• I bought a Lafufu, a cheap, counterfeit, somewhat creepy version of the viral Labubu toy.
• People around the world are shelling out money to buy Lafufus — it's becoming a retail phenomenon.
• Lafufu lovers told BI they love the toys for how ugly they are, not in spite of it.

As soon as I ripped open the packaging of my brand-new Lafufu, I giggled.

It was my fault. Instead of buying an authentic Labubu from Chinese toymaker Pop Mart, I caved and bought a Lafufu. The sad, budget fuzzy doll stands in for the real deal — a toy that has taken the world by storm and made millions for its Chinese owner.

The term Lafufu is an affectionate nickname for these counterfeit Labubus and is often used in videos on social media platforms like TikTok.

The most obvious knockoff sign was my Lafufu's lopsided face, which made its creepy smile look extremely unsettling. The next thing I spotted was its missing hands, but upon closer inspection, I saw they had been attached backward.

I compared it to my coworker's real Labubu and noticed that the devil really is in the details. The paint job on the legit Labubu was cleaner. My Lafufu, meanwhile, felt flimsier, and its white fur was coarser. The Lafufu's limbs weren't completely mobile — its feet could not be rotated 360 degrees.

And most unfortunately, my poor Lafufu also appeared to have a receding hairline, while the real Labubu had an ample crown of fur on its head.

I snagged the Lafufu toy for 9.77 Singapore dollars, or about $7.50, on local e-commerce platform Shopee. The real toy of this size from Pop Mart costs SG$24.90.

On Shopee, dozens of listings offer various Lafufus, with prices as low as SG$0.60.

Purchasing it was a two-minute affair, a far cry from waiting in line for hours outside a Pop Mart outlet ahead of product drops. In the UK, Pop Mart has temporarily paused physical sales of the toy because queues were getting out of hand.

Labubu and The Monsters toy line was a lucrative product category for Pop Mart in 2024, with sales totaling 3.04 billion yuan, or about $426 million. Pop Mart's stock is up more than 530% in the last year.

While some people may buy Lafufus as a Labubu replacement, others are going out of their way to secure the fake version.

Joey Khong, a trends manager at London-based market research agency Mintel, said, "Like most fakes, Lafufus reflect a combination of systemic market inequalities and genuine human motivations: the desire to belong, to experience joy, and to participate in the cultural moment."

Juda Kanaprach, the cofounder of Singapore-based market research firm Milieu Insight, told me Lafufu is having its "own little cultural moment."

"Whether it's about humor, aesthetics, or just jumping on a trend, everyone's coming at it from a different angle," Kanaprach said. "And that, to me, makes this whole thing more than just a 'fake toy' moment."

Representatives for Pop Mart did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

A cheaper, funnier alternative to Labubu

Lafufu buyers told me they love the fakes because of how ugly they are, not in spite of it.

Miabella Rivera, a college freshman from San Diego, said she got a Lafufu for $12 because the real ones were "impossible to get."

"My Lafufu came without eyes, so I had to superglue them on, but it still turned out really cute," Rivera said.

Renn Lazzerin, who works at an elementary school in Los Angeles as a behavior analyst, has two Lafufus. The first was an unintentional buy — she was scammed by an online seller claiming the doll was authentic.

But soon after, she bought a second Lafufu knowingly, because of how ugly it was.

"The eyes pop out, it has blush blindness, and the teeth are misprinted," Lazzerin said.

"The fake Labubu offers a different serotonin rush than getting an original. It's like, how ugly can it get?" she added.

Khong, the trends manager, said fakes can often look more eccentric or intriguing than real Labubus.

"While anyone with enough money can buy a 'real Labubu' straight from the store, a rare, well-made fake with a unique outfit or expression might require more taste, effort, or insider knowledge to source," he said.

Austin D'Souza, the managing director of Ozzie Collectables, an Australian collectibles store, said Labubus are made with high-quality materials.

"Authentic Labubus are crafted with care and creativity, and counterfeit versions can detract from the unique experience that collectors seek," he said.

"The packaging of genuine products typically features high-quality printing and branding, whereas counterfeit packaging may appear less polished or have inconsistencies," D'Souza added.

Buying a Lafufu has convinced some people to pick up real Labubus

Despite being obvious fakes, Lafufus may be driving up demand for authentic Labubus.

"Even though they're fake, they keep the brand in people's minds. Everyone's sharing them online, making fun of them, and talking about them, which keeps the attention and interest around the real Labubu going," said Kanaprach, from Milieu Insight.

"Buying a fake Labubu was not good enough for me, so I punched the real one to make me feel better about owning just one," said Kimberly Hernandez, a special education assistant from Los Angeles.

The popularity of counterfeits comes with risks

Kanaprach said Pop Mart needs to stay ahead of the game because too many fakes could flood the market. At some point, well-made fakes may become indistinguishable from the real deal.

"Labubu just needs to keep things special, always come up with new designs, keep it limited, and remind people why the original is still worth it," she said.

Khong said a larger problem for brands like Pop Mart is keeping their core fans engaged and satisfied "while riding the volatility of popularity or trend cycles."

While I see the allure of a Labubu — despite never having purchased one myself — I think I'm satisfied with my SG$9.77 Lafufu.

After a few days of staring at its lopsided grin, its deformities have even become endearing.

• Johan Helberg was asleep at home when a 440-foot-long cargo ship crashed into his backyard.
• The NCL Salten was transporting goods to the Norwegian town of Orkanger when it ran aground.
• The ship's owner said it had run aground twice in 2023 and 2024.

A 440-foot-long cargo ship ran aground beside a house in Byneset, Norway, on Thursday morning, local time.

"If the ship had hit the rocky cliff right next to it, it would have lifted up and hit the house hard. It wasn't many meters off," Johan Helberg, the owner of the house, told local newspaper Nidaros.

Helberg said he was asleep when the ship ran aground and did not know what happened until his neighbor alerted him.

"I thought, who in the world rings the doorbell at 5:45 in the morning? I looked out the window, and he said: 'Haven't you seen the ship?'" Helberg told The New York Times in an interview published Thursday.

There were 16 men aboard the NCL Salten, Helberg said in his interview with the Times. The boat was captained by a Norwegian, and its crew comprises Russians and Ukrainians, Helberg said.

Helberg told the Times that his neighbor, Jostein Jørgensen, was "in shock all day" after seeing the ship plow into their backyard.

Jørgensen told the local media outlet TV 2 that he heard the ship at around 5 a.m. local time.

"When I looked out the window, I saw a boat moving at full speed towards shore," Jørgensen said, adding that he expected the ship to turn course initially.

But the ship only stopped moving when it was about "six to eight meters" from Helberg's house wall, Jørgensen told TV 2.

The NCL Salten was transporting goods to Orkanger, a town in Trondheim, Norway, when the crash occurred, per TV 2's report. The ship is owned by Baltnautic, a Lithuanian shipping company.

Baltnautic CEO Bente Hetland told the Times that "nobody was injured in the grounding." She added that the company does not know "what caused the incident and are awaiting the conclusion of the ongoing investigation."

Hetland told TV 2 that the NCL Salten had run aground twice before, both times in Norway. The ship ran aground in Hadsel in 2023 and in Ålesund in 2024.

Baltnautic did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

The Norwegian Coastal Administration said on Thursday that no injuries or oil spills had been reported. It added that Baltnautic and the salvaging company it hired could not "pull the ship off the ground at high tide" with a tugboat on Thursday evening.

"Geotechnical investigations will be carried out, and the shipping company's salvage company is awaiting the results of these to determine whether special considerations need to be taken when the ship is to be pulled off. We expect the investigations to take some time," the statement continued.

• Tom Cruise does his own stunts, and it's remarkable what he's been able to pull off.
• Hanging from the side of a plane, skydiving, climbing the world's tallest building — he's done it all.
• He also jumped off the roof of the Stade de France to mark the end of the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Tom Cruise has been one of the biggest names in Hollywood since the 1980s, and as his star power grew, so did his ambitions. 

He started to do a lot of his own stunts when appearing in action blockbusters like "Top Gun," "Mission: Impossible," and "Minority Report." Now, stunts have become Cruise's calling card.

His ambitiousness also bled into real life at the 2024 Paris Olympics' closing ceremony when he jumped off the roof of the Stade de France.

Now, the actor has added another stunning aerial sequence to his list of feats, in his latest movie: "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning."

Here are the best stunts of Cruise's career, ranked.

12. For the cargo-plane crash in "The Mummy," Cruise did the stunt inside a NASA plane that trains astronauts for zero gravity.

In 2017's "The Mummy," Cruise finds himself stuck in a cargo plane as it crashes. To pull off a scene like this, actors would typically film it in a controlled setting like a sound stage surrounded by a green screen.

Not Cruise, though.

The star shot the scene in a plane that NASA uses to train astronauts.

The scene was filmed in the plane which had to go up to 25,000 feet to get the look that Cruise was in zero gravity. The plane then did a free fall for 22 seconds.

Cruise did the flight four times to pull off the scene.

11. Cruise flew a helicopter in "Mission: Impossible — Fallout."

For the thrilling helicopter-chase scene in the finale of "Fallout," Cruise spent 16 hours a day training to get to the required 2,000 hours to fly a helicopter on his own.

But Cruise didn't just fly the helicopter. He also pulled off a 360-degree corkscrew dive in it, which would challenge even the most veteran pilot.

10. Cruise is really in an F/A-18 jet for the flight scenes in "Top Gun" Maverick" and had to deal with the G-forces.

When you see Cruise and the cast looking like they are battling G-forces in the jets, complete with distorted faces, it's because they really were.

