. But studios are producing a growing number of HDR titles with higher luminance, and these kinds of videos absolutely stun on the G5.

For instance, "Mad Max: Fury Road" and "Aquaman" are both mastered for brightness well beyond 1,000 nits, allowing the G5 to unleash its full potential. "Fury Road," in particular, is packed with intense explosions and shimmering reflections that pop from the screen. Meanwhile, "Aquaman" is full of vivid colors that carry bold saturation. Both of these titles look noticeably more impactful on the G5 than they would on the C5.

The G5 also outpaces LG's C- and B-Series in refresh rate. Cheaper sets typically max out at 120Hz or 144Hz, but the G5 can handle up to a 4K/165Hz signal when paired with a gaming PC. This allows it to display smoother motion, provided your PC can render high frame rates, and helps cement it as one of the best gaming TVs.

The G5's handsome "Gallery" design is also worth noting. This allows it to be hung flush on a wall with its included mount. That said, the TV does not come with a traditional pedestal stand, so you'll need to buy one separately if you don't want to mount it. The G5 is sold in 55-, 65-, 77-, 83-, and 97-inch sizes. However, the 97-inch model doesn't use a four-stack OLED panel, so it can't get as bright as the smaller models.

Most will be satisfied with the cheaper C Series, but the G5 is the best LG TV for home theater fans willing to splurge on industry-leading image quality.

Note: A new 2026 edition of this set, the G6, is now available. I got an early look at the G6, and it offers better reflection handling and improved processing. That said, it costs about $1,000 more than the G5 currently sells for. Big enthusiasts may want to consider paying extra for the G6, but most people are better off saving with the G5.

Read our full LG G5 4K TV review.

Check out our guides to all of the best TVs, best OLED TVs, and best TVs for picture quality.

Best budget OLED: LG B5

What we love: It's LG's most affordable OLED, yet still delivers the same pixel-level contrast and deep black levels as pricier models.

Drawbacks: It's dimmer than the brand's step-up models, and its refresh rate is lower.

The B5 is about as close to budget-friendly as OLED TVs get. It offers an infinite contrast ratio, true black levels, and wide viewing angles, just like LG's pricier OLEDs. However, the B5 does have some drawbacks compared to LG's step-up models. Most notably, its brightness and refresh rate can't match those of its pricier siblings.

The B5 is dimmer than other OLEDs, with a peak brightness of around 700 nits. That's a respectable number, but it's under the 1,000 nit standard that a lot of HDR material is designed for. This means that some high-dynamic-range content may appear dimmer on the B5 than the filmmakers intended. Likewise, the TV's lower brightness means it's less effective at overcoming reflections in rooms with a lot of ambient light.

The TV's refresh rate maxes out at 120Hz, which is solid, but not on par with LG's step-up models. The C5 and G5 can support 144Hz and 165Hz, respectively. A 120Hz refresh rate is still high enough to unlock the smoothest gameplay modes on a PS5, Xbox, or Switch 2, but PC gaming enthusiasts may want to spend extra to get a TV with a higher refresh rate.

But even with those shortcomings, the B5 still offers better picture quality than any of LG's non-OLED TV models. Its contrast control and precise black levels result in better overall image performance than all of the brand's QNED, Mini LED, and standard LED displays. The B5 is available in 48-, 55-, 65-, 77-, and 83-inch sizes.

Check out our guide to all of the best budget TVs.

What else we considered

Though the models highlighted above are our top picks for the best LG TVs, the brand also offers several other worthwhile displays. Here's a rundown of a couple of other LG TVs we tested, along with details on why they didn't quite meet the criteria for this guide.

LG C6H OLED 4K TV - See at Amazon
The C6H is a new submodel in LG's 2026 C6 Series lineup. It's only available in 77- and 83-inch screen sizes, and it can get much brighter than its smaller counterparts. The C6H wowed us during our full review, delivering picture quality that comes close to matching LG's step-up G Series. The only reason the C6H doesn't have a spot in our guide is because you can still find the 77- and 83-inch G5 for around the same price or less. Since the G5 performs a bit better, we give it an edge. However, this will change as the C6H price drops throughout the year. When that happens, it will become the best big-screen OLED value in LG's lineup.

Read our LG C6H TV review.

LG StanbyME 2 TV - See at Amazon
The StanbyME 2 is a unique portable 27-inch TV with an integrated battery and rollable stand. We reviewed the original first-gen model, but it has since been replaced by a second-gen version with a slightly higher-resolution screen, longer battery life, and quick detachability for use like a tablet. It's a cool fit for people who want a space-saving TV that's easy to move from room to room. However, it's expensive for such a small screen, and its use cases are limited to very specific kinds of buyers.

Read our LG StanbyME TV review.

Why don't we recommend LG LED TVs?

In addition to OLED TVs, LG also offers several TV models that use LED backlights, including standard LED, QNED, and Mini LED options. Though these TVs have their benefits, they generally fall behind similarly priced alternatives from brands like TCL, Hisense, and Samsung. For instance, we previously included an entry-level LG LED TV as a budget pick in this guide, but recent price fluctuations make it hard to recommend over better-performing models from other companies. If you favor the LG brand, we generally recommend sticking to their OLED TV models since that's where the company excels over rivals.

For more affordable TV recommendations, check out our guide to the best TVs under $500.

For LED TV recommendations from other companies, check out our other brand-specific TV guides:

• Best Hisense TVs
• Best Sony TVs
• Best TCL TVs
• Best Samsung TVs
• Best Roku TVs

What about LG Micro RGB TVs?

This year, LG is launching its first Micro RGB TVs. The flagship MRGB95B is now available to preorder in 75, 85, and 100 inches. Unlike traditional LED TVs, which use a white or blue backlight, LG Micro RGB TVs use an RGB backlight with red, green, and blue diodes. In theory, this should enable them to produce a wider, brighter range of colors than other display types, including OLEDs. Other brands have launched TVs with similar technology, though different companies use different branding, like RGB Mini LED, RGB LED, and True RGB.

We'll be testing the MRGB95B soon for consideration in this guide. You can learn more about RGB backlight technology in our RGB LED vs. Mini LED comparison.

How we test LG TVs

We selected the best LG TVs based on extensive hands-on experience with a range of LG models. We've been reviewing home entertainment products for over a decade, and used that expertise to vet our recommendations and build our testing methodology.

Our review process focuses on key performance metrics, including brightness, color coverage, contrast, black levels, viewing angles, design, and overall value. We also test LG's webOS interface to gauge navigation speed and general smoothness of operation.

When recording a TV's brightness and color, we use a colorimeter with a pattern generator, test patterns from the Spears & Munsil UHD HDR Benchmark 4K Blu-ray disc, and Calman calibration software. That said, test patterns can only reveal so much, so we place a heavy emphasis on watching real-world content on each LG TV we review to see how the displays perform with various types of videos in both bright and dimly lit rooms. We've curated a selection of scenes from movies and TV shows to assess HDR highlight quality, shadow detail, posterization, color fidelity, and fine details, using a mix of 4K, high-definition (HD), and standard-definition (SD) samples. We also use a PS5, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch to test gaming performance.

For our guide to the best LG TVs, we paid careful attention to how each LG model performs relative to other TVs in the brand's lineup and to similar rivals from competing brands. This enables us to highlight key benefits and limitations across the company's entire collection.

For more information on our review methodology, check out our breakdown on how we test tech products.

Meet the expert behind this guide:

Steven Cohen, senior tech editor: I've spent more than a decade reviewing home entertainment gear, and my team and I get our hands on the latest TVs year-round. I also attend LG's annual reviewer workshops, so I get an early look at the company's newest video and audio tech before it hits stores. I studied film production, which basically means I'm a stickler for picture accuracy, wanting movies and shows to look the way their creators intended. Beyond lab testing with calibration tools and benchmark discs to measure brightness and color, I live with every LG TV I review. That means real-world streaming, movie nights, gaming marathons, and regular channel surfing. My goal is to cut through the jargon and help you find the best LG TV for your budget.

Learn more about the Reviews team at Business Insider.

LG TV FAQs

What smart TV interface does LG use?

LG TVs use the brand's proprietary webOS smart TV interface. Versions of webOS have been used on LG TVs since 2014. The latest iteration is webOS 26, which debuted with the brand's latest 2026 TV models.

Although older versions of webOS used a pop-up menu, newer versions have transitioned to a full-screen homepage design. This homepage is similar to a lot of other smart TV interfaces, with access to streaming apps and various rows of content recommendations.

In general, webOS is a solid smart TV system with support for all the best streaming services, though it's not quite as smooth or intuitive as Google TV or Roku OS. The platform's organization places a bit too much emphasis on sponsored content and shopping recommendations, but we do like that you can disable most of these ads via a toggle in the settings menu.

The best LG TVs with the latest version of webOS also support various AI features, including an AI Concierge search function and personalized picture and sound optimizations based on your viewing preferences. Although we generally recommend leaving these functions off to achieve the most accurate image and audio, they're worth experimenting with if you're unhappy with how the TV looks or sounds. Google Gemini and Microsoft CoPilot AI are also available on newer models.

Top webOS TVs come with LG's Magic Remote, which supports traditional button clicks for navigation as well as motion controls that let you move a virtual cursor on screen by pointing the remote at the display.

What TV sizes does LG offer?

LG offers a wide range of TV models in sizes from 27 to 115 inches.

