• UPS is cutting its business with Amazon in half by mid-2026, it said Thursday.
• While big, Amazon's business with UPS was becoming less profitable, CEO Carol Tomé said.
• Amazon has been building out its own logistics infrastructure in recent years.

UPS is reducing the number of Amazon packages it handles as profit from those shipments shrink, its CEO said Thursday.

"This was not their ask," CEO Carol Tomé said on an investor call. "This was us. This was UPS taking control of our destiny."

Shares plunged as much as 18%.

The shipping giant said it would cut its business with its largest customer in half by June 2026. Amazon shipments make up about 20% of UPS's volume in the US, CFO Brian Dykes said on the call. The company had reported fourth-quarter results before the stock market opened.

"Amazon is our largest customer, but it's not our most profitable customer," CEO Tomé said on the call. "Its margin is very dilutive to the US domestic business."

UPS used recent contract negotiations with Amazon to reach an agreement on the drawdown, Tomé said. Keeping the same amount of business with the retail giant "will likely result in diminishing returns," she added.

"Due to their operational needs, UPS requested a reduction in volume, and we certainly respect their decision," an Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider. "We'll continue to partner with them and many other carriers to serve our customers."

While the move away from Amazon will cost UPS business in the short run, the company could use it to "focus in on higher-yielding, margin-enhancing volumes," analysts at Goldman Sachs wrote on Thursday.

Tomé said that the remaining 50% of UPS's business with the e-commerce giant includes handling some returns for Amazon — something that UPS does "very, very well" for them and is unlikely to go away anytime soon.

"We have 5,200 UPS store locations that make it very convenient for customers of Amazon to return their Amazon packages," she said on Thursday's call.

Amazon has spent years building its logistics services, from warehouses to its aircraft fleet.

The company has used those resources to offer its own shipping options. Late last year, Amazon launched a new option for sellers on its website that can deliver products from source factories to customers, for instance.

Amazon also offers shipping options to sellers who don't even sell on its website.

• Blackstone has been investing billions in the AI revolution, including billions in data centers.
• Chinese AI model DeepSeek is raising questions about whether these investments will pay off.
• The stock declined more than 4% Thursday despite the company's stellar earnings report.

A top Blackstone executive on Thursday addressed the threat that AI model DeepSeek could pose to the company's multibillion-dollar bet on AI infrastructure, saying the firm is watching the situation closely.

"We've obviously been spending a lot of time the last week looking at the impact of DeepSeek," president and COO Jon Gray said in a fourth-quarter earnings call, adding: "The real question is what is demand going forward?"

Blackstone, which calls itself the largest data-center provider in the world, has $80 billion in existing data center assets — and has touted more than $100 billion in the pipeline. Gray didn't address the firm's pipeline but acknowledged that "the cost of computing is coming down pretty dramatically," which could change demand for future investments in how AI is powered.

"So we still think it's a very important segment, and there's a way to run, but obviously, we're watching what's happening very closely," he said.

Blackstone is the latest company to react to concerns that DeepSeek, an AI model from China, is 20 to 40 times more efficient than OpenAI, according to an analysis by Bernstein. This has called into question both Silicon Valley valuations and trillions in AI infrastructure investment.

Blackstone's share price, which had opened up nearly 1.5%, dropped at the market open and recently traded down more than 4% to $177.50 a share. Blackstone's earnings handily beat expectations, with the firm setting a record for fee-related earnings in the fourth quarter.

Gray suggested that lower costs could drive more adoption and, therefore, more demand for infrastructure, echoing statements from tech CEOs like Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Gray's comments reflect Silicon Valley's new favorite economic theory, the Jevons Paradox, which posits that usage will increase as the price of a resource declines.

Citing Mark Zuckerberg's comments on Wednesday, he said that data centers might need to be more "fungible" than before, which may mean "less training" of AI models but potentially more "inference," the practice of using AI to come to predictions or conclusions, as well as increased demand for cloud or enterprise usage.

The larger picture, that "our lives are migrating online" has not changed, Gray said. He also said the firm's $80 billion in data center assets is tied to existing demand via leases to large, well-capitalized companies.

"We're not doing things speculatively," Gray said. "It's based on the demand signals from our tenants.

Blackstone's investment in data centers began in earnest when the firm took data center REIT QTS Realty Trust private in 2021 for $10 billion. It's continued to make big bets like its $16 billion-plus take-private last year of AirTrunk, the largest data center transaction of all time.

During an earnings call last year, CEO and cofounder Steve Schwarzman announced his ambitions for the firm to be the world's largest investor in AI infrastructure.

He projected $2 trillion in global investment to build and facilitate data centers over the next five years and that the AI revolution would contribute to a 40% increase in electricity demand in the US over the next decade.

This has already spurred the firm to invest in adjacent sectors, like its recent $1 billion purchase of a Virginia power plant in a data center hot spot.