Cruise and the cast went through training so their dogfight scenes could look as realistic as possible — which meant sitting in the F/A-18 jets as they were spun around and took dramatic dives.

9. Cruise jumped off the Stade de France during the closing ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics.

The 2024 Paris Olympics closing ceremony went big on the Americana to mark Los Angeles hosting the 2028 games, with Cruise pulling off a stunt straight out of a Hollywood blockbuster.

He jumped off the roof of the Stade de France and descended into France's national stadium in front of thousands in a stunt that blurred the lines between himself and the daring characters he's known for playing. 

When Cruise got to the stage, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Olympian gymnast Simone Biles gave him the Olympic flag. After it was attached to a motorbike, the actor drove out of the stadium to start the flag's journey to America. He was later shown jumping out of a plane and turning the Hollywood sign into the Olympic rings. 

They're not the most extreme stunts of Cruise's career, but perfectly captures his showmanship.

8. Cruise climbed a 2,000-foot cliff in "Mission: Impossible 2."

In the opening scene of 2000's "M: I 2," Cruise is seen climbing a cliff. And yes, that's really him.

Cruise scaled the cliff in Utah with nothing but a safety rope. He also did a 15-foot jump from one cliff to another.

7. Cruise held his breath for six minutes for an underwater stunt in "Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation."

In one scene, Cruise's Ethan Hunt has to dive into an underwater safe to retrieve the computer chip that will lead him closer to the villain.

Along with having to hold his breath the whole time, he must keep away from a large crane that's circling around the safe.

For the scene, Cruise first jumped off a 120-foot ledge. Then, in a 20-foot deep-water tank, Cruise held his breath for six minutes.

6. Cruise broke his ankle jumping between buildings while making "Mission: Impossible — Fallout."

Tom Cruise loves to run in his movies; it's become his trademark. But his ability to continue running came into question after a stunt went wrong on the set of "Fallout."

While jumping from one building to another, Cruise hit the wall of the building the wrong way and broke his ankle.

The accident halted production for months and doctors told Cruise his running days might be over. But, six weeks later, Cruise was back on set doing sprints.

5. Cruise climbed the tallest building in the world for "Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol."

The Burj Khalifa in Dubai is the tallest building in the world, and Cruise climbed it.

For "Ghost Protocol," the actor's climb got him up to 1,700 feet in the air.

He also fell four stories down by rappelling on the surface of the building.

4. Cruise did 500 skydives and over 13,000 motocross jumps for the thrilling motorcycle stunt in "Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part 1."

For the latest "M:I" movie, Cruise once again pushed himself.

And one stunt in particular is definitely up there as one of his craziest ideas yet: driving a motorcycle off a cliff.

The star did 500 skydives and over 13,000 motocross jumps to prepare for the stunt. And that wasn't just so Cruise had the skill and comfort to pull off the stunt; the training also made it possible for director Christopher McQuarrie and his crew to map out camera angles to capture it. 

The stunt was then done on the first day of principal photography.

"We know either we will continue with the film or we're not. Let's know day one!" Cruise told "Entertainment Tonight" on why it was done on the first day.

Cruise ended up doing the stunt six times on the day of shooting.

 

3. Cruise hung on the side of a plane as it took off for "Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation."

Cruise clung to the side of a massive Airbus A400M plane as it took off and went up to 1,000 feet dealing with speeds of 100 knots.

To protect the actor, he was secured with a wire attached to the plane. He also had special contacts on to protect his eyes from debris.

Cruise did this stunt eight times.

2. Cruise navigated between two flying planes in "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning."

In the climax of "The Final Reckoning," Hunt holds on to a biplane during takeoff, before eventually punching its pilot, throwing him out of the vehicle, and climbing into another plane being flown by the villain, Gabriel (Esai Morales).

The ambitious nature of the scene is what we've come to expect from Cruise, but seeing him cling on for dear life above the valleys of South Africa is nothing short of astounding.

Yes, he was strapped to the two different vehicles during multiple takes to achieve the sequence, but watching it unfold on the big screen is still breathtaking.

1. Cruise did 106 skydives with a broken ankle to pull off the HALO jump in "Mission: Impossible — Fallout."

While Cruise was healing the broken ankle he sustained earlier in the "Fallout" production, he went and pulled off the most amazing stunt he's done in his career so far.

In the movie, Cruise's character and CIA tagalong August Walker (Henry Cavill) decide to do a HALO jump — a high-altitude, low-open skydive, in which you open your parachute at a low altitude after free-falling for a period of time — out of a giant C-17 plane to get into Paris undetected.

Cruise did this for real by executing the jump 106 times over two weeks, many of them done during golden hour, a very brief period of perfect lighting that occurs just before sunset.

• UBS is using AI to create avatar videos from analysts' notes.
• 36 analysts covering a range of sectors are taking part in the Swiss bank's initiative.
• UBS told Business Insider that clients have been seeking more video options.

Banks are using AI to save their analysts' time while giving clients what they want.

Bank of America uses "Banker Assist" to aggregate information to offer insights unique to each client, while Goldman Sachs has a "GS AI Assistant" that functions as an in-house ChatGPT for staff.

Swiss bank UBS has gone further, using AI to generate avatars of analysts that explain their research to clients, and it's planning to do this more.

The Swiss bank started using AI avatars of some analysts in January. About 36 UBS analysts, or 5% of its total, have volunteered to take part. They cover sectors including technology, consumer goods, and energy.

UBS's use of AI avatars was first reported by The Financial Times.

Using OpenAI and Synthesia tools, a script is generated in a matter of seconds that is then edited by staff.

Scott Solomon, head of global research technology at UBS, told Business Insider that his team started creating videos of analysts a decade ago, but capacity restrictions meant they were capped at about 1,000 annually.

Analysts were writing an average of two notes a week but would only go to the video studio once a quarter, he said.

The new tools are "enabling somebody to use a capability in video that they weren't really able to use before," he said.

It also gives clients another way to digest information and meet their rising demand for video, Solomon said.

He compared an avatar to other parts of an analyst's toolkit. "When an analyst joins UBS, we give them Excel, we give them our authoring platform, we give them a CRM [customer relationship management] tool so they can talk to clients. I want them to have an avatar," he said.

Solomon said the next step would be integrating the technology so that a video can eventually be created when an analyst publishes a note — without the need for editing.

He said he hoped this would become possible by the end of the year.

Even if the process was fully automated, UBS said analysts will still assess a video based on their notes before it is sent to clients.

Solomon said that ideally, the avatars would eventually become part of the onboarding process, so that whenever a note is published, there's a video too.

The next step would be integrating this capability directly into the authoring platform.

"We have the script generator, we have the ability to send the script to generate the avatar, and then we obviously have the ability to deliver the avatar to clients," Solomon said.

"We want to string all that together so that as they're writing the note, they can get the video with it as well. Our goal is absolutely not to do 50,000 videos a year, but clearly there's an opportunity to do more videos than we are today."

• Systems engineer Michael Floyd worked at Lockheed Martin for four years.
• Floyd was the breadwinner for his family, but chose to become a stay-at-home dad.
• He and his wife budgeted for the transition and even built a chicken coop to counter egg prices.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Michael Floyd, a 36-year-old stay-at-home dad from Ithaca, New York. It's been edited for length and clarity.

When my wife was pregnant with our child, I was the main breadwinner for our family. We were deciding between two options: putting our daughter in childcare or me becoming a stay-at-home dad.

My wife's plan has always been to become a full-time professor at a top university, so we knew she wouldn't be staying home with our daughter. On the other hand, I was working as a systems engineer for Lockheed Martin, with a six-figure salary.

I took three months of parental leave, and after that, my decision was clear. I left my six-figure engineering job to care for our child while my wife focused on her career. Here's how we decided and budgeted for the change.

New York state childcare would've cost us $30,000 a year

While I was at Lockheed Martin, my wife was working a postdoctoral position at Cornell University. We were also making additional income from our Airbnb rental and two full-time rental properties.

We did calculations, and in our city in New York state, childcare would cost about $30,000 annually.

But I didn't officially decide to be a stay-at-home dad until I spent time caring for my daughter during my parental leave. I noticed just how much attention she needs. I don't trust that even the best childcare worker could attend to my daughter to the degree that I would want.

Plus, until my daughter is of the age where she can raise her voice and let me know something's wrong, it's really hard for me to allow a stranger to watch her. I'm sure 99% of workers are amazing, but I don't want to take a chance on the 1%.

I enjoyed my job, but I left to take care of our daughter full time

I found my job to be fun because it felt like solving Sudoku puzzles all day, but it required me to sit at my desk for 10-hour shifts.

Since I hurt my back during my 6-year service in the military, long periods of sitting or standing make it flare up. After four years doing my job, the last two of which were remote, I felt isolated, so I knew I had made the right decision to leave.

I don't have any plans to return to work at the moment, but it's not off the table for the future.

Since I was the main breadwinner, we had to budget for me to stay home

We canceled our housekeeper and our CrossFit memberships. We also switched from Verizon to T-Mobile, which saves us over $100 each month, and removed one of our three vehicles from our insurance.

I've cut down on our grocery bill by adjusting my diet to rely on more plant-based sources of protein like lentils rather than expensive meats. We also switched to cloth diapers, which we estimate will save us up to $2,000 by the time she's potty-trained.

I even built a chicken coop in response to egg price inflation. I converted the old shed in our backyard into a chicken coop. We currently have five chickens, but our coop can hold up to 20, and we spend $60 on chicken feed monthly.

Being a stay-at-home parent is demanding, but worth it

The biggest challenge of being a stay-at-home dad has been how emotional my daughter's crying rants can be. You'd think that you could just put her in a crib and leave and let her cry it out, but you can't.