For TV recommendations specific to certain sizes, check out our size-specific buying guides:

• Best 100-inch TVs
• Best 85-inch TVs
• Best 75-inch TVs
• Best 65-inch TVs
• Best 55-inch TVs
• Best 50-inch TVs
• Best 43-inch TVs

Does LG make 8K TVs?

Though LG has sold 8K TVs in the past, it currently has none in its lineup. The only major brand with new 8K models is Samsung.

Are LG TVs better than Samsung TVs?

LG and Samsung are both reliable brands that make several excellent TVs. In most respects, it's hard to say that one is definitively better than the other. Instead, each has strengths and weaknesses across its lineup.

LG was the first TV brand to bring 4K OLED displays to the mass market, and it offers a comprehensive collection of OLED models in many sizes. Meanwhile, Samsung entered the 4K OLED market much later and initially had a more limited lineup. This has changed in the last couple of years, though, and now Samsung offers a similar selection of sizes and performance tiers. However, LG is still the only brand that sells a 97-inch OLED.

Both companies use WOLED panels in certain models, while Samsung also uses QD-OLED screens in some sizes. QD-OLED panels have an edge in color and brightness, but WOLED panels offer deeper black levels in rooms with ambient light. LG also utilizes a four-stack OLED panel in its high-end G Series OLEDs, which can rival the brightness of Samsung's QD-OLEDs.

Both companies also sell LCD-based TVs, with entry-level options that use standard LED panels and more advanced models with QLED screens, local dimming, and Mini LED backlights. LG brands its more advanced LCD TVs as QNED and NanoCell, while Samsung brands its high-end LCD TVs as Neo QLED. Though LG's newest QNED TVs have gotten a lot better, generally speaking, Samsung's Neo QLEDs offer superior backlight control.

In 2026, both brands have also released Micro RGB TVs that use red, green, and blue LEDs in their backlights to deliver better color capabilities. It remains to be seen whether one company has an edge over the other in Micro RGB performance.

LG and Samsung both use their own proprietary smart TV interfaces, and they both support Xbox Game Pass streaming and similar AI functions. That said, LG's remotes stand out for their motion controls, and Samsung's remotes stand out for their SolarCell technology that works without a battery.

Another important distinction between the two brands is that LG supports Dolby Vision HDR on its mid- and high-end TVs, while Samsung supports the competing HDR10+ format. These formats offer similar performance, but Dolby Vision content is more widely available across streaming services and 4K Blu-ray discs. You can learn more in our HDR TV guide.

• Data from NAR shows the median sale price of an existing home was $429,300 in June.
• The median single-family home sale price could hit $1 million by 2050, according to an economist.
• The climb to $1 million will be slow, so buyers should expect modest price gains for now, they said.

I know it, and you know it — buying a home has never felt this unaffordable.

For years, prospective buyers have faced a punishing mix of too few homes for sale, high mortgage rates, and persistently high home prices. Those pressures have pushed homeownership out of reach for many Americans. Unfortunately, affordability could get even worse in the years to come.

At an economic forum during the National Association of Real Estate Editors conference in June, National Association of Realtors chief economist Lawrence Yun told a room full of journalists that he expects the median single-family home sale price to reach $1 million by 2050.

For comparison, the median sale price of an existing home was $429,300 in June, according to NAR data. Yun told Business Insider that while his 2050 forecast is speculative, it is based on steady annual home-price growth of 3% to 4%.

"It's worth looking back: for example, back in 1990, the median national home price was barely above $100,000," Yun said. "At that time, people would not have envisioned that today's home prices could be $400,000."

He pointed to San Francisco's housing market as another example. "In San Francisco, a million-dollar home is very common today, but back in 1990, the median home price in San Francisco was about $250,000, and I'm sure no one was thinking about a million," Yun added.

Yun's forecast is sobering, especially as some parts of the real estate market appear to be normalizing. Home-price growth has slowed in formerly hot markets like Austin and San Diego, while new home construction in smaller markets like Kaufman, Texas, and Harnett, North Carolina, has helped boost sales.

Yun said those cities are outliers in a national real estate market still defined by climbing prices and soft demand.

"Places like Austin, or any local market, will deviate from national trends for some time. But Austin's price decline is pretty much due to the fact that it had a spectacular run-up," he said. "One wonders, after a little pause in Austin, whether it will begin to show that superstar status again."

Yun said it will take years of steady gains for the US median single-family home sale price to reach $1 million. For now, he expects prices to rise only moderately.

"In the short term, I think home prices will see a very minimal gain this year — maybe 1%, 2%, or 3% nationwide," he said. "That would be below consumer price inflation and below income growth, since incomes are rising around 3% to 4%. I think home-price growth coming in slightly below income growth is a healthy thing."

• Stocks saw intense volatility on Tuesday, ending in the red after after earlier gains.
• The Nasdaq 100 fell as much as 4% around midday, erasing gains from Monday's session.
• A fresh rally in chipmakers sputtered and reversed course, with the VanEck Semiconductor ETF down as much as 7%.

After a comeback rally on Monday and in the early hours of Tuesday's session, stocks tumbled deep into the red again.

A chipmaker-led rally turned sour by late morning, with the Nasdaq 100 down almost 4% during the session. The chip sector was getting crushed again in the session after a rally on Monday helped erase some of the losses from the end of last week.

The VanEck Semiconductor ETF plunged nearly 7% at its low.

Some of the hardest hit stocks in the chip space included: Marvell, optical names, and quantum computing plays. Micron Technology was down 4.3%, and Broadcom lost 1.3%.

Here's where major indexes stood at the 4 p.m. ET closing bell:

• S&P 500: 7,386.44, down 0.26%
• Dow Jones Industrial Average: 50,872.11, up 0.2% (+86.10 points)

• Nasdaq 100: 29,084.50, down 1.12%

The sell-off was abrupt, and marked a sharp reversal from gains seen earlier in the trading session when the indexes were up roughly 1% each. The volatility was reflected in a 10% move higher in the VIX index.

Market watchers have chalked up the recent selling pressure to profit-taking after a record-setting stretch for the stock market, with renewed bullishness in tech lifting indexes to all-time highs in recent weeks.

"We're still seeing profit taking in tech, while the sectors doing well today are the underperformers over the last month," Wall Street veteran Louis Navellier said, adding "Returns are broadening, which is a good thing."

Some also theorize that the sell-off indicates investors are boosting cash positions in anticipation of piling money into SpaceX stock when it begins trading on Friday.

Tuesday's losses exended declines on Friday, which some some top Wall Street forecasters have framed as a healthy pullback.

While equities sank lower, Brent oil fell 2.8% to $91.45 and WTI oil dropped more than 3.3% to $88.21.

US President Trump told reporters that negotiations with Iran are ongoing and going well, saying, "We could have at least an idea by one or two days from now."

Trump added that the US would respond after a helicopter was shot down over the Strait of Hormuz. The president blamed Iran, though US Central Command said the incident was still being investigated.

US Treasury bonds moved higher with the 10-year yield hitting 4.52%.

• Taniquewa Brewster received $1,000 a month for one year from an Austin basic income program.
• She landed job certifications and stable housing, but is worried about emergency expenses.
• US cities have run hundreds of pilots offering no-strings-attached cash to low-income families.

Taniquewa Brewster is an assistant property manager, doula, student, advocate, and proud mom of six.

The 41-year-old is also a former guaranteed basic income participant in her hometown of Austin, Texas. She was one of 135 low-income households that received $1,000 a month for a year, from September 2022 to August 2023. The money helped her cover bills, build savings, and land a more stable career.

Business Insider first spoke with Brewster in the fall of 2024, about a year after her cash payments ended. She's now feeling more confident in her family's future — even if unexpected bills remain a stressor.

"I've been able to keep my children from having to work to contribute to the household," she said in June. "They can do whatever they want to do with their money, and that's a big difference for me — breaking that generational curse of poverty." She said that fear is no longer her dominant emotion.

Basic income gained momentum in the early 2020s as a solution for poverty and an increasingly AI-dominated job market. The no-strings-attached cash model has been tried hundreds of times over the past decade, championed by lawmakers, local advocates, and some big-name tech leaders. Business Insider has heard from single parents who used the money for groceries and families who secured apartments after years of instability.

Much of the reporting and data about basic income follows participants during and immediately after their programs. What's less documented is how families fare in the years after their cash payments end. Brewer said she's still seeing a benefit.

Brewster feels more financially confident, but worries about emergency expenses

Austin's guaranteed basic income program was a collaboration between the city and the nonprofit UpTogether. Brewster qualified because she was experiencing housing insecurity and earned less than 60% of the area median family income, which was slightly over $64,000 annually for her household size. Brewster is a single mother who supports her children — now between infancy and college age — alone.

Prior to GBI, she was patching together low-paying part-time jobs and struggling to pay bills. She said the financial strain prevented her from getting the training she needed for a higher-paying real estate job with predictable hours.

"I was working as hard as I could, working overtime," Brewster said in 2024. "That's keeping me away from my family. That's keeping me away from things that I can be doing — even going back to school — because I have to work so hard to just cover rent."

With the extra $1,000 a month, Brewster said she was able to get the certifications she needed to be promoted as a leasing agent and now assistant property manager. She also completed her doula training and has since gone back to school to study nonprofit management. She remains a vocal advocate for basic income in Texas. Building a career that both supports her family and allows her to support others is a dream, she said.

She's currently adopting her youngest daughter, whom she's been fostering, and her family is preparing to move to a bigger apartment. Data from the Austin pilot shows that the majority of participants were better able to afford basic necessities and pay off debt during and directly after the pilot.