Blackstone has been ahead of the curve in this strategy, and other investors are now jumping in. A KPMG survey found that 40% of US asset manager respondents told KPMG that it's their top real estate investment priority over the next two years, up from 27% just six months ago.

Although DeepSeek could threaten demand for data centers, China isn't turning away from investing in AI infrastructure either. China recently announced a roughly $140 billion investment in data centers.

• I took my kids to Dubai, and our first trip to the city was amazing.
• However, I should've budgeted more time and money because we didn't get to do everything.
• I also wish we'd spent more time in the desert and had a little more downtime.

Dubai boasts the tallest building, the biggest mall, and the water park with the most water slides in the world. Despite these claims to fame, I still considered it a stopover city, not a full vacation destination.

When I booked my family's flights to India, which included a stop in Abu Dhabi (less than an hour from Dubai), I decided to extend the layover so we could explore for three days.

My kids and I had a great time, but now that we've seen all the city has to offer, I wish I'd done some things differently.

I should've booked a longer trip.

Once I started looking into how to spend our time in Dubai, I realized that the three days I planned were not nearly enough.

If I had to plan the trip over again, I'd schedule at least four or five days in Dubai.

Even though I am not a big shopper, I surprisingly wish I had more time to explore the Dubai Mall. In particular, I wanted to try the indoor skating rink and ski slopes and explore more of the impressive indoor Chinatown.

I also should've planned further in advance.

Since this was just a stop on the way to our larger vacation, I didn't do much advanced planning.

Unfortunately, that meant we weren't able to do everything we had originally hoped.

I discovered too late that tickets to Dubai's Museum of the Future, which I'd wanted to visit, sell out months in advance.

We definitely needed more downtime throughout the trip.

Since our time was limited, I felt pressure to be constantly on the go. Nevertheless, I wish I'd squeezed in a couple of hours of downtime to relax.

That also probably would've helped us acclimate to the time difference from the East Coast.

I carefully selected a beautiful hotel, Andaz Dubai The Palm, that's right on the beach and has a gorgeous infinity pool. However, it would've been nicer if we'd had a little more time to actually enjoy its relaxing amenities.

The city was even more expensive than I'd budgeted for.

I knew Dubai was expensive, but I didn't realize how pricey it was until I started looking into activities.

I originally planned on taking my kids to the top of the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa, and visiting its observatory. However, once I saw the price of the tickets, I abandoned the idea.

I couldn't imagine shelling out nearly $200 for the three of us to have what would probably be an hourlong experience.

Even though we skipped it, my kids and I posed for plenty of photos in front of the Burj Khalifa and appreciated its height from afar.

Other activities were more expensive than I expected as well, including the Dubai Mall Aquarium. Tickets started at about $50 a person.

I didn't realize how far apart some of our must-visit stops would be.

The Burj Kalifa is right next to the Dubai Mall, but the city's famous mosque, markets, Global Village shopping area, and local cultural center are all fairly spread out.

The distances between sites made getting around time-consuming and expensive. I wish I'd paid more attention before booking activities to make better use of my time and cut down on transportation costs.

For example, since we visited the Dubai Mall during the day, we weren't able to see its spectacular evening fountain show. I thought we'd be able to dash over one night, but we always found ourselves too far to make the trip worthwhile.

We didn't spend nearly enough time in the desert.

Some of my favorite travel experiences have involved being in the desert, so a desert safari was at the top of my list for our Dubai trip.

I booked the least expensive option with the luxury tour company Platinum Heritage.

Although I enjoyed everything I did in Dubai, this was the most fun and unique. My family spent a fantastic evening climbing sand dunes, spotting wildlife, getting henna tattoos, riding camels, enjoying a traditional Arabian feast, stargazing, and more.

When it was over, I wished I'd booked more time in the desert — or at least had us spend the night.

• Like some other federal employees, Tony Ruiz received a deferred resignation email this week.
• The email offers what appears to be a buyout if he quits his job.
• Ruiz says he feels doubly targeted as a Latino and as a federal worker. But he has no plans to resign.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Tony Ruiz, a 47-year-old Army veteran who works as a Veterans Service Representative at the US Department of Veterans Affairs.

Like many federal employees, Ruiz received an email this week from the US Office of Personnel Management offering buyouts to federal workers who want to resign rather than work under the new administration. Ruiz's employment has been verified by Business Insider.

Ruiz, who is Latino, says he feels like he's been hit by a double whammy: the resignation offer, and, before that, a letter from higher-ups asking workers to root out any examples of efforts to promote DEI, or diversity, equity, and inclusion.

The following has been edited for length and clarity:

I was hired in February of last year to be a veteran service representative at the US Department of Veterans Affairs, which is a role based out of Los Angeles.

I work for the part of the VA that's in charge of all veteran benefits, and my job is really to assist veterans in all kinds of things. For example, if a veteran is