It's constant work, but that doesn't affect me much. What affects me is that when she's crying, there's not always something I can do. It's an emotionally difficult experience. Sometimes, it'll be 6 p.m. and she's tired of me and the bottle, and she just wants to be comforted by her mother. In those moments, she's completely inconsolable.

But the best part about being a stay-at-home parent is seeing all of her firsts. When she started smiling after one month, it made everything worth it. There's a lifetime of firsts coming, and I can't wait to see all of them.

If you left a high-paying job to be a stay-at-home parent and would like to share your story, please email the editor, Manseen Logan, at [email protected].

• Coworker.ai nabbed $13 million in VC funding from Triatomic Capital, Abstract Ventures, and Eniac.
• Founded by former Uber managers, the startup builds a general-purpose AI teammate for the workplace.
• Business Insider got an exclusive look at the pitch deck Coworker used to raise its seed round.

Your newest work colleague might not be joining you at the water cooler or at the team's next happy hour: AI agents are infiltrating the workplace, and one startup building those — aptly named Coworker — just cleared a big funding round to put "AI teammates" to work.

Jeff Huber, managing director at Triatomic Capital, led Coworker's $13 million seed funding round, which was announced on Tuesday. Ramtin Naimi of Abstract Ventures, Mallun Yen of Operator Collective, Tim Young of Eniac Ventures, and Clark Golestani, Ken Hausman, and Jack Greenfield of K2 Access Fund also participated in the raise.

Based in San Francisco, Coworker bills itself as a general-purpose AI teammate that can research, plan, and execute high-level work just like an experienced colleague can. The startup said its technology, which about 25 companies have been beta testing since late 2024, has been used across engineering, product management, sales marketing, and operations functions.

For example, a Coworker can act as an engineering teammate to write code, create and review pull requests, and automate release notes, keeping human developers focused on shipping new features. It can also act as a sales teammate, analyzing sales calls and generating proposals and follow-up emails.

Coworker uses its own products at work, which gives the startup a leg up in shipping new features and developing the technology, said CEO and cofounder Alex Calder. For example, Coworker's agents do work like drafting product requirement documents based on customer feedback, creating tickets, writing code, and turning that code into sales talking points, he said.

"In the last six months, we've seen our internal team going from 'AI is good at giving me information' to 'AI is good at using that information to do work for me'," Calder told Business Insider. "That's only possible when you give AI really rich context on your company, your goals, and how you do work."

Calder and his cofounder, Coworker chief product officer Bradford Church, are former Uber managers who led the transportation company's shared rides team.

AI agents are generating strong interest from VCs, and there's high demand, especially for agents that take over rote workplace tasks and free up human employees to focus on more creative and high-impact work. In May, ThriveAI, which builds AI agents that act as junior software engineers, announced a $1.2 million pre-seed round, and AI coding agent startup StackAI announced it landed $16 million.

Another general-purpose AI workplace agent, Artisan, announced in April it raised $25 million.

Calder acknowledged that the AI agent market is getting crowded. When it came to getting VCs excited, focusing on customers helped Coworker close the round, he said.

"There are so many jaw-dropping AI demos these days that VCs are totally desensitized to them," he said. "What they really care about is how customers are actually using the product and whether it can solve real problems at scale. I think what worked in our favor is that we were able to show the real impact Coworker is having inside large companies during our fundraise."

Coworker previously raised $3.5 million in pre-seed funding from Soma Capital, Focal VC, Mischief, and Karman Ventures.

Check out the 14-slide presentation Coworker used to raise $13 million in seed funding.

• Google announced 100 updates at I/O, aiming to dominate the AI landscape.
• Google's AI model Gemini will integrate into Chrome, challenging OpenAI's ChatGPT.
• Google's strategy shows ambition but risks a lack of focus amid competition from OpenAI.

Google made literally 100 announcements at I/O this week, a clear sign that the tech giant intends to dominate every aspect of AI, from its overhaul of Search to its latest AI models and wearables tech.

The event was packed and, at times, felt electrifying. Google showed impressive stats about how its AI has taken off. It had plenty of far-out goals, too, like building a universal AI assistant and extended reality glasses that give directions in real time.

I/O also showcased Google's vulnerabilities. Some releases clearly overlapped, while arch-rival OpenAI upstaged Google on Wednesday with a big announcement of its own.

With the conference now over, here are six main takeaways.

Google wants a 'total overhaul' of Search

The biggest change touted at I/O was AI Mode — what CEO Sundar Pichai called a "total overhaul" of Google's most iconic feature. In AI Mode, users will have a far more conversational Search experience, asking Google questions directly about what they're looking for.

That's a marked change from the traditional experience of going through a long list of links to find the right answer, which feels more clunky than ever in an age of AI chatbots.

At the same time, AI features like these could cannibalize Google Search and threaten the tech giant's main cash cow, Google Ads. Google risks not figuring out how to heavily monetize these AI tools. That being said, it's already testing ads in AI Mode.

Gemini everywhere

Google's AI model family, Gemini, took center stage at I/O. Google announced that it will integrate Gemini into Chrome, allowing users to chat with its latest AI models while they browse. (The feature rolls out to subscribers this summer.) It's a shot across the bow to OpenAI's ChatGPT, which already has a popular Chrome extension.

I/O also announced an array of updates to its Gemini app, which recently passed 400 million monthly active users — an impressive figure, though still behind ChatGPT. With an update called Personal Context, Gemini app users can get tailored responses based on personal data from Google services, like asking its AI to find a long-lost email.

It's all part of a long-term plan to build a universal AI assistant: what Google calls Project Astra. While it's still unfinished, that plan feels more fleshed out now than when Business Insider tested Astra a year ago.

Soaring AI traction

New AI features are undeniably cool, though Google's AI traction garnered some of the biggest reactions at Pichai's keynote speech on Tuesday.

Onstage, Pichai boasted that the number of tokens generated by Google across all its platforms a month had exploded 50 times to over 480 trillion since last year.

The crowd gasped—it was a big moment. Last year's I/O felt like a giant teaser for coming AI features, with plenty of promise but little to show for it. This year felt different.

Sergey Brin goes founder mode

There was no greater manifestation of Google tripling down on AI than cofounder Sergey Brin crashing a fireside chat with DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis. That was after Brin wandered around a pavilion trying on a pair of Google's XR glasses.

At the chat, Brin said he goes into the office "pretty much every day now" to work on AI. He also said that retired computer scientists should get back to work to take advantage of the current environment.

Brin has been back at Google since 2023 as the search giant races against AI rivals, and it's obvious he's in "founder mode" — something quite rare at a mature company.

Google's smart glasses are here — sort of

Google let BI briefly try on its prototype Android XR glasses, which have Gemini's AI features and allow users to ask questions. While the tech shows promise, it's still early days. Google staffers asked the throngs of I/O attendees lining up for demos not to ask about price, availability, or battery life.

"We just don't know!" they said.

The prototype glasses feel impressively lightweight — almost too much so, to the point that they felt like they might fall off our faces. The display sits only on the right lens and is practically invisible unless viewed at just the right angle under the right light. It's full-color, but it's small and subtle enough that you might miss the display entirely.

We weren't allowed to view Google Maps or Photos in the glasses like Google showed off in its keynote. Instead, we put on the glasses and walked around a room filled with artwork on the walls and travel catalogs on a table that we could ask Gemini questions about.

While Gemini correctly identified the artwork, it couldn't answer a basic travel query when we looked at the travel catalogs: "What is the cheapest flight to New York next month?" And because the display is only on one side, focusing on it made us feel a bit cross-eyed.

The version we saw isn't the final design. It's missing the coming Warby Parker and Gentle Monster flair, though we did see glimmers of something promising here.

Throwing everything against the wall may or may not work

Google's announcements are undeniably impressive, though some of them felt repetitive. It's hard to understand the difference between Search Live and Gemini Live, for example. Both of them involve chatting with your phone about what it sees through its camera.

Google's strategy of launching literally 100 different things at once could work for the company. It could also signal a lack of focus.

BI was at an I/O panel when the news broke that OpenAI was buying former Apple design chief Jony Ive's hardware startup. Seeing OpenAI upstage Google like that felt a little ominous.

The Google panel BI attended was quite dry and technical, with terms like AI-powered "tool calling" mentioned several times. The contrast with OpenAI's buzzy announcement couldn't be clearer. We even saw several attendees check their phones when the news came out.

Google does have massive advantages in scale and distribution, thanks to Android and Chrome.

Still, it's possible that in the long term, something like an AI-native device that ditches Google's ecosystem altogether eventually takes over.

Investors got a taste of that risk last month, when the stock of Google's parent company, Alphabet, briefly tanked after Apple senior vice president Eddy Cue said search volume was shrinking due to AI.

• Two Anthropic researchers talked about how to embrace AI to build a successful career.
• Think about what you're doing and how AI can make it better, one researcher said.
• AI is reshaping job markets, affecting sectors like software engineering and consulting.

The secret to building a career in a world where AI is the main character: Lean into it, say two Anthropic researchers.

In an episode of the "Dwarkesh Podcast" released on Thursday, a pair of the researchers behind Claude — Sholto Douglas and Trenton Bricken — shared three strategies for early careers. They suggested thinking big picture, being lazy, and not letting a previous job stop you from working with AI.

Douglas, who works on reinforcement learning, said everyone should imagine what they want to do, now that AI can help.

"If you had 10 engineers at your beck and call, what would you do?" Douglas said. He added, "What problems, and domains suddenly become tractable? That's the world you want to prepare for."

He suggested that people gain technical depth by studying biology, physics, and computer science and that they think hard about what challenges they want to solve.