"It didn't just help me financially, it gave me confidence in myself," she said. "It was a hand up and not a handout."

She said the payments didn't fix all of her affordability concerns. She had an unexpected illness last year that required expensive medications and hospital care. She has some savings, but worries about what will happen if her family runs into more emergency expenses.

Like other GBI pilots, Brewster's program was designed to provide short-term financial support. Austin's program stopped recently due to a funding lapse and limited political backing. The US has yet to try basic income for more than a few years at a time, largely because governments and philanthropists say they can't fund it long-term. Some tech leaders who previously championed basic income for displaced workers now say the impact doesn't justify the investment.

Critics of basic income also say cash payments discourage participants from working to earn a paycheck, and that the programs require too much capital to operate alongside other safety net programs, like SNAP and Medicaid.

But, for Brewster, even a year of no-strings-attached cash was life-changing.

"It felt like people were actually asking me what my needs were, and how they could help me meet those needs," she said. "There's something comforting about someone actually caring enough to ask."

• Without adjusting for inflation, 60 movies released by US studios have grossed $1 billion or more at the box office.
• Using data from Box Office Mojo, we compiled a list of the highest-grossing movies worldwide.
• "The Super Mario Galaxy Movie" is the latest film to join the elite club.

Don't let anyone tell you differently: Hollywood is powered by the box office.

For over a century, the movie business has entertained people around the globe by creating powerful stories that astound us and make us want to come back for more.

It has led to a collection of titles reaching the rarified $1 billion box office mark during their theatrical run.

This is where Marvel movies, Disney animation, and James Cameron reign supreme.

Here are the movies that have crossed the prized $1 billion mark at the box office.

Kirsten Acuna and Kim Renfro contributed to previous versions of this story.

60. "The Super Mario Galaxy Movie" (2026)

Worldwide gross: $1,000,530,625

"Galaxy" marks the first $1 billion-plus earner of 2026.

Following the hit original, 2023's "The Super Mario Bros. Movie," which you'll find further down this list, Nintendo and Universal teamed up for a sequel that expands the Mario Bros. universe.

Now that both "Mario" movies have crossed the $1 billion mark, the franchise is on its way to becoming one of the most lucrative animated series in Hollywood.

59. "Jurassic World Dominion" (2022)

Worldwide gross: $1,001,978,080

Poor reviews didn't stop people from seeing the third "Jurassic World" outing.

It took over three months, but "Jurassic World Dominion" crossed $1 billion worldwide. The sequel likely crossed the number thanks in part to the original "Jurassic Park" cast returning to the big screen and teaming up with the newer "Jurassic World" cast in this entry.

58. "The Dark Knight" (2008)

Worldwide gross: $1,008,287,756

Back in July of 2008, people began speculating that Christopher Nolan's "Batman Begins" sequel starring Heath Ledger as the Joker might have the box-office power to set a world record.  "There are even whispers starting whether 'Dark Knight' can beat the incredible worldwide numbers posted by the all-time $1.8 billion benchmark of 'Titanic,'" Deadline reported.

At the time, the film broke several box-office records, including highest-grossing opening weekend, highest Friday midnight showings, and highest-opening day record. "TDK" went on to become the highest-grossing movie of 2008.

The film's successful viral marketing campaign and box-office performance really set the bar for what a superhero movie could be. Many consider it a blueprint for the success of superhero movies that came afterwards. Unfortunately, instead of DC catapulting into the stratosphere from here on out, Marvel took the lead, appearing on this list 10 times compared to DC's four.

57. "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" (2012)

Worldwide gross: $1,017,453,991

When Peter Jackson's first "Hobbit" movie crossed the $1 billion mark, it looked like a good indication that the subsequent two sequels would perform equally well, if not better, at the box office.

But neither of the second two "Hobbit" films wound up crossing that box-office landmark. Both "The Desolation of Smaug" and "Battle of the Five Armies" grossed around $960,000,000 each.

56. "Alice In Wonderland" (2010)

Worldwide gross: $1,025,468,216

When Tim Burton's take on the original Disney classic hit $1 billion at the box office in 2010, it was only the sixth ever film to do so. In the years since, more than 20 other films have joined the club — but the sequel to this live-action "Alice In Wonderland" was not among them. 2016's "Alice Through the Looking Glass" grossed over $299 million worldwide. 

55. "Zootopia" (2016)

Worldwide gross: $1,025,521,689

"Zootopia" became a surprise hit for Walt Disney Animation. At the time, it set a record for the biggest animated March opening weekend of all time.

54. "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" (2001)

Worldwide gross: $1,028,496,499

Nineteen years after its initial 2001 release, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" managed to cross the $1 billion mark only after it was given a theatrical re-release in China.

Deadline reported that the movie had grossed $13.6 million over the course of three-days after it was released in theaters with a "remastered 4K 3D" version. It's the second movie in the "Harry Potter" franchise to gross more than $1 billion. 

53. "Finding Dory" (2016)

Worldwide gross: $1,029,266,989

Moviegoers flocked back to theaters in the summer of 2016 for Disney Pixar's "Finding Nemo" sequel. It was the second animated feature of 2016 to pass the $1 billion mark ("Zootopia" is the other).

At the time, the box-office numbers also made "Finding Dory" the fifth highest-grossing animated movie of all time. 

52. "Despicable Me 3" (2017)

Worldwide gross: $1,034,800,131

"Despicable Me 3" was a sleeper hit of 2017. With the return of Gru, Lucy, and of course the Minions, this is the second movie in the franchise to gross over one billion dollars. The introduction of "South Park" co-creator Trey Parker as a new villain was a smart move.

51. "Lilo & Stitch" (2025)

Worldwide gross: $1,038,027,526

Disney's live-action remake genre followed the dud of "Snow White" with this major success.

Along with hitting the billion mark, the movie also broke the Memorial Day opening weekend box office record with $341.7 million worldwide.

50. "Star Wars: Episode 1 — The Phantom Menace" (1999)

Worldwide gross: $1,046,515,409

"The Phantom Menace" was the first "Star Wars" movie to earn $1 billion, thanks to its 3D re-release in theaters 13 years after the original debut. Without that second surge of ticket purchases, the film would have stayed under $1 billion along with the original three movies.

49. "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" (2011)

Worldwide gross: $1,046,721,266

There are four total "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies in the franchise — and two of them have joined the billion-dollar club. "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" sits behind the "Dead Man's Chest" installment of this Disney franchise.

48. "Aladdin" (2019)

Worldwide gross: $1,054,304,000

Like many of the Disney live-action versions of animated classics, "Aladdin" did very well at the box office. "Aladdin" became one of Disney's record-breaking seven movies to hit $1 billion in 2019.

47. "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" (2016)

Worldwide gross: $1,058,684,742

"Rogue One" cemented its place in the "Star Wars" franchise by raking in $1 billion just 39 days after its global release. The spinoff became the fourth and final movie of 2016 to make $1 billion at the box office. All four billion-dollar movies of 2016 were Disney releases.

46. "Moana 2" (2024)

Worldwide gross: $1,059,242,164

In the sequel, Moana and Maui reunite to reconnect the people of the ocean by seeking out a lost island.

45. "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" (2006)

Worldwide gross: $1,066,179,747

Back in 2006, when the sequel to Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl" hit theaters, it took just three months for the movie to make $1 billion at the box office. At that time, it was the third ever film to do so.

44. "Toy Story 3" (2010)

Worldwide gross: $1,067,316,101

The third movie in the "Toy Story" franchise crossed the $1 billion mark in 2010 and made Disney history as Pixar's highest-grossing film of all time. The success of "Toy Story 3" helped push a fourth movie into Disney's animated movie plan.

43. "Toy Story 4" (2019)

Worldwide gross: $1,073,841,394

With "Toy Story 4" also crossing this milestone, Disney became the first movie studio to create seven billion-dollar movies in a single year. The movie joined its Disney comrades "Captain Marvel," "Aladdin," "Avengers: Endgame," "The Lion King," "Frozen II," and "The Rise of Skywalker."

CEO Bob Iger recently announced a fifth "Toy Story" movie is in the works.

42. "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" (2019)

Worldwide gross: $1,077,022,372

The ninth episode in the "Star Wars" Skywalker saga, "The Rise of Skywalker," crossed the $1 billion mark on Tuesday, January 14.

As reported by Variety, it took this film 28 days to hit this milestone, while "The Force Awakens" did it in 12 days and "The Last Jedi" managed it in 19 days.

41. "Joker" (2019)

Worldwide gross: $1,078,958,629

This DC comic movie is the first R-rated movie to ever make $1 billion at the box office. Deadline announced the milestone, which came about six weeks after the movie premiered worldwide.

Marvel's "Deadpool" star Ryan Reynolds snarkily congratulated "Joker" on becoming the highest-grossing R-rated movie of all time.

40. "The Dark Knight Rises" (2012)

Worldwide gross: $1,085,199,115

Christopher Nolan's follow-up to "The Dark Knight" had became the 13th film in history to reach $1 billion in 2012. This achievement was remarkable, especially given concerns that the movie's success would be dampened after the Aurora theater shooting took place during a midnight screening of the film.

39. "Jurassic Park" (1993)

Worldwide gross: 1,103,096,466

Similar to "The Phantom Menace," a 3D re-release is responsible for putting "Jurassic Park" over the edge and into the $1 billion club. "Jurassic Park" wasn't originally released in China in 1993, according to a report from The Wrap. But the 20th anniversary international re-release included China — and the difference in ticket sales showed.