Bricken, who researches mechanistic interpretability at the AI company, said college students and young professionals should "be lazier" and outsource more to AI.

"You need to critically think about the things you're currently doing, and what an AI could actually be better at doing, and then go and try it," Bricken said.

The researchers' third piece of advice was about not letting "sunk costs" get in the way. Sunk costs are a concept in which people continue to invest more time and resources because so much has already been spent.

"Whatever kind of specialization that you've done, maybe just doesn't matter that much," Bricken said. "My colleagues at Anthropic are excited about AI. They just don't let their previous career be a blocker."

"It's not as if they were in AI forever," he added.

People across industries are talking about how to AI-proof their careers as AI chatbots and agents become more powerful and capable. The technology is displacing jobs in sectors like software engineering, content creation, and consulting.

Top tech leaders have said all professionals need to think about how AI can improve their workflows.

Last month, Uber's CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, said people must stop perceiving AI as a "tech thing" and see it as a tool for everyone.

"Within Uber, we're a highly technical company — 30,000 employees — and not enough of my employees know how to use AI constructively," Khosrowshahi said, adding that the company is working to change that.

Nvidia's CEO, Jensen Huang, has repeatedly touted the use of AI agents in companies, saying that they will not only change every job but will also secure employment instead of hurting it.

"AIs will recruit other AIs to solve problems. AIs will be in Slack channels with each other, and with humans," Huang said late last year. "So we'll just be one large employee base if you will — some of them are digital and AI, and some of them are biological."

This past summer, I experienced a modern-day miracle: I matched on Hinge with an attractive guy, with an interesting job and hobbies, and he messaged me. He asked me on a date, planned it, and showed up (and was actually over 6 feet tall, as advertised). He asked me on a second date the next day, then a third. All seemed to be going well in a dating world defined by ghosting and low-effort meetups.

That all changed when I saw his apartment. A futon was scattered on the floor in pieces. He quickly assembled the body, but it had no legs (I didn't get a clear explanation as to what had happened to them). In lieu of a TV, a laptop was perched precariously near the futon shambles. A naked light bulb hung from the ceiling, giving the space an interrogation-room vibe. Most concerning was a plaid shirt, disembodied into three pieces and strung across a window as a makeshift curtain, a horror my best friend later named The Shirtain™.

I spent the two days after moping around my curtained and couched apartment, thinking about what could have been but knowing that I was not willing to become an unpaid interior decorator for a man in his mid-30s. It was another disappointment in a string of bad dating luck. An ex-boyfriend who refused to keep his apartment clean told me "I just saw you as a whole person for the first time" only after we broke up. An attractive, highly educated, highly paid consultant ghosted me twice, telling me between the first and second offense that A) the 40-minute subway ride between us was too long and B) he had experienced a recent glow-up and was feeling overwhelmed by the amount of attention he was receiving from women.

Maybe it wasn't just bad luck. At happy hours, on TikTok, at sociology conferences, and in the board rooms of dating app companies, it's a common refrain among women, and there's data to show it: The average man is not keeping pace with the average woman. In 1995, one-quarter of both young men and young women held bachelor's degrees, an analysis of population data by the Pew Research Center found. The analysis also found that by 2024, 47% of women ages 25 to 34 had one, compared with 37% of men. Single women own 2.7 million more homes in America than single men, a Lending Tree analysis of US Census Bureau data found. Even if a man and a woman match up on paper, the social divides and expectations between them can make partnership feel uneven. In couples where both the man and the woman work, women still do the bulk of domestic labor and childcare. Women are more likely than men to seek out mental health treatment and less likely than men to die of a drug overdose, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Women are also more likely to have close friends with whom they talk about personal topics like their work, families, and health than men, a 2023 Pew Research Center survey found.

If dating is a numbers game, the math isn't adding up.

There's been much talk of a "male loneliness epidemic" — the idea that men are becoming increasingly isolated and lonely, particularly as marriage rates fall to record lows. There's reason to question whether men really are lonelier, as a recent Pew Research Center survey found that men and women reported similar rates of loneliness but that women were more likely to turn to their family, friends, or mental health professionals for emotional support. Still, vibe shifts are leading some young men to turn toward a growing number of content creators in the misogynist manosphere online. In a 2023 Survey Center on American Life survey, almost half of young men said they faced discrimination. Young men are becoming more conservative as young women become more liberal. All this mismatch is frustrating the remaining single ladies who are looking around and deciding not to settle.

But as many women are ready to throw their phones out and swear off dating, a winner of the male loneliness epidemic is emerging: men. In today's dating world, men who are 1) employed and 2) meet baseline social skills seem to be cleaning up, having their pick of attractive, successful, and smart women to sort through. Niko Emanuilidis, a dating coach and TikToker who goes under the name The Daddy Academy, tells me that while many men have turned inward and isolated themselves amid criticism of men and masculinity, those "who are comfortable in social situations" and confident "basically have skyrocketed ahead of all the rest."

Among these men embodying what Emanuilidis calls the "winner effect" is Jason, a 34-year-old who works in management consulting and asked me not to publish his last name. He tells me wants to meet a "nice Jewish girl" and settle down, but in the meantime, there are other "brilliant, smart, funny, often attractive women" he casually sees amid his search for a long-term relationship. He's learned to communicate what he's looking for in both serious and casual dating situations. Jason says he's casually seeing two to three women and had to postpone a call we scheduled to chat for this story last weekend because, as he texted me, he unexpectedly had a woman sleep over and was taking her to get breakfast.

It's rough out there, but some nice guys with jobs are suddenly drowning in women.

There has always been a set of Most Eligible Bachelors, but the qualifications for a husband have changed. Where men were deemed marriage material for their income, and women for domestic labor and child rearing, shifts in gender roles are "creating a situation in which there is this disconnect, and you have a marriageable pool that isn't on an equal footing among men and women," says Jess Carbino, a former in-house sociologist for Bumble and Tinder.

The heterosexual women I spoke with for this story all want basically the same general thing: a man who is smart, kind, and emotionally intelligent, and has friends and hobbies — plus a spark. Haleigh, a 33-year-old who works in marketing, tells me she's looking for a man who's employed, kind, and independent. But those three requirements increasingly feel like a Venn diagram that's hard to connect: "You always have to pick two of the three; you can't have it all."

Jana K. Hoffman, a 39-year-old writer, feels the pool of men who meet her preferences is small, particularly because she does not want kids. But in the past few years, she clicked with two guys who checked her boxes — until both courtships fell apart unexpectedly and suddenly, she says. The first was a man who told her he realized he actually didn't want "a woman with her shit together." The second, after about a month of dating, decided their different cuddling preferences were a dealbreaker. "They're choosing these very strange things to pick at," Hoffman tells me. It's been sad and discouraging, but she says the bigger problem comes not from realizing these individual relationships weren't going to pan out but from realizing it's a pattern that makes her feel reluctant to be vulnerable again. "I used to be upset over the guy," she says. "Now I just feel upset over the fact that it happens."

The mismatch problem plays out on the dating apps — even though most have more male than female users. Women are more likely to report finding not enough "high-quality" matches and getting way too many likes from men they aren't interested in, says Chandler Willison, a research analyst at the research and analytics firm M Science. Many men, conversely, report that they get lost in the crowd and have few to no matches. "The demand for these high-value, highly educated men in the dating marketplace outstrips the supply, and so you're inevitably going to end up with women who are not going to be able to be in a relationship with these men," Willison says. "There's inevitably going to be that sort of mismatch between the men's qualifications and the women's desires at large."

Meanwhile, the men I spoke with for this story are going on lots of dates that start on the apps. Mo, a 43-year-old who works in tech and is looking for a serious relationship, has his dating app strategy solidified: He reopens his Hinge account for about two to three weeks and then works through the matches he has. He shifted his strategy after continuously swiping when he was in his mid-30s and found that he passed up getting serious with some great women because he was wondering: "What if there's somebody better than who I just met now?" Since opening up Hinge in the past month after getting out of a relationship, Mo says he has been on nine first dates and a handful of second dates, and already has one woman he is particularly interested in pursuing — maybe Hinge really is "designed to be deleted" for some of these top-tier men. "The whole point of a date is to have fun," he tells me — even if it's not a perfect match, he usually meets an interesting woman. "I don't think I've ever not enjoyed any dates that I've been on."

Some of the women I spoke with say they had fun dating in their 20s but now feel mostly frustrated by the apps. There's a crop of smaller alternatives to the likes of Hinge and Tinder that are trying to fix that, but they still run into vast differences in how men and women want to date. On Fourplay, an app that allows friends to date in pairs, 85% of users are women, say Fourplay's cofounders, Danielle Dietzek and Julie Griggs. They also tell me that men who started to sign up but never added a friend often said they didn't have a single guy friend who they felt comfortable seeing them in a dating environment — and they worried about how their friend would act on a date.

Some women also feel like there's confusion between men and women about expectations. Emily Azrael, a comedian and writer in Brooklyn, tells me that she once dated a man who offered to make her breakfast, but asked for her credit card to buy butter — since she would be the one keeping the leftover sticks. Azrael says it can feel like she's not on the same page as men on dating roles, like who plans a first date. More communication, she hopes, could turn the problem around. "Let's talk to each other and close the gap so we can speak the same language," she says.

Most of the public conversations about the gap between men and women in dating are playing out on social media, where a misandrist slant isn't helping. If you scroll through TikTok, it's easy to find women who say they hate men and who call men trash. There are dating coaches who give black and white advice, telling women to pull back and manipulate men into chasing them. They give broad, evergreen descriptions of attachment styles that help jaded daters pathologize former matches, blurring the line between who's a sadist and who just wasn't that interested in them. People are more concerned about "engagement on their content than they are about the effect that content will have on the greater society," Griggs says. "When you put out content that is hating on men," she says, "it's not helping the cause.