A few more pandemic re-releases in 2020 and 2022 helped send it up the chart even more.

38. "Transformers: Age of Extinction" (2014)

Worldwide gross: $1,105,261,713

Ah yes, the unstoppable box-office power of the "Transformers" franchise. According to The Wrap, "Age of Extinction" (the fourth movie) was made specifically with international audiences in mind — and it paid off. Almost a third of the total box-office revenue came from China alone.

37. "Skyfall" (2012)

Worldwide gross: $1,108,594,137

At the time of its release, "Skyfall" was Sony's highest-grossing movie worldwide and the first Bond movie to surpass $1 billion at the box office. It became the second highest-grossing film of 2012 (behind "Avengers").

It also helped that Adele recorded a banger of a theme song for the film, which won the Academy Award for best original song.

36. "Transformers: Dark of the Moon" (2011)

Worldwide gross: $1,123,794,079

The third "Transformers" movie was Paramount's first film to reach $1 billion at the box office. Similar to "Age of Extinction," the boost in ticket sales came largely from international movie audiences. This was the last "Transformers" movie which starred Shia LaBeouf. 

35. "Captain Marvel" (2019)

Worldwide gross: $1,131,416,446

And here we begin with the seemingly unstoppable success of Marvel universe movies. Just over three weeks after its release date and record-breaking opening weekend, "Captain Marvel" crossed the billion-dollar mark for global box office sales.

34. "Spider-Man: Far From Home" (2019)

Worldwide gross: $1,132,723,226

The Hollywood Reporter broke the news of this new milestone for the Spider-Man franchise as "Spider-Man: Far From Home" crossed the one-billion mark less than a month after its US premiere on July 2.

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

Worldwide gross: $1,139,431,705

People came out in droves for the final installment of Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. After only 10 weeks in theaters, "Return of the King" became the second movie ever in history to make $1 billion ("Titanic" was the first in 1997). The film went on to break an Academy Award record by sweeping all 11 categories for which it was nominated. 

The film's 2021 re-release in theaters during the pandemic in nine markets, including China, helped move it a few spots up this list.

32. "Aquaman" (2018)

Worldwide gross: $1,152,028,393

"Aquaman" became the first DC superhero movie to make $1 billion dollars at the box office. The movie was already breaking records in China before it had opened in the US in early December, and clearly it was all up from there.

A sequel is set for December 2023 with Amber Heard reportedly in a pared-down role.

31. "Captain America: Civil War" (2016)

Worldwide gross: $1,155,046,416

"Captain America: Civil War" was a blockbuster hit in 2016, and the first movie of that year to rake in $1 billion. The wild success of Cap's third outing came from it playing more like an Avengers film thanks to a large superhero roster, including Iron Man, and the introduction of Tom Holland's Spider-Man.

30. "Minions" (2015)

Worldwide gross: $1,159,457,503

The 2015 prequel to "Despicable Me" focused only on the overall-wearing Minions the world had come to love. People clearly appreciated the yellow henchman's standalone film, since neither of the two "Despicable Me" movies have breached $1 billion. 

29. "Iron Man 3" (2013)

Worldwide gross: $1,215,577,205

Tony Stark swept away comic fans with the third movie of his trilogy, "Iron Man 3." It only took 23 days in the box office for the film to hit $1 billion. If anyone doubted the power of Robert Downey Jr.'s  success as Iron Man, this movie, which grossed nearly double of the actor's second solo outing as the character, was the final confirmation of his vital role in Marvel's franchise.

28. "The Fate of the Furious" (2017)

Worldwide gross: $1,236,009,236

In April 2017, the eighth movie in "The Fast and the Furious" franchise joined the billion-dollar club.  Clearly Vin Diesel's creative control of these action-packed movies is paying off along with its diverse cast. This is the second movie from the franchise to make more than $1 billion.

27. "Incredibles 2" (2018)

Worldwide gross: $1,243,225,667

Despite the 14-year gap between the first Pixar original movie "The Incredibles" and its sequel, the critically acclaimed "Incredibles 2" created a new record as fastest animated film to gross $1 billion at the box office.

26. "Beauty and the Beast" (2017)

Worldwide gross: $1,266,115,964

Also in April 2017, Walt Disney Studios announced that its live-action remake of "Beauty and the Beast" had officially passed the $1 billion mark for global box-office sales. Its total revenue makes "Beauty and the Beast" the highest-grossing film of 2017.

25. "Frozen" (2013)

Worldwide gross: $1,285,319,131

"Frozen" maintained the top spot for the highest-grossing animated feature of all time until the release of its sequel in 2019. The film joined the billion dollar club in the same week it nabbed two Oscars. 

After its initial release, it became Walt Disney Pictures' third highest-grossing film of all time. According to Deadline, the film earned a profit of over $400 million for Disney.

24. "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom" (2018)

Worldwide gross: $1,310,469,037

The second installment in Universal's rebooted "Jurassic Park" trilogy had an impressive opening weekend and then quickly grossed $1 billion after two weeks. 

23. "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" (2017)

Worldwide gross: $1,334,407,706

"Star Wars: The Last Jedi" crossed the $1 billion mark just three weeks after its release. This second installment in the new franchise made $500 million in its first weekend alone — though "The Force Awakens" still holds the record for biggest "Star Wars" opening weekend of all time with $529 million.

22. "Deadpool & Wolverine" (2024)

Worldwide gross: $1,338,073,645

The team-up no one thought was possible turned out to be a cash cow.

Along with breaking opening weekend records with its over $440 million take, its worldwide total gross makes it the highest-grossing R-rated movie of all time.

21. "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part Two" (2011)

Worldwide gross: $1,342,505,340

Following the trend of some other franchises in our top list, the final "Harry Potter" film was the only one of the bunch that raked in $1 billion or more until "Sorcerer's Stone" was given a theatrical release in China.

20. "Black Panther" (2018)

Worldwide gross: $1,349,926,083

"Black Panther" crossed this milestone in just 26 days after breaking the record for best February opening weekend of all time. This movie was the 16th Disney film to gross over one billion dollars. 

19. "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" (2023)

Worldwide gross: $1,360,879,735

Universal Pictures' adaptation of the Nintendo game crossed $1 billion in just 26 days, making it the first film of 2023 to cross the threshold and the studio's seventh-largest film.

"The Super Mario Bros. Movie" is the fifth film released during the pandemic to hit $1 billion theatrically and the first animated movie to do so.

18. "Avengers: Age of Ultron" (2015)

Worldwide gross: $1,405,018,048

"Transformers," "The Dark Knight," and "Pirates of the Caribbean" are three franchises which each have two movies in the billion dollar club — and you can add "The Avengers" to that list.

The 2015 follow-up ensemble movie added James Spader as the terrifying new villain, and (surprising no one) "Age of Ultron" opened in the number one spot around the world.

17. "Barbie" (2023)

Worldwide gross: $1,447,138,421

Greta Gerwig's "Barbie" has been unstoppable in theaters since its release. Not only did the film earn 2023's highest-grossing domestic opening weekend, but it also contributed to the fourth-largest box-office weekend of all time.

When it crossed the billion-dollar mark in 17 days, Gerwig became the first solo female director to have a movie cross that threshold. Every other $1 billion movie directed by a woman has a male codirector.

"Barbie" is now the highest-grossing movie of 2023.

16. "Frozen II" (2019)

Worldwide gross: $1,453,683,476

The highly-anticipated sequel to the highest-grossing animated movie of all time, 2013's "Frozen," easily surpassed the box-office gross of its predecessor. "Frozen II" became Disney's sixth (out of seven total) movies to cross $1 billion in 2019 after 24 days.

A third "Frozen" movie is currently in the works.

15. "Avatar: Fire & Ash" (2025)

Worldwide gross: $1,485,999,890

Like the two films before it, James Cameron's third movie in his "Avatar" franchise has hit the billion-dollar milestone.

Movies directed by Cameron show up three more times on this list. No director has had as many billion-dollar-grossing movies as Cameron.

14. "Top Gun: Maverick" (2022)

Worldwide gross: $1,495,696,292

The highest-grossing movie of Tom Cruise's career, the sequel to the 1986 film crossed $1 billion in just 31 days.

13. "Furious 7" (2015)

Worldwide gross: $1,515,342,457

"Furious 7" broke records when it raced past the $1 billion box-office mark in just 17 days. As Entertainment Weekly reported "that makes 'Furious' 7 the fastest live-action film to reach that number." But two other 2015 movies (coming later on our list) eventually bumped it to third place.

This was the last "Fast and Furious" movie to include Paul Walker, which some believe helped boost box-office numbers.

12. "Marvel's The Avengers" (2012)

Worldwide gross: $1,520,538,536

The first "Avengers" movie brought together an all-star cast of comic book heroes — and Marvel's efforts were rewarded at the box office. The film passed $1 billion in ticket sales in just 19 days — which means it's tied for third place in the list of fastest grossing movies alongside "Avatar" and "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part Two."

11. "The Lion King" (2019)

Worldwide gross: $1,662,020,819

"Jurassic World" broke all sorts of records. It bumped "Furious 7" out of the number one spot for fastest movie to make $1 billion when it broke the record in only 13 days. At the time it also stunned box-office analysts with the highest-grossing opening weekend of all time, besting "Marvel's The Avengers," with $208.8 million. Worldwide, it opened to over $500 million, making it the first movie to ever crack that number opening weekend. 

That record didn't last long, however.

10. "Jurassic World" (2015)

Worldwide gross: $1,671,537,444

"Jurassic World" broke all sorts of records. It bumped "Furious 7" out of the number one spot for fastest movie to make $1 billion when it broke the record in only 13 days. At the time it also stunned box-office analysts with the highest-grossing opening weekend of all time, besting "Marvel's The Avengers," with $208.8 million. Worldwide, it opened to over $500 million, making it the first movie to ever crack that number opening weekend. 

That record didn't last long, however.

9. "Inside Out 2" (2024)

Worldwide gross: $1,698,863,816

After relegating titles like "Luca" and "Turning Red" to direct-to-streaming releases during the pandemic, which led to frustration and low morale within the company, Pixar is back on top.

"Inside Out 2" hit the $1 billion global mark in 19 days, the fastest ever for an animated movie. It's also the only movie released in 2024 that has crossed the $1 billion mark.

We wouldn't be shocked if Pixar is already crafting another sequel for Joy, Anxiety, and all of Riley's other feelings.

8. "Zootopia 2" (2025)

Worldwide gross: $1,866,647,950

Some sequels can get hurt at the box office for coming out so long after the original. Not this Disney title.

Released almost a decade after the first "Zootopia" movie, audiences rushed back to watch Nick Wilde and Judy Hopps go on another case.

After opening with a huge $559.5 million global take, making it the biggest global opening for an animated movie ever, it hit the $1 billion mark in just 17 days, becoming the second 2025 release to hit the billion milestone (the other being Disney's "Lilo & Stitch").

7. "Spider-Man: No Way Home" (2021)

Worldwide gross: $1,921,426,073

Spider-Man broke the pandemic curse. "No Way Home" became the first film since 2019's "The Rise of Skywalker" to cross $1 billion at the box office. The Tom Holland-starring film crossed $1 billion in just 12 days and become the highest-grossing movie of 2021.

According to Forbes, it's only the fifth film to cross $1 billion without a China release. If it ever does open there, it will likely cross $2 billion. 

6. "Avengers: Infinity War" (2018)

Worldwide gross: $2,052,415,039

The third "Avengers" film broke the all-time world record with a $630 million opening weekend, proving the Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise is stronger than ever. By mid-June, "Avengers: Infinity War" became only the fourth movie to ever crack the two-billion dollar ceiling as well.

5. "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" (2015)

Worldwide gross: $2,071,310,218

The seventh movie in the "Star Wars" franchise broke the "Jurassic World" records when box-office numbers tallied $1 billion after only 12 days. And it didn't stop there — "The Force Awakens" went on rake in more than $2 billion, solidifying its number four spot on our list and becoming the highest-grossing "Star Wars" movie of all time.

4. "Titanic" (1997)

Worldwide gross: $2,264,812,968

More than two decades since its release, James Cameron's "Titanic" is holding steady as one of the biggest box-office hits of all time. The movie made around $1.8 billion during its initial 1997 release and then topped $2 billion after it was rereleased in 3D in honor of the 100-year anniversary of the iconic ship's sinking.

3. "Avatar: The Way of Water" (2022)

Worldwide gross: $2,343,477,301

Two weeks after its premiere in movie theaters, Cameron's first "Avatar" sequel had already grossed more than $1 billion at the box office, a rare feat during the COVID-19 pandemic.

It then became the second-fastest movie to cross $2 billion in just 39 days.

While discussing the digital release of "Avatar: The Way of Water," out March 28, producer Jon Landau told Insider he and Cameron wondered if the sequel to the 2009 film would reach the number "Titanic" crossed at the box office.

"I was never nervous that people would lose interest because I didn't think they needed to have interest. I thought we were making a new movie," Landau said when asked if he was nervous that audiences may lose interest in an "Avatar" sequel after waiting more than a decade for it.

"I looked at this almost like an original piece of content that happened to be with known characters in a known world, but we were showing them in a new way. So I was nervous about how the movie would do because when you stop being nervous, you stop caring. But I was never worried," Landau added of the movie's strong box-office performance.

2. "Avengers: Endgame" (2019)

Worldwide gross: $2,799,439,100

Marvel's major endcap to its run of 22 comic-book-based films broke the record for the fastest movie to reach $1 billion dollars in international box-office totals.

On the Sunday of its opening weekend, Disney estimated "Avengers: Endgame" had made $1.2 billion within the first five days of its global debut. 

It became the highest-grossing movie of all time until Disney rereleased "Avatar" in China in 2021.

1. "Avatar" (2009)

Worldwide gross: $2,923,710,708

With close to $3 billion in box-office revenue, Cameron's "Avatar" was miles ahead of other films on the list.

Disney's epic Marvel adventure "Avengers: Endgame" knocked it out of the top spot in the summer of 2019.

However, "Avatar" retook the top spot when Disney (which now owns the rights after the Fox acquisition) rereleased the film in China in spring 2021.

Vistaprint is one of the most popular destinations for custom printing, whether you are launching a small business, planning an event, or refreshing your marketing materials. The retailer offers everything from business cards and flyers to banners, stickers, labels, signage, and branded merchandise, making it a convenient one-stop shop for both personal and professional projects.

One reason Vistaprint has remained so popular is how easy it makes the design process. The platform includes customizable templates, simple editing tools, and branding features that help shoppers create professional-looking products without needing design experience. Whether you are ordering a few business cards or a large batch of promotional materials, the process feels approachable from start to finish.

Since custom printing costs can add up quickly, many shoppers look for discounts before placing an order. Vistaprint regularly runs promotions across popular categories, and coupon codes can further reduce costs. Below, we have rounded up the best Vistaprint coupons, promo codes, and deals available right now.

Today's best Vistaprint discount codes

Previous Vistaprint discount codes

Are there any other Vistaprint sales running at the moment?

In addition to their voucher codes, Vistaprint also runs several ongoing sales and promotions, all of which can be found on their "Offers" page. As of the time of writing, Vistaprint is running the following deals.

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

How to use Vistaprint voucher codes

Vistaprint requires all shoppers to create an account before designing products, so start there. Once you've created an account, you can add coupon-eligible items to your cart. From the "My Cart" page, you can apply a promo code by clicking the "Have a code?" dropdown, pasting the code into the text box, and clicking apply. Once the voucher code has been applied, continue to checkout to enter your shipping and billing information.

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Vistaprint does not allow discount codes to be stacked together. Only one code may be applied per purchase.

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Vistaprint does not offer special discounts for students or teachers in the United States, so your best bet is to take advantage of their other coupons and deals.

Military members can receive a discount on all Vistaprint purchases. To take advantage of the discount, shoppers must verify their military status.

If you are a student or teacher, check out our roundups of the best student discounts and best teacher discounts to unlock more deals.

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Vistaprint offers shoppers free economy shipping on orders of $100 or more. You don't need to enter a promo code to access free shipping; just add enough items to your cart.

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• Jeffrey Maas was told that his savings account had been compromised because of a computer error.
• He followed the advice for resolving the issue: withdrawing money from his bank account and buying gold.
• The grandfather of two lost $390,000 and is now taking legal action.

When Jeffrey Mass and his wife retired, they had planned to use part of their savings to travel to Europe and take foreign cruises.

They also wanted to leave inheritance money for their adult kids and establish college funds for their two young grandchildren. "We had this idea of how we wanted to spend our golden years and include a legacy," Maas, 77, told Business Insider.

The couple's future is unlikely to look anything like they'd hoped: Maas was scammed out of his $390,000 nest egg — around half his life savings — by cybercriminals who struck twice.

The scammer said he represented PayPal

Maas received an email on June 5, 2024, claiming to acknowledge a $691.05 payment for Norton Antivirus identity theft protection software.

The email was not, in fact, from Norton, but from the scammers. Maas, a former human relations professional, who had not ordered the service, called the "helpline" number listed.

He reached a man, who called himself Jason Green and said he was an agent for PayPal. He said he could refund the money if Maas filled out an online form.

The senior provided details, including his bank name and the last four digits of his PNC checking and money accounts. Unbeknownst to Maas, the scammer had also taken control of his computer.

Green began the "refund process," but told Maas he had accidentally deposited $300,000 into the checking account. Green used his computer access to show Maas a falsified PNC statement recording the transaction.

Maas was told he could incur penalties from the IRS

"He kept saying he would be fired if his mistake was discovered," Maas said, adding that the scammer was slick and solicitous.

A second scammer, to whom the first conman directed to call, told Maas that the only way he could refund the $300,000 without incurring financial penalties from the IRS was to deposit gold.

The same day, Maas visited his regular PNC branch in West Orange, New Jersey, to authorize the wiring of $300,000 to American Coin and Stamp Co, Inc., a precious-metal dealer based in Clifton, New Jersey, as recommended by the scammers, to buy gold.

Details of the scam are described in a lawsuit filed in the Law Division of the Superior Court of New Jersey, Essex County. In it, Maas claims negligence against PNC and American Coin.

He is also suing a Pennsylvanian named Jaynesh Patel, alleging conspiracy to commit conversion and conspiracy to commit common fraud. Authorities arrested Patel, identifying him as a person who allegedly helped retrieve hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of gold from Maas. Patel has been charged in a separate criminal investigation of the matter.

According to the lawsuit, a PNC banker guided Maas through the process of wiring the money to American Coin. Throughout the whole transaction, the suit said, Maas was on an open phone line with Green. It said the staff member asked Maas no questions, such as why he was depleting his savings to purchase gold.