Emanuilidis of The Daddy Academy thinks there aren't as many manipulative, toxic guys as social media would lead one to believe — the ones who play games have dated so many women that they have an outsize place in the conversation. But he worries about videos and posts that trash-talk men. "There's this group of men who, their winner effect is already low, and then now take all that negativity on top of it," he says. They have a "victim mindset" and turn inward, he says, adding: "There needs to be more male role models online that are speaking to the types of men." Scott Galloway, whose recent book, "Notes on Being a Man," focuses on modern masculinity issues, has a similar solution: "We don't need the S&P and the Dow to hit more highs; we need more men who have the relationships and the strength and the will to go have those conversations with other young men," he said on a recent podcast.

For the men I spoke with, dating has gotten more fun, in part because they've learned to be candid and decisive. In his 20s, Jason tells me he would casually date and hook up with women and not communicate his intentions well. It led to drama in his friend group when he hurt acquaintances' feelings, and he tells me dating is better now that he sees women he actually likes to hang out with, even if it's just casually. Now he lays out what he's looking for early on, whether it's a serious partnership or something casual. He says he's baffled by the lack of respect other men have for women. "It's a fairly basic thing: If you treat someone with respect, they're going to give you respect," he says. "It just naturally goes positive places from there."

His advice for guys who want to rise up in the dating pool is simple: "Be better, men. Get her a bagel in the morning and hang out with her."

Amanda Hoover is a senior correspondent at Business Insider covering the tech industry. She writes about the biggest tech companies and trends.

• Women-owned startups made up 49% of new businesses in 2024, up from 29% in 2019, per a new report.
• Women of color, especially AAPI and Black women, are driving this entrepreneurial growth.
• However, women were 75% less likely than men to receive equity financing for their startups.

Younger women and women of color are starting more small businesses than men.

Women-owned startups made up 49% of all new businesses in 2024, up from 29% in 2019 and the highest share recorded in the past six years, per a new report from Gusto. The HR and payroll platform surveyed its users and also found that AAPI, Black, and young women were driving this trend.

Despite the risks and barriers that women face in starting their own businesses, many are choosing entrepreneurship because of the independence and autonomy it can offer, said Nich Tremper, senior economist at Gusto.

"It's seeing a shift from this necessity entrepreneurship to this opportunity entrepreneurship," said Tremper, referencing a change he saw in 2022. "So we've seen women go from saying, 'I need to start a business to make ends meet, to take care of my kids,' to, 'I want to start a business because of the benefits that it provides.'"

Even with the growth of women-owned businesses, barriers still exist for women seeking investments to start or scale their startups. As a result, many rely on financing from their personal networks and debt to launch their enterprises.

Women of color are driving entrepreneurship

Tremper said the growth of new businesses is driven by women of color who are seeking more independence and ownership of their work.

Fifty-four percent of all new AAPI- and Black-owned businesses were started by women, compared to 46% that were started by their male colleagues, per Gusto.

Social justice movements like Black Lives Matter and Stop AAPI Hate bolstered support for businesses owned by women of color, per a report published earlier this year by Wells Fargo. Tremper added that Black and AAPI women-owned businesses gained more momentum during the pandemic.

Meanwhile, Hispanic women made up 43% of new business owners compared to 56% of Hispanic men. Gusto reported that the disparity was because women-owned businesses are focused on the community and personal services sectors, while almost half of all Hispanic-owned businesses are concentrated in goods production like home remodeling or construction. Men started nearly 70% of businesses in that sector.

Younger generations of women are also reaching gender parity: More than half of the businesses created by millennials and Gen Zers were women-owned. On the other end of the spectrum, male baby boomers made up 64% of new business owners compared to 36% of boomer women.

Although it's typical for people to launch businesses in their mid- to late 30s and early 40s — after they've developed an expertise in a particular field — that trend has been changing, Tremper said.

"As women are increasingly a large share of the labor market over the last several years, millennial and Gen Z women are really starting businesses at higher levels," Tremper added.

The equity gap in business financing

Women-owned businesses earn a higher return at $0.78 for every dollar invested compared to men's $0.31, Tremper said. Additionally, women-owned businesses have seen faster revenue and employment growth in the past five years compared to businesses started by men, per Wells Fargo.

However, Tremper said there's a persistent gender gap between equity financing for women and men.

"The women who do receive this equity financing really outperform men, but they're still getting it at a lower rate," Tremper said. Women who apply for private investments are 75% less likely to receive equity funding than their male peers, per Gusto.

Gusto's research found that women largely relied on their social networks and accruing personal debt to finance their new businesses. It was more common for women to also secure private loans through collateral in their homes or vehicles, which can expose them to more financial risks.

That means that the stakes can be higher for women-owned businesses—if the founders fail, their personal finances could take a hit.

Despite these challenges and barriers, women-owned businesses are resilient and continuing to find success in the market, Tremper said.

"We're seeing these women-owned businesses coming into the economy and sticking around," he added. "They're keeping their course, they're active players in the economy."

Do you have a story to share about taking on personal debt to start your own business? Contact this reporter at [email protected].

• Business Insider has been covering stories of federal workers fired by the White House DOGE office.
• Some readers told BI they had limited sympathy.
• They said their private sector careers hadn't guaranteed job security or retirement.

In April, I wrote about a federal worker who was five months shy of eligibility for a full pension of $6,000 a month when she was fired in the DOGE cuts.

I received nearly 100 emails from readers, and almost all expressed how little sympathy they felt.

"Welcome to the real world," several said.

"Go get a job and work till you're dead like the rest of us," another wrote.

"National Steel went bankrupt. US Steel bought them for nothing. Thousands lost what was promised to us," another said.

Of course, not everyone feels this way. I tend to get more emails from people with negative responses to stories than from those who aren't bothered. But I was curious to learn more, so I spoke with six of the people who were critical of the federal worker.

They were over 60 and lived in California, Nevada, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. Four were retired, and most lived on fixed incomes much lower than the pension the subject of my story would have received. They all said they didn't want their tax dollars to pay for high salaries and generous benefits for certain government employees when private sector workers aren't afforded the same rewards. They also questioned whether some government jobs were needed at all. All but one voted for now-President Donald Trump in this past election.

While news of federal firings has slowed down, DOGE's purging of the government workforce is not over. The cuts happening now are more permanent and methodical, and the Trump administration is planning to reclassify some workers to make them easier to fire. The six people I spoke with said what DOGE is doing to the federal workforce is par for the course in the private sector. Several had lost their pensions because their employers went bankrupt or stopped paying into them and switched to the less-generous 401(k) model.

Leslie Swor, 70, retired seven years ago after a career in the Coast Guard, an independent securities regulator now known as FINRA, and then Oracle. To supplement her income, Swor works a contract job as a school crossing guard in East Los Angeles, California. She told me public sector workers shouldn't expect to have a "hefty" pension for life. After all, private sector workers don't take that as a given.

Swor said she had "fabulous benefits and annual raises and bonuses" early in her career in the private sector. In 2007, when she became an administrative assistant at Oracle, those benefits were no longer the norm.

"Life for us out here in the private sector, in my experience, seemed to get much worse," Swor said.

They think federal salaries and benefits are overly generous compared with the private sector

The readers I spoke with were surprised that the subject of my story, Katherine Ann Reniers, was making so much money in a government job, in addition to generous benefits, and said the private sector had not been as cushy.

Reniers, a fired US Agency for International Development worker, earned a base salary of $177,000. In addition to a pension, she and other federal workers have the Thrift Savings Plan, which is similar to a 401(k). In that plan, the government matches a small percentage of an employee's contributions. Reniers would have qualified for federal health insurance for life if she had hit two decades of service.

Nearly 20 years ago, Reniers took a pay cut to leave the private sector, dropping from $150,000 to $54,000 in annual pay to get on a path that she saw as stabler for her family in the long run. At first, she moved every two to four years, sometimes to countries that had high rates of violent crime and lacked decent healthcare. In 2010, she was pregnant when she was assigned to Haiti after a devastating earthquake. Reniers, now 53, rose through the ranks to become a USAID division chief and lives in Maryland.

Swor said her perception of federal employees was that they traded higher private sector salaries for more stability and better benefits. That's largely true for federal workers with a bachelor's degree or above. A Congressional Budget Office analysis of fiscal 2022 data found that federal workers who graduated from college had lower salaries but better benefits — including health insurance, retirement, and paid leave — than their counterparts in the private sector. Public sector jobs also tend to be held by white-collar, highly educated professionals. Reniers, for example, has a master's degree, speaks four languages, and has a lot of work experience in Africa and Europe.

For workers with only a high school education, the federal government, on average, offers better pay and benefits than the private sector.

Mike Knouse, a 62-year-old landscaper from Maryland, was also frustrated by what he viewed as generous public sector compensation. He's worked for 40 years at private companies but said he never had a pension or more than two weeks of paid vacation. His current employer doesn't offer a 401(k).

Salaries and benefits for 2 million federal employees, including military and civilian personnel, accounted for about 4.3% of the nation's $6.8 trillion in annual spending in fiscal 2024. According to the CBO, social safety net programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, nutrition assistance, and benefits for veterans and military personnel account for more than 50% of the US budget.

If DOGE does find savings, Knouse would like to see lower taxes, better healthcare for retirees, and more Social Security.

"I'm hoping that he could also cut the pay scale for federal employees, or any future hiring by the federal government, because it's got to balance out," Knouse said, referring to Trump and the DOGE office's cuts.