"He did not ask why Mr. Maas was on a call during the entire interaction or who was on the other end of the call," the complaint stated. "He did not try to assess if Mr. Maas was being unduly influenced."

Maas placed the coins in the back seat of a car

The lawsuit said that American Coin received the wire amount an hour later, and that Maas drove to Clifton to pick up the gold from Jeffrey Angello, owner of American Coin.

The suit added that Maas was also on the phone with the scammer during the gold exchange, and no one questioned why the large sum of gold was being purchased, or how he had learned about the store.

Maas returned home, following Green's advice to wait for someone to collect the coins. A black Nissan with a New Jersey license plate arrived, and Maas placed the coins in the back seat through an open window.

The next day, Green told Maas that the process had been successful and offered him a $1,000 reward for his help, which, the lawsuit said, Maas declined.

Maas was shown a forged document depicting his bank account

"I said, 'I don't want a reward,'" Maas told Business Insider. "I told him to leave me alone."

Green then told Maas that, instead, he would pay Maas $10,000 compensation because he had "saved his job." As Maas completed the supposed reward form, Green said there had been another mistake: $100,000 had been credited to his account, not $10,000.

Maas was again shown a forged document depicting his PNC account with the latest deposit and told he would need to repeat the process of the previous day.

The New Jersey resident returned to PNC and withdrew $90,000. The suit alleges that Maas was on an open phone line and that the second banker who helped him did not ask him what he needed the funds for, or note that he had withdrawn the $300,00 the day before.

Maas requested that the wires be recalled

Maas' complaint said the banker "did not alert Mr. Maas that this withdrawal would essentially wipe out the savings in his checking and money market account."

Maas then returned to Angello and purchased more coins. This time, a green Honda with Pennsylvania plates came to pick up the gold.

"I was on the phone with Green, but I just figured something wasn't right," Maas told Business Insider. After a sleepless night of "agitation" and "complete humiliation," he filed a report with the West Orange Police Department.

Officers identified the Honda driver as Patel, leading to his arrest and indictment on a second-degree theft by deception charge. He has pleaded not guilty, and his next court appearance is on July 6, 2026.

The lawsuit said Maas reported the situation to PNC and requested the wires be recalled, only to learn that it could not be done. "I was hoping it was a bad dream, but it wasn't," Maas said to Business Insider.

He had two severe episodes of fainting, which doctors diagnosed as the result of stress. He spent three days in the hospital on both occasions and suffered from severe social anxiety and avoidance.

The coin dealer has denied all wrongdoing

The lawsuit alleges that neither the bank nor the dealer took the necessary precautions to prevent the elaborate con.

Business Insider reached out to PNC and Patel's attorneys in both the civil and criminal cases against him. PNC, which has filed a motion to dismiss the case on legal grounds, said it could not comment on active litigation.

Patel's attorneys have not responded to Business Insider's request. However, in his answer to the complaint, Patel denied Maas' allegations.

Jeffrey Angello, owner of American Coin, denied wrongdoing. He told Business Insider that the lawsuit was "absurd."

"I'm livid that they are taking shots at my company and me when we've been here for 70 years," he said. "My name is being sullied." He said the case was keeping him up at night, and he was considering counter-suing.

Maas wants to raise awareness

Meanwhile, Maas told Business Insider, "Of course, my wife yelled at me, but she and my family have been super about what happened, but I'm my own worst enemy. Nobody held a gun to my head, but I was trying to do the right thing."

He added that he was left shaken, and his regret at what happened wouldn't go away. As for his attitude toward PNC, American Coin, and Patel, Maas said he wanted nothing more to do with them, but hopes to recover damages, attorney's fees, and court costs.

Maas' attorney, Steve Cohen, who said scams against older Americans are prolific, accused financial entities such as PNC and American Coin of being as crucial to the success of the con as the frontline criminals.

"They ignored all the red flags," he told Business Insider. "Jeffrey has been gutsy coming forward with his story."

Maas has now dramatically scaled back his expectations for an enjoyable retirement, yet still wants something good to come out of his experience.

"In retrospect, you just get caught up, and your adrenaline is going, and now it's caused this situation," he said.

Maas said that, by going public, he hopes people will take note of his personal story of being scammed, and it will raise awareness of exploitative crimes like phishing.

• After suffering seven miscarriages, Monica Kranner finally fell pregnant at the age of 53.
• Monica and her husband, Peter, are often mistaken for their son's grandparents.
• The intrusive comments she receives about her age as a parent can still be hurtful.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Monica Kranner, 56, a nutritionist based in London. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Having a 2.5-year-old when you're 56, and your husband is 60, means everyone has questions and opinions about your life.

I've heard just about every comment you can think of, and it's been going on ever since I was pregnant. I would be at the dentist, for example, and have to put on the consultation form that I was pregnant, only for the receptionist to do a double take.

One that really hurt was being out at a restaurant for a family dinner over Christmas, when the server complimented us for spending quality time with our "grandson." The assumption that we are our son's grandparents happens pretty much every time we go out, whether it's to the park, a toddler group, or even while shopping.

We end up sharing our painful backstory with strangers

Sometimes I can keep my cool, but other times it really hurts that people just make assumptions, because we waited so long to have our son.

It becomes expected that we share our very painful, personal back story: that we have been trying to conceive since I was 39, and I have experienced seven devastating miscarriages. Our son is the miracle we were waiting for over 14 years. Having to share this with strangers isn't easy, but it feels necessary.

All our son currently sees is two parents who love him immensely. He doesn't see our ages, but I'm worried this will come when he starts school. I don't want his friends to judge him and tease him for having older parents. It's one of the reasons I am actually thinking of homeschooling him, to protect him from bullying.

As older parents, we don't take our health for granted

Having a young child at this age means you don't take anything for granted. I have been a nutritionist for over 20 years, seeing clients across London, where we live; Vienna, where I'm originally from; and Los Angeles.

Even though we ended up conceiving through IVF, I'm convinced that nutrition played a strong part in helping me fall pregnant at the age of 53, and getting through menopause when I started experiencing hot flashes when I was 55, delayed because of the IVF hormones.

And now, nutrition is what keeps me fit enough to match my son's energy levels. It's also not just about the present. Naturally, my husband and I want to live as long as possible to be here for our son, so that's another reason we want to take care of our health.

As a family, we eat a fully organic diet, and I cook fresh meals at home as often as possible. I make sure every meal contains protein, vegetables, and either rye bread or rice noodles. A typical meal for my son would be a boiled egg with kefir, a fermented milk drink, some boiled, sliced vegetables, avocado, and a side of banana chips and rye bread.

Each week, I make a large portion of bone broth, cooking it for up to 12 hours before cooling it and decanting it into toddler bottles, which I then serve daily to my son. I'm confident it's one of the reasons he's hardly been sick. My husband Peter and I both regularly have bone broth too, and my elderly dad in Austria has also started having it. I've even gotten my nephew and his children onto it.

I also take several supplements. I've also taken up reformer pilates to build strength. And we try to get as much sleep as possible.

I really enjoy my time with my son

I've had a long time to think about how I want to balance work with spending time with my son, as it's important to me to spend as much time with him as possible while keeping my nutrition business going. I took a step back from my business when my son was born, seeing clients only when they approached me — I didn't do any proactive marketing again until this year. My husband runs his own small advertising agency, so he had some flexibility to step in and take care of our son when needed, and we also use a babysitter.

Now our babysitter comes for about half the day, and I take care of Lewis myself for the other half. That's the other thing you have to think about when you start a family at this age - you can't rely on grandparents to help. They have either died already or are too old to have the physical strength and mental capacity to take care of a toddler.

I really enjoy my time with my son, though, and I hope he does too. I take him to toddler activities like golf, gymnastics, and soccer. When he takes a nap, I try to lie down with him to rest and be near him.

It's frustrating that so many people think it's OK to make the insensitive comments that they do. You don't know what someone else has been through. It's nobody's business how old we are. We are doing the best for our son, and that is what matters.

• Becca and Jess Stern launched a locker brand in 2018 with $25,000 and no industry knowledge.
• The sisters built an eight-figure global brand by refusing to chase trends.
• Their "think x 10" rule pushed them to make big operational bets early on.

Becca Stern loved buying vintage lockers, but found they weren't very practical for home storage.

She and her sister, Jess Stern, had often talked about starting a business together and saw an opportunity to reinvent them into something beautiful and functional for people to use in their homes.

"Once we made the decision to start, things moved quickly," Becca said. The sisters were working with no product development knowledge and no outside funding. They also overlapped for only a few hours each day, as Becca worked from Australia while raising her new baby, and Jess worked from the UK on the side of her full-time job. "There were lots of late-night calls and the feeling that we were always swimming in the deep end, constantly hitting new challenges and figuring out the best way forward," she added.

Still, within a few months, they were in China meeting with potential manufacturers. They put about $25,000 AUD of their own savings into branding, samples, and a stand at a trade show in Sydney, officially launching their brand, Mustard Made, to the world in 2018.

They walked away from that show with over $200,000 AUD in orders. "That was the moment we realized we were onto something," Becca told Business Insider. Six months later, Jess left her corporate career to go all in.

Since then, they've grown into a thriving global brand, spanning three continents with a team of nearly 40 employees and bringing in eight figures of revenue a year. The sisters told Business Insider about the two pivotal decisions that helped them expand their company.

They avoided trends

From very early conversations about the business, the Stern sisters decided they wanted to focus on timelessness over trends.

Given the "obsessive" amount of thought and energy they put into their products, they said they couldn't imagine selling them for only six months before moving them to a sale section and phasing them out. They also questioned whether trend chasing really worked. "We've seen in the industry how hopping on trends can provide quick and exciting wins, but they can also date your product very quickly," Becca said.

That clarity, they added, has helped them build a brand with a "cult following," and a nearly 30% return customer rate that has only grown over time.

"When you see something go viral, it's certainly tempting to think, 'Should we be doing that too?'" Jess said, such as when "Brat Green" or "Barbie Pink" were taking over social media.

But the sisters said they want to stay close to the intentional design customers have come to love and expect from the business. They told Business Insider that they still sell every product and color they have ever launched, except for a limited rainbow launch in 2024 to raise money for an LGBTIQ+ organization.

"Growth can sometimes dilute a brand, but we've worked hard to ensure that every decision still feels aligned with who we are," Becca said.

They built as if they were bigger from day one

On the operations side, the sisters applied an internal pressure test they call "think x 10." This is when they ask whether any given process, system, or approach would still work if Mustard were 10 times its current size. "It has saved us so many headaches and allowed Mustard to grow and expand globally," Becca said.

Early on, that question pushed Becca and Jess toward a decision that felt uncomfortably big at the time: signing with a third-party logistics provider instead of managing warehousing from a shipping container in Becca's backyard.

"It feels ridiculous now, but at that point, engaging with a third-party logistics provider felt like a really huge step," Becca said. The "think x10" philosophy gave them the confidence to take the leap. The risk expanded Mustard Made's ability to meet demand and scale. Now, the business has four third-party logistics warehouses with plans to expand to the East Coast. "It always blows my mind to see that the scale that once felt unachievable has now become our norm."

The same logic applies to hiring. "Bringing in great people early has been key to scaling the business," Jess said, adding that hiring before they felt ready, particularly in areas where the founders didn't have expertise, is what allowed them to focus on the strategic areas of the business.

Becca frames the business's underlying mindset as a three-step cycle. "Be optimistic, then pessimistic, then optimistic again. You have to have belief and hope to get moving, then you have to break it down from every angle to find all the possible ways it could go wrong," she said.

"Once you've planned for the worst-case scenarios, you lean all in and enjoy the ride."

The Love Island that started it has returned for a bombshell 13th season. Keep reading to learn everything you need to know about where to watch Love Island UK, including free and global streaming options.

If you don't want to scroll any further: Love Island UK airs on ITV2 in the UK starting June 1, with the series streaming for free on ITVX. Other countries began to receive new episodes on a slight delay, with Australia getting the new episodes on 9Now starting June 3 and the US gaining access on Hulu beginning June 4.

Where to watch Love Island UK for free in the UK

Love Island UK airs on ITV2 in the UK. New episodes drop daily (every day except Saturday) at 9 p.m. BST. The new season kicked off on June 1, 2026. Fans can live stream the series for free on ITVX, which also carries all episodes from the series on demand. Users just need to create an account if they don't already have one, and then they're all set to start streaming.

How to watch Love Island UK from anywhere

Fans who happen to be away from the UK when a new episode drops can still keep up with their free streaming option with the help of a VPN. VPNs, or virtual private networks, are handy tech tools that let people temporarily alter the virtual location on their electronic devices. They're popular apps among those looking to boost their cybersecurity and access their usual services while traveling abroad.

NordVPN is one of the best VPNs on the market. It's fast, easy to use, and has a 30-day money-back guarantee if you find that it's not helping you out.

Where to watch Love Island UK in the US

Hulu is the streaming home of Love Island UK in the US, but new episodes will hit the streaming service on a slight delay from the UK airdates. The season premiere arrived on June 4 in the US. Hulu subscriptions start at $12 a month for the ad-supported tier, which comes with a 30-day free trial for new customers. You can upgrade to ad-free for $19 a month (without a free trial) or try out one of the Disney Plus bundles. All 12 past seasons of Love Island UK are also available on Hulu.

Where to watch Love Island UK in Australia

In Australia, 9Now is the streaming home of Love Island UK. This is a free streaming option that just requires account creation if you don't already have a login. New episodes will land on the streamer with a slight delay from the UK premiere, with the season starting on June 3 Down Under. You can also catch Seasons 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12 on 9Now.

Who is the host and narrator of Love Island UK?

Maya Jama is the longtime Love Island UK host. Iain Stirling serves as narrator. Jama also hosts the spinoff Love Island All Stars series, which dropped its third season earlier this year (also on ITVX).

Where to watch other Love Island series

While the UK iteration might be the one that started it all, there are seemingly endless spinoffs in the Love Island franchise, including Love Island USA, which is also currently dropping its latest season. If you'd like to learn about other streaming options (including All Stars, USA, and Australia), you can check out our full where to watch Love Island viewing guide.

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

• Meta is spending $115 million on a new program for training workers to build out its data centers.
• The data-center boom has created shortages of electricians and fiber technicians.
• AI may be software, but building it still requires a massive human workforce.

The next AI career path could start with a hard hat, not a laptop.

Meta said Monday it is investing a $115 million in a roughly 5-week program aimed at fast-tracking careers in the skilled trades as it looks to build out data centers to support its massive AI ambitions.

Called "America's Workforce Academy," it's a free initiative that supports participants while they learn and then guarantees a job for all graduates, the tech giant said. It will initially launch in Louisiana, Ohio, Indiana, and Texas this year.

No prior experience is required, and Meta said every graduate will leave with a verified, industry-standard credential in fields such as electrical work, mechanical systems, and plumbing.

The move comes after Meta announced in April a four-week training program for new fiber technicians set to begin this summer. Meta said that initiative, called Level-Up, received 35,000 applications in the first seven days.

Meta's new workforce initiatives show the AI boom is creating a scramble for people who can build and operate the physical infrastructure behind the technology. Even as tech companies trim their white-collar workforces, they are increasingly competing for electricians, fiber technicians, and other skilled tradespeople.

"Despite all the rhetoric about automation, AI still depends on a massive human workforce," said Chris Kaufman, a cofounder of the e-commerce giant StockX and a leadership consultant. "The future may be more automated, but somebody still has to build the data centers, run the fiber, and keep the lights on."

High demand for hard hats

In 2025, permits were issued for 176 new data centers across 34 states — the most new permits in one year since the first was issued in 1976, Business Insider previously reported. Meanwhile, the construction industry needs an estimated 349,000 new workers this year to meet demand, according to Associated Builders and Contractors, a trade group.

"Many Americans face a Catch-22, they need training to get a new higher paying job, but they can't go without pay to attend a training course," wrote Gina Raimondo, former US Secretary of Commerce, on X. Meta's new workforce academy "aims to solve this problem with paid apprenticeships and credentials that lead to actual, available good jobs."

Also on AI-hungry employers' most-wanted lists: people who can safeguard these centers. Job postings that mention "physical security" and "data centers" have nearly quadrupled since early 2020, Business Insider previously reports.

It's unclear how long these new data center jobs Meta is looking to fill will last. Data centers generally do not create large numbers of permanent, full-time jobs in local economies, Business Insider previously reported. Researchers at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business found that once a large data center is completed and up and running, its on-site workforce drops by an average of 78%.

Last month, Meta laid off roughly 10% of its 78,000 employees, citing a "continued effort to run the company more efficiently" and to help it offset its other investments. Meta is pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into its AI ambitions and weaving the technology throughout its apps, including WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram.

Meta is also keeping tabs on its own employees' AI usage. The company installed new software in April on its US workers' computers that tracks their keystrokes and mouse movements to train its AI. The move sparked internal backlash, Business Insider previously reported.

• I went on a trip to Scotland with friends, and we made a few mistakes along the way.
• We should've tracked expenses during the trip instead of sorting our bank statements afterward.
• It would've been smart to communicate what we were packing to avoid showing up with the same items.

You really learn a lot about people when you travel with them. A trip can bring out the best — or the most chaotic — sides of everyone involved, so if it's not planned right, things can go off the rails.

I was reminded of this recently on a trip to Scotland with friends, where I realized that so much of the experience starts long before the plane takes off.

From planning and packing to navigating new cities and making group decisions, every step of the journey takes patience, flexibility, and good communication.

Still, despite the stress, traveling together is one of the most rewarding ways to bond. When it's done right, those shared challenges and spontaneous moments can create memories that last a lifetime.

Here are five things I would've done differently on a recent trip with friends.

Planning out logistics beforehand would've made everything run smoothly.

Early in the planning process, we started a shared PowerPoint to outline an itinerary and list everyone's interests. However, we didn't consistently update it, so by the time we left, it was only a partial list without details or scheduling.

As a result, many decisions were made on the spot — calling places from our Airbnb to make reservations or scrambling to buy tickets to Edinburgh Castle, which were sold out for two days in advance.

Next time, I'd use a shared document or spreadsheet to list everyone's top three priorities, then map out out logistics and secure reservations and tickets to any must-see places.

I wish we had talked about a budget and set expectations early.

Traveling with others means navigating different budgets, interests, and priorities.

Some people may prefer spending money on rideshares for convenience, while others may want to splurge on fancy dinners or souvenirs.

For this trip, it wasn't that we didn't discuss this — it's just that we only did it once we got to Scotland.