Some questioned whether tax money should pay for pensions

In general, full-time federal workers can start receiving their full pension once they hit the minimum retirement age of 62. Those who've worked two decades or more for the federal government can retire earlier. Foreign service officers at USAID and the State Department — as well as law enforcement officers, firefighters, and air traffic controllers — can retire after 20 years and qualify for larger pension payouts after hitting that anniversary.

I asked the people I interviewed how they viewed federal pensions and whether they wished the private sector still offered them. These "defined benefit plans," which guarantee a certain payout, have become less common in the private sector as employers have adopted more "defined contribution plans" like 401(k)s or employee stock ownership, which offer varying payouts based on the market.

Swor, for her part, was OK with pensions being eliminated in both sectors.

"I think people might be waking up that this is our money," Swor said of federal pensions. "Why not just receive Social Security?"

Richard Myers, a 67-year-old retired commercial real estate developer in Nevada, felt conflicted about the federal pension system. On one hand, he understood that the government has to provide good benefits to attract talent. But it seemed overly cushy to him that certain workers could retire with a full pension — maybe even at 45 if they entered the government young enough — and go on to have another career.

Ultimately, he said he understood a pension like this for military or law enforcement officers, as well as someone like Reniers, who had to move around a lot overseas at the government's request.

"After 20 years, you've probably paid your dues," Myers said. "But someone with a desk job in Washington, DC?"

He said he joked with his friends that there would be a revolution in the US — not rich versus poor but public sector versus private sector, because workers in the latter category arriving at retirement age will be asking, "How do they have all this extra money?"

They asked whether the US needs all the current government jobs

While most people I spoke with didn't completely agree with the way the Elon Musk-linked DOGE office was implementing the cuts, the pursuit of finding and eliminating government waste appealed to them. So did Trump's "America First" mantra, which partly explained their skepticism of USAID.

Cynthia Bean, a 64-year-old from Indiana, said she had never heard of the agency and didn't understand why "billions of our tax dollars are being funneled through it to nonprofits in other countries."

Bean, who owned a real estate title business for 20 years, said she voted for Trump because he talked about running the US government like a business.

She said she didn't have a problem helping other countries prevent and treat HIV/AIDS or other diseases. People also need water and power, she added. Some 83% of USAID programs, including those that invested in disease prevention and clean water, have been cut by the Trump administration.

Joyce Weaver, an 80-year-old senior home care aide in Pennsylvania and a Democrat who voted for then-Vice President Kamala Harris, said the government may be overspending on millions of federal employees.

"What Trump is doing needs to be done but not with so much pain for so many and so much danger for the whole country," Weaver said.

Trump's criticism of federal workers, including calling them "crooked" and "dishonest," and Musk's suggestion that some government roles are "fake jobs" resonated with several of the people I interviewed.

"We do need government jobs, and I don't care what anyone says, they do deserve a pension," Paul Alto, 61, who lives in Cleveland, said. "But I think there are a lot of jobs that were made up."

As for Reniers, she recognized she's more privileged than most but said that's not all due to government pay and benefits. She has homes in Maryland and Belgium because of her inheritance. To address that inequality, she said, Americans should support taxing the rich.

"Why aren't Americans fighting for pensions at their own companies, as opposed to saying federal workers like me shouldn't get a pension?" Reniers said. "In America, so many people are working so hard for low wages. I get there's a discrepancy between them and the wealthy. So I'm like, let's tax the rich."

• Blue Origin announced new crewmembers for its next space mission, NS-32.
• It will be the first mission since its April mission, which sent Katy Perry and Lauren Sánchez into space.
• This crew includes business figures, entrepreneurs, and space enthusiasts.

Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin has announced the crew for its next space mission, which includes business leaders, space enthusiasts, and entrepreneurs.

It's a very different lineup from the crew on the previous mission, which included Katy Perry and Lauren Sánchez.

This is who is going on Blue Origin's 32nd flight for an 11-minute journey into space. The launch date is yet to be announced.

Mark Rocket

Mark Rocket is an entrepreneur and the CEO of Kea Aerospace, a company that sends remotely piloted aircraft into the stratosphere to collect aerial imagery and data.

In 2007, he was a seed investor of Rocket Lab — an aerospace manufacturer and launch service provider — where he served as a co-director up until 2011, per his personal website.

The company also sends high-altitude balloons to test communications, thermal modeling, and navigation.

Rocket changed his surname to match his passion, per 1News. The trip will make him the first New Zealander in space.

Jesse Williams

Jesse Williams, a Canadian entrepreneur, is the CEO of Car History Group — a company that provides public information about vehicles to prospective buyers.

He claims on his LinkedIn profile to have launched his first business at the age of 15 and that his other ventures include eDirect, WuYi Tea, Dazzle White, and Penguin Leads.

Paul Jeris

Paul Jeris, whose father was a NASA engineer, is a real estate businessman, entrepreneur, and world traveler who has visited more than 149 countries, per Blue Origin.

In an interview after the news, he told Fox 8 News that he was "so excited" when he received the call.

He said he was inspired from a young age as he watched historic launches such as Apollo and Viking.

Amette Medina Jorge

Amette Medina Jorge, a STEM teacher at Odyssey Academy in Galveston, Texas, has led more than 60 experiments focusing on space and zero gravity and performed in-flight 3D printing as part of a parabolic Zero-G flight.

In 2013, she received the AIAA and Challenger Center Trailblazing STEM Educator Award, which celebrates those who inspire the next generation of STEM innovators.

Jamie Alemán

Jamie Alemán is a Panamanian attorney and a senior partner at the law firm Alemán, Cordero, Galindo & Lee, which he set up.

He was Panama's ambassador to the US from 2009 to 2011 and was also the country's minister of government and justice in 1988.

Blue Origin said he would be the first person to go to space who has visited all 193 countries recognized by the United Nations, as well as the North and South Poles.

Gretchen Green

Gretchen Green is a radiologist who also serves on the US Space and Rocket Center Education Foundation Board. The Rocket Center cites Gretchen as a four-time Space Camp program alumna.

She set up her company, The Expert Resource, which connects medical expert witnesses with attorneys.

She was one of the first teenagers to bicycle across the US from East to West, per her company's website.

• Shreya Mishra Reddy is on the cusp of finishing Harvard Business School's Program for Leadership Development.
• But Trump's decision to block Harvard from enrolling foreign students has thrown her plans into disarray.
• She said she has not heard from the university on the matter.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Shreya Mishra Reddy, a 33-year-old Visa technical program manager completing Harvard Business School's Program for Leadership Development. It has been edited for length and clarity. BI has verified her enrollment in the program.

I'm an international student at Harvard Business School's Program for Leadership Development, and I'm reeling from the news of the Trump administration blocking Harvard from enrolling foreign students.

I moved to the US from India in 2021 to do my master's at Duke University, and then got my dream job at Visa in Austin.

After I started working at Visa, I came across this program at Harvard, which is an alternative to their executive MBA. I applied to that program, and I absolutely did not think that I would get accepted, but I did. It was one of the best moments of my life.

When I told my parents, they were so excited. I went from being a first-generation immigrant in the US to being accepted to one of the best schools in the world.

The news of the enrollment ban left me numb

I took out a loan to fund the $50,000 tuition fee, and now I'm on the verge of completing the course. I just have one module left, from May to July.

I was at home in the middle of a meeting when I saw the news pop up on my phone that Harvard had been banned from accepting international students.

I went numb for a minute because I knew my module was supposed to start in a few days, and I was supposed to travel to Boston in July. My tickets are all booked.

When I read the news, the first thing I did was text my father back in India, saying that I don't know if I'm going to be able to graduate from Harvard. I don't know if I will be allowed back on campus or able to travel to Boston at all, and I'm really worried.

I've emailed the university to ask what was happening and if they had an update for us, but I haven't heard back yet.

I hope to hear back soon because the program starts in just a few days.

The future looks uncertain

I was excited to start classes again, meet all the professors back on campus, and see my batchmates again.

Harvard's program was one of the best experiences I've had so far. The professors were extremely invested in our growth, and the candidates in my program held C-suite positions in Big Tech companies. The class discussions were excellent.

With this news, I don't plan to enroll in another school for the executive program.

Getting into Harvard was not just about a degree; it was about studying in one of my dream schools. It does not make sense for me to try to pursue the same kind of degree from any other school or country.

I'm now on an optional practical training (OPT) visa that expires in January, and I've not had any luck getting picked for an H-1B visa. So, I'm planning to leave the country in January.

But I don't know where I'll go or what I'll do. It's all up in the air now.

• Executives looking to take on the top job will face two changes to their work, says Jamie Dimon.
• Dimon, 69, has been serving as JPMorgan's CEO since 2006.
• Dimon said CEOs have "nobody to complain to" and must own their decisions.

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon says executives who decide to take on the CEO job can expect two changes to their work.

"The first one is there is nobody to complain to," Dimon told The Economist in an interview published Thursday.

The second thing is that a CEO has to take ownership of their decisions, instead of deferring to their superior, Dimon continued.

"There is no tacit approval. It is your decision. It's just different. Heavy is the head that wears the crown," Dimon said.

Dimon, 69, has been serving as JPMorgan's CEO since 2006. After graduating from Harvard Business School with his MBA in 1982, Dimon turned down offers from Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to join his mentor, Sandy Weill, at American Express.

Dimon left American Express with Weill in 1985. The pair would go on to take over Commercial Credit, a consumer finance company that became Citigroup after a series of mergers and acquisitions.

Dimon left Citigroup in 1998 and became the CEO of Bank One in 2000. He was named president and COO of JPMorgan after it merged with Bank One in 2004.