Setting a budget and expectations in advance would have made a significant difference and saved us from spending vacation time figuring out how to allocate our money.

We should've communicated a packing list so we didn't show up with the same items.

When we all arrived at the Airbnb, we took inventory — three hairdryers, three curling irons, and so on. It turned out we were fully equipped to style the hair of all of Scotland.

Although we had plenty of tools to go around, it wasn't really necessary. For shareable items like these, it would've been smart to coordinate ahead of time about who's bringing what.

That way, we could've avoided duplicates and freed up packing space for other items.

It would've been smart to delegate responsibilities.

Thinking about it now, it would've been helpful to delegate responsibilities and have each person in the group take charge of something.

For example, one person could have been in charge of ordering Ubers, and another could've put their card down for dinners. This also works for non-monetary roles, such as having a designated picture taker or someone in charge of all navigation.

It takes the pressure off moments when someone needs to step up, keeps things running smoothly, and makes tracking expenses a lot easier.

Tracking expenses in real time would've made splitting costs way easier.

After the trip, my friends and I all had to comb through our bank statements to split shared costs and figure out who owed what.

It quickly became confusing — international charges were appearing under different names, addresses, and numbers, making it difficult to distinguish between them. It was also hard to identify which transactions had foreign fees attached.

Looking back, we should've tracked expenses in real time whenever someone put their card down. Apps like Splitwise or Settle Up make it easy to log purchases and divide costs fairly.

That way, nothing gets overlooked and no one ends up paying more than their share.

This story was originally published on January 21, 2026, and most recently updated on June 9, 2026.

• Anthropic released Fable 5, a "Mythos-class" model with safeguards.
• Anthropic previously held off on publicly releasing its first Mythos model, warning the AI was too skilled at hacking.
• Fable 5's capabilities "exceed those of any model we've ever made generally available," Anthropic says, even with safeguards.

Anthropic is finally willing to give you Mythos, but it comes with some safeguard strings attached.

On Tuesday, Anthropic said it was releasing a "Mythos-class" model called Claude Fable 5, but with safeguards so significant that it gave the model a different name.

"Without safeguards, Fable 5's capabilities in areas like cybersecurity could be misused to cause serious damage," Anthropic said in its announcement.

The safeguards, which mean some queries on certain topics will instead be ported to Anthropic's Opus 4.8 model, are initially tuned to be more conservative. The safeguards are triggered when Fable 5 detects requests concerning cybersecurity, biology and chemistry, or distillation. If that happens, Anthropic said users will be informed that their request is being routed through Opus 4.8.

Fable 5 is available immediately to all Pro and Max subscribers as well as team and enterprise plans, Anthropic said. That broad access won't last for long. Starting June 23, Fable 5 will require usage credits, though the company said it may extend the initial access period if there's sufficient capacity.

"The rollout is a little clunky (wanted to get it into as many hands as quickly as possible!)," Anthropic's Sam McAllister wrote on X, adding that while broad access will likely be removed in two weeks, "we'll be working hard to bring it back as soon as we can, as more compute comes online."

Anthropic is also continuing Project Glasswing, which it first announced in April, that gave early access to the first version of Mythos, Claude Mythos Preview, to a limited number of tech, cybersecurity, and financial companies. The AI company said "a small group of cyberdefenders and infrastructure providers" will get access to Claude Mythos 5, which is the same model as Fable 5 "but with the safeguards lifted in some areas."

"It has the strongest cybersecurity capabilities of any model in the world," the company said of Mythos 5. "Soon, we intend to expand access to Mythos 5 through a broader trusted access program."

Even with constraints, Anthropic said Fable 5 "exceed those of any model we've ever made generally available."

"It is state-of-the-art on nearly all tested benchmarks of AI capability, showing exceptional performance in software engineering, knowledge work, vision, scientific research, and many other areas," the company said. "The longer and more complex the task, the larger Fable 5's lead over our other models."

Anthropic said Stripe found that Fable 5 compressed months of engineering into days. For financial tasks, the company said IMC found that Fable 5 "aced their trading-analysis evaluations nearly across the board, including factual lookup, conceptual reasoning, root-cause analysis, and expected-value analysis."

Like previous Anthropic models, Fable fits within the theme of naming AI models after forms of composition. The AI startup said Fable was chosen because it shares similarities with Mythos.

"Fable is from the Latin fabula, 'that which is told,' akin to the Greek mythos," the company said.

The release comes at a critical time for Anthropic, which recently announced that it had confidentially filed a draft S-1, officially kicking off the march toward a blockbuster IPO.

OpenAI, Anthropic's chief rival, announced on Monday that it too had confidentially filed its S-1. SpaceX, which includes Elon Musk's xAI, is set to go public on Friday when it begins trading on the Nasdaq.

Anthropic's initial announcement of Mythos spooked financial markets and governments worldwide, raising concerns that AI models had advanced to the point where they could now uncover major vulnerabilities in software and cybersecurity.

President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order that allows AI companies to voluntarily give the federal government access to frontier AI models up to 30 days before their release. The order explicitly prohibits the government from imposing a mandatory review on AI companies.

• Hung-Lin Lai, an Oklahoma-based lawyer, welcomed a judge blocking the $100,000 H-1B visa fee.
• Lai said small businesses like his will likely seek to hire from abroad again.
• However, Lai said it's unclear if the fee will remain struck down.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Hung-Lin Lai, 34, the CEO of Lai & Turner Law Firm PLLC, who lives in Oklahoma. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

When a federal ruling struck down the $100,000 H-1B fee on Monday, I was relieved.

Many lawyers were optimistic this would be the result, based on a previous Supreme Court ruling that struck down Trump's tariffs. I felt the administration's immigration decision similarly bypassed regular lawmaking, so it was unlikely to remain in place.

However, the battle's not over. The Trump administration can appeal this decision, and other legal challenges to the H-1B fee are still moving through the courts. The judges might agree with this decision, or rule in the opposite direction, creating what's called a "circuit split." We have to wait and see what happens, as a decision about this fee could make its way to the Supreme Court.

The ruling is helpful for small businesses who want to recruit and hire foreign talent

The H-1B fee impacted small and medium-sized businesses, like mine, who can't afford to pay $100,000 to hire a foreign worker, while for big companies like Amazon and Facebook, it's the cost of doing business.

One prospective client abandoned sponsoring someone for an H-1B visa after finding out they'd need to pay the fee. I think most business owners would rather invest $100,000 into their company than pay it to the government.

As an employer, I was lucky to hire someone on the H-1B visa before the $100,000 fee came into effect. But we want to sponsor more people who are abroad. Earlier this year, I entered a virtual staff member in the lottery, but told her that if she were picked and the fee was still in place, I wouldn't be in a position to pay that amount.

Unfortunately, she hasn't been selected, so that point is moot, but this recent ruling makes me more willing to sponsor foreign team members in the future. However, this could still be costly, because the ruling doesn't impact last year's changes to the lottery system favoring applicants with a higher wage. This means I may have to submit an application in a higher wage tier to give candidates a better chance of being selected.

I'm still discussing with colleagues how this ruling might impact applicants to the lottery for the 2027 fiscal year, and whether there's a way the $100,000 could still apply to them. Currently, the $100,000 fee is no longer required for current applications. I think we'll see the ruling impact the following year's lottery. If the $100,000 fee still does not apply, we might see an uptick in small and medium-sized businesses like ours being willing to submit petitions.

It's helpful for businesses our size, so that we can recruit and hire foreign talent, rather than just the Amazons and Facebooks being able to hire these individuals.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told Business Insider the ruling was "blatant judicial activism."

The spokesperson added: "The recent changes to the H-1B visa program, including the increased fee, are intended to address concerns about program integrity and the impact on the U.S. workforce. The policy aims to ensure that employers prioritize hiring U.S. workers, particularly in high-skilled fields. The Trump Administration remains committed to safeguarding opportunities for American workers and maintaining the integrity of employment-based visa programs."

• On Monday, Apple unveiled new software updates to Siri, the camera app, and parental controls.
• The company also tucked in a change to its Password and Safari apps.
• That update could be one of Apple's most practical — if not flashy — AI-powered updates.

Apple's new AI wants to fix your bad passwords.

At its Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, Apple said its Passwords app will soon be able to update eligible weak or compromised passwords.

"Now, you can automatically update eligible accounts to strong passwords with just a tap," Beth Dakin, a senior manager on the engineering team for Apple's browser app, Safari, said during the event.

She said that the system would "agentically take action on your behalf."

Apple already alerts users when a saved password is weak, reused, or may have been exposed in a data breach. The coming feature goes a step further, Apple said, by allowing users to change a compromised password with a single tap on a blue button on the Security page within the Passwords app.

The Passwords app works with Apple's AI, Apple Intelligence, and Safari to navigate websites, sign in, and upgrade passwords.

The password safety tool was among the subtler updates discussed during Apple's keynote on Monday, which also included flashy AI features like a more advanced Siri, enhanced photo editing tools, and improved device search.

Still, Apple's password update is significant because it is built into Safari and Passwords, popular tools pre-loaded onto most Apple products.

Apple isn't the first tech company to offer a password changer. Google said in 2021 that its Chrome browser could help change compromised passwords with a single tap on supported sites. At Google's I/O conference in 2025, Google also previewed a Chrome feature that can automatically change weak or compromised passwords on supported sites with user consent.

Marques Brownlee, the tech reviewer with more than 21 million YouTube followers, called Apple's Passwords app update "super clever" in a video posted on Tuesday.