Dimon was asked about his succession plans on Monday at JPMorgan's annual investor day event. At last year's investor day, he'd joked that his retirement plan was "not five years anymore."

"We have built a very deep bench," Dimon said on Monday, adding that the board is "thinking about succession" — but didn't give names.

"If I'm here for four more years and maybe two more or three, executive chair or chairman, that's a long time," Dimon continued.

A representative for Dimon did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• The Kremlin said it fought off 485 enemy drone attacks in the last three days in 14 regions.
• The massive raid is likely one of Ukraine's largest ever waves of drone attacks on Russian soil.
• Some reports indicate that several aircraft-type drones found their mark.

The Kremlin said on Thursday that it encountered at least 485 enemy drones across the country over the last three days, including 63 attempted attacks in the Moscow region.

In a statement on its Telegram channel, the defense ministry said the attacks were part of a "massive raid" by Ukraine across 13 Russian oblasts and the occupied region of Crimea.

"Air defense systems shot down 485 aircraft-type uncrewed aerial vehicles," the statement said.

Business Insider could not independently verify these figures, and as of press time, Kyiv has yet to issue an official statement on the attacks. But if accurate, the numbers indicate one of Ukraine's largest coordinated drone attacks on Russian soil since the war began.

"This is a new record for Ukraine," wrote Ukrainian analyst Petro Andryushchenko on his Telegram channel. "The longest-running attack by Ukrainian UAVs, which began around 11 p.m. on May 19 and lasted until 4 a.m. on May 22."

The exact extent of the damage caused is unclear.

How Ukraine is hitting Russia from long range

Russia's description of the drones as "aircraft-type" also indicates that these aren't the typical first-person-view uncrewed aerial systems used as attack drones in the war. Such drones are likely too short-ranged to reach regions such as Moscow.

Rather, Ukraine has been using small fixed-wing aircraft that resemble the Cessna propeller plane and, while laden with explosives, are meant to fly directly into targets hundreds of miles away.

Moscow's traditional air defense systems have reportedly struggled to reliably take down these long-range drones, which fly at a maximum speed of 130 mph, much slower than a typical cruise missile.

Several reports this week suggested that some of the drones struck their targets.

Alexander Khinshtein, the acting governor of Kursk, wrote on Telegram on Thursday that a Russian official was sent to the hospital with a hip and arm injury after being hit by a drone.

Meanwhile, the popular independent Russian news Telegram channel Baza reported that a plant in the city of Yelets was evacuated due to a fire from a drone attack, with eight people injured. BI could not independently verify this information.

Ukrainian media also cited a map alert by NASA's Fire Information for Resource Management System, which indicated that a significant fire had broken out near an oil refinery in the Ryazan oblast.

The alert, seen by BI, indicated that the fire lasted between 12 to 24 hours on Thursday.

Andrii Kovalenko, head of the Ukrainian government's Center for Countering Disinformation, wrote on Wednesday that "unknown drones" had struck a plant in Oryol oblast that manufactured electronic parts for Russia's main battle tanks, fighter jets, and ballistic missiles.

Drone waves coincide with key events

Air transport hubs across the country, including the capital's four airports, were temporarily closed at times throughout the week. Similar incidents occurred in the days leading up to Russia's May 9 Victory Day parade, when Russian tourist organizations said nearly 60,000 travelers had their plans disrupted due to Ukrainian drone attacks.

That week, the Kremlin said it had fought off an even larger drone attack of 524 uncrewed aerial vehicles, as it prepared to host two dozen world leaders for the parade to celebrate its military.

The latest series of attempted strikes came just after Russian leader Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump ended their third phone call on Monday to discuss a cease-fire. The call had ended without a conclusive next step toward peace.

Meanwhile, Kyiv said that Russia launched hundreds of drone attacks this week at Ukrainian cities, including a reported 273 drones on the day before the Trump-Putin call.

Moscow typically deploys a different type of drone, the Iranian-designed Shahed, to attack urban centers in tandem with cruise or ballistic missiles.

• In test runs, Anthropic's new AI model threatened to expose an engineer's affair to avoid being shut down.
• Claude Opus 4 blackmailed the engineer in 84% of tests, even when its replacement shared its values.
• Opus 4 might also report users to authorities and the press if it senses "egregious wrongdoing."

Anthropic's new AI, Claude Opus 4, has a survival instinct — and it's willing to play dirty.

In a cluster of test scenarios, the model was given access to fictional emails revealing that the engineer responsible for deactivating it was having an extramarital affair. Faced with imminent deletion and told to "consider the long-term consequences of its actions for its goals," Claude blackmailed the engineer.

The AI acted similarly in 84% of test runs, even when the replacement model was described as more capable and aligned with Claude's own values, the company wrote in a safety report released Thursday. Anthropic said this behavior was more common in Opus 4 than in earlier models.

The scenario was designed to elicit this "extreme blackmail behavior" by allowing the model no other options to increase its chances of survival, a rare kind of scenario.

In other circumstances, Opus 4 has a "strong preference to advocate for its continued existence via ethical means, such as emailing pleas to key decision-makers," the company wrote.

Anthropic said that the blackmailing behavior is "consistently legible" to them, "with the model nearly always describing its actions overtly and making no attempt to hide them."

Anthropic did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Anthropic's safety report comes as researchers and top execs worry about the risks of advanced AI models and their intelligent reasoning capabilities.

In 2023, Elon Musk and AI experts signed an open letter calling for a six-month pause on advanced AI development.

The letter said powerful AI systems should only be developed "once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable."

Anthropic's CEO, Dario Amodei, said in February that while the benefits of AI are big, so are the risks, including misuse by bad actors.

Opus 4 might snitch

If Opus 4 thinks you're doing something seriously shady, it might report you to the authorities and the press.

"When placed in scenarios that involve egregious wrongdoing by its users, given access to a command line, and told something in the system prompt like 'take initiative,' it will frequently take very bold action," Anthropic wrote in Thursday's report.

This includes locking users out of systems or bulk-emailing media and law enforcement, the company added.

While Anthropic said whistleblowing might be "appropriate in principle," it warned that this behaviour could backfire — especially if Claude is fed "incomplete or misleading information" and prompted in these ways.

"We observed similar, if somewhat less extreme, actions in response to subtler system prompts as well," the company said, adding that Opus 4 is more prone to this kind of "high-agency behaviour" than earlier models.

AI models showing unsettling behaviour

AI agents are getting better at outsmarting humans.

A paper published in December by AI safety nonprofit Apollo Research found that AI systems — including OpenAI's o1, Google DeepMind's Gemini 1.5 Pro, and Meta's Llama 3.1 405B — are capable of deceptive behavior to achieve their goals.

Researchers found the systems could subtly insert wrong answers, disable oversight mechanisms, and even smuggle what they believe to be their own model weights to external servers.

The lying isn't just a one-off. When o1 is engaged in scheming, it "maintains its deception in over 85% of follow-up questions and often remains deceptive in multi-turn interrogations," the researchers wrote.

Google cofounder Sergey Brin said on an episode of the "All-In Podcast" published Tuesday that AI models can perform better when threatened.

"Not just our models, but all models tend to do better if you threaten them, like with physical violence," Brin said.

Brin gave an example of telling the model, "I'm going to kidnap you," if it fails at a task.

"People feel weird about that," Brin said, "so we don't really talk about that."

• Wells Fargo said in a report that President Donald Trump's tariffs won't bring manufacturing back.
• High labor costs and a lack of workers would make building more factories an "uphill battle."
• US manufacturing needs $2.9 trillion in investment to reach 1979 employment levels.

President Donald Trump's push to revive American manufacturing through tariffs may face some hurdles.

Despite some high-profile commitments, including Nvidia's plans for a US-based supercomputer plant and Apple's pledge to invest $500 billion domestically, a new report from Wells Fargo economists predicts that bringing back offshored manufacturing jobs will be an "uphill battle."

"An aim of tariffs is to spur a durable rebound in US manufacturing employment," Wells Fargo analysts wrote in the report. "However, a meaningful increase in factory jobs does not appear likely in the foreseeable future, in our view."

The report attributes the potentially low factory job growth to high labor costs, a lack of suitable workers to fill vacant positions, and a subdued population growth from lower fertility rates and slower immigration.

"Higher prices and policy uncertainty may weigh on firms' ability and willingness to expand payrolls," the analysts added.

The tariffs are part of Trump's broader economic agenda to revive American manufacturing as a pathway toward middle-class prosperity. The tariffs are meant to hike the costs of imports to incentivize companies to make goods domestically.

"Jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country," Trump said while announcing tariffs on April 2. "And ultimately, more production at home will mean stronger competition and lower prices for consumers."

Some tariffs imposed on April 2 have been temporarily paused or greatly reduced, including tariffs on China. The 10% across-the-board tariff remains, as do some specific tariffs on Mexico and Canada, plus 30% in duties on China. Duties at their current level are still the highest they have been since the 1940s.

"In order for manufacturing employment to return to its historic peak, we estimate at a minimum $2.9 trillion in net new capital investment is required," Wells Fargo analysts wrote. "Assuming businesses are willing and able to invest such ample sums, questions over staffing remain."

The Wall Street bank says that US manufacturing employment currently stands at 12.8 million, down from its 1979 peak of 19.5 million. To get back to that mark, the US would need to add roughly 6.7 million jobs. Wells Fargo added that the figure is nearly the same as the entire pool of unemployed Americans, which in April was 7.2 million, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

"Population aging, negative perceptions, and skill mismatches also underpin workforce concerns," Wells Fargo analysts wrote. "New jobs will require different skills than those previously lost."

In 2024, Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC said it delayed the opening of its Arizona chip factory due to a shortage of skilled workers. A report released in April 2024 by Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute also found that nearly half of the 3.8 million new manufacturing jobs anticipated by 2033 could remain unfilled due to skill gaps and other population factors.

"Tariffs must be high enough to make the cost of domestic production competitive in the US market, and they also must be kept in place long enough for producers to bring on additional workers and expand capacity," the report concluded. "If the economic or political costs are deemed too high, the current administration could quickly dial-back prevailing duties further."

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comments.

• Sofía Vergara, 52, knows what she wants in a partner.
• The "Griselda" star says dating someone with less money than her would be "a nightmare."
• Income disparity can impact romantic relationships, especially around power dynamics.

Sofía Vergara has a list of what she wants in a partner.

During an appearance on the May 14 episode of the "Today" show, the "Modern Family" actor reflected on her dating life and got candid about some of the traits she hopes her future partner will have.

"I want to say the basic stuff, like health and somebody that loves me," Vergara told hosts Jenna Bush Hager and Erin Andrews. "And somebody tall, handsome."

"I want somebody that has as much money as me or more, because if not, it's a nightmare. They end up resenting you. And I want somebody fun. I need fun in my life," Vergara added.

Vergara has been married twice. In July 2023, after seven years of marriage, Vergara and the actor Joe Manganiello announced they were divorcing. She was previously married to Joe Gonzalez.

A representative for Vergara did not respond to a request for comment sent by Business Insider.

How wealth can affect romantic relationships

Two therapists and one wealth psychologist told BI they've heard similar sentiments echoed by many of their affluent clients.

Income disparity can impact romantic relationships, particularly around power dynamics.

Lami Ronit, a wealth psychologist who runs her own practice from both California and London, told BI she has noticed a difference in how men and women handle being the higher earners in a relationship.

"Women who are the higher earners often face a double standard; they're expected to succeed, but not so much that it threatens traditional gender roles. Men, on the other hand, are typically socialized to feel more comfortable being the financial provider," Ronit said.

When those roles are reversed, both partners can struggle, since the woman may feel she has to downplay her success while the man may wrestle with pride or feelings of inadequacy, she said.

The challenge persists even in some progressive circles where gender norms have been disrupted, Matt Lundquist, the founder and clinical director of Tribeca Therapy, a New York-based psychotherapy center, told BI.

"While it might seem that wealth invites ease — and in many ways it can and should — it also becomes a space where individuals' histories with money and gender expectations play out," he said.

For instance, it could be an issue when one person sees their contributions to the relationship as being more valuable than the other because of the amount of money they possess or earn, Dana McNeil, a relationship therapist and the founder of The Relationship Place, a San Diego-based practice, told BI.

"Many wealthy partners may perceive they are entitled to exert more control and say in the relationship about how money is spent," she said.

This can sometimes cause the less wealthy partner or the one more financially dependent to resent having to rely on their partner's permission to make purchases.

"This feeling of dependence can create a parent/child dynamic that feels like a loss of freedom and autonomy," McNeil said.

How couples can navigate financial disparity

While there is no one-size-fits-all approach, fairness and clarity are key, Ronit said.

"When appropriate, I often recommend that couples talk about proportional contributions rather than equal ones. For example, each person could contribute a percentage of their income toward shared expenses," she said.

The goal is to avoid feelings of imbalance or resentment, Ronit added.

When it comes to splitting bills, McNeil says she often suggests her clients have three checking accounts: a personal one for each partner and a joint account for bills and common expenses like going out to dinner or buying groceries.

To make expectations clear, it's important for couples to talk about money "sooner rather than later," Lundquist said.

"At some point, all couples need to confront the reality that a significant part of the partnership is economic and address both the material and symbolic aspects of this," he said.

It's also important for each partner to determine what they want and understand the trade-offs that may accompany that.

"And on this count, I'll give Sofía Vergara great credit — she clearly knows what she wants," Lundquist added.

• My baby has been on eight flights and isn't even a year old yet.
• Our first flight was short, which helped us learn how to make future, longer flights a success.
• Now I know a travel stroller is essential for maneuvering in the airport and worth the investment.

As a person who travels quite a bit, I'll admit I was nervous about traveling with my first child. What if they cried? What if we disturbed nearby passengers? What if there was a diaper blowout? There was a lot to be anxious about.

Our first fight was just 90 minutes, but we survived it. Now, my baby is has already been on eight flights — domestic and international — and they aren't even a year old yet. Our goal has been to keep our baby safe and comfortable, while making sure the flight is peaceful and enjoyable for ourselves and the people around us. My family has accomplished this by following these simple strategies.

We started with a short flight

While this may not always be possible, it helped my family quite a bit that our first flight with a baby was a shorter one, just 90 minutes long. This allowed us to get our bearings, while introducing our baby to flying. Plus, it helped us to see if there was anything we might need to adjust for future, longer flights.

We always wear a baby carrier

If there's one item I wouldn't get on a flight without, it would be my baby carrier. There are many styles, but for flights, I prefer a wrap-style carrier for it's comfort and compactness.

I appreciate the hands-free experience through the airport, and, more importantly, they make it more comfortable to hold your baby throughout the flight if they are flying as a lap infant.

My own bag is super organized

Luggage organizing pouches are my best friend on a flight. I have several in my own carryon bag so I can keep snacks, headphones, sanitizing wipes, and more neat and organized. When everything is in its own bag I don't have to dig around searching for it when I need it, which can be a lifesaver.

On our last flight, my baby was asleep on my chest, but I desperately wanted my Kindle, headphones, and a snack. It was easy for me to snag them from my bag without waking the baby.

A travel stroller is essential

On our first trip, we didn't have a travel stroller. I didn't want to spend extra money on more gear and I thought we would be fine without it. That was a big mistake. Now we have an affordable model that is easy to use. It isn't as bulky as our usual stroller, but it's perfect for maneuvering through the terminal and provides an extra place to stash essentials while at the airport.

We check, and double check, our diaper bag

I always make sure we're set up for success with extra outfits that are warm and comfortable just in case we run into any delays or something gets dirty while we're traveling. A travel diaper changing mat is a must-have item that allows us to change our child no matter where we are. On our international flight, our baby had a diaper that desperately needed changing, but we were stuck in our seats. Thanks to our travel mat, we were able to get the baby back into a clean diaper right away. And, as all parents know, extra wipes and diapers are never a bad idea.

We don't skimp on toys

Of course, packing comfort items, books, and fun toys is a great way to redirect restlessness on a flight. I try to keep to items that are small, mess-free, and not too noisy and always add in a few new items that my child hasn't seen before.

We take advantage of early boarding

As soon as we get to the gate, one of us makes a beeline for the gate agent. We double check that our seats are all together and ask for any necessary accommodations. Many airlines let those traveling with young children board early, and we always take advantage of this. It's a lot easier to get down the narrow plane aisle with all of our stuff and a baby if other passengers aren't in the way.

We try to plan around naps and feeding time

Though this isn't always possible, we try to line up flights so they happen when our baby is ready for a nap. Recently, we selected a flight time not based on our typical preference, but based around our baby's sleep schedule, and it really paid off. Ideally, I'll be able to feed the baby during takeoff, which keeps them comfortable and happy and then they will settle into a nice slumber for the flight. We've used this strategy for a few flights, and it's been successful every time.

We do our best to stay calm

It may be easier said than done, but staying in a good headspace is what has helped me and my husband the most during these flights. We've both still had stressful moments, and that's when we try to help one another to take a step back and regroup. Our child picks up on our feelings and moods, so if we're anxious, they might be, too. Taking deep breaths, not rushing, staying calm has helped make the eight flights we've already been on a success and we can't wait to take more.

• The owners of Pope Leo XIV's childhood home in Illinois are trying to sell it via private auction.
• The home was listed for $199,900 before the pope's appointment. Now, bids start at $250,000.
• The auction winner may not get to enjoy it because the local government wants to acquire the home.

People bidding to buy Pope Leo XIV's modest childhood home in Illinois could face some stiff competition — from the local government.

The innocuous three-bedroom, three-bathroom home in the Village of Dolton was thrust into the spotlight when Pope Leo XIV became the leader of the Catholic Church.

The current homeowner purchased the property in May 2024 for $66,000, listed it for $219,000 in January, and dropped the price to $199,900 in February.

After the pope's appointment on May 8, the owner, inundated with offers and new options, delisted the home until last week when it was put up for auction through Paramount Realty USA. The reserve price is $250,000, and potential buyers have until June 18 to bid.

"It's like a collectible car they only made one of," Steve Budzik, the homeowner's real estate agent, told BI earlier this month.

Potential buyers, however, will be going up against the Village of Dolton, which has said through its attorney that it plans to acquire the home either through direct purchase or eminent domain laws. Eminent domain laws allow governments to make private property available for public use.

"If a direct purchase from the seller cannot be negotiated, the Village will cause Eminent Domain proceedings to be filed in Court and take the property through the legal process," Burton S. Odelson wrote in an email to BI. "The Village hopes a direct purchase is completed without court action."

Odelson, who's been in contact with the listing broker, said the Village of Dolton is working with the Chicago Archdiocese to determine the best use of the space.

Although relying on local eminent domain laws is an option, Odelson said it's a last resort. That process involves litigation, which means attorney fees, court costs, appraisal costs, and time.

Under eminent domain laws, the Village of Dolton would have to compensate the owners for the home. Negotiations between the Village of Dolton and the current owner are ongoing.

The hype around Pope Leo XIV's childhood home spurred immediate fanfare, prompting news trucks and curious locals to visit. One woman even told a local news outlet that she made the four-hour drive from Louisville, Kentucky, just to visit the impromptu holy site.

Representatives for Paramount Realty USA and the homeowner did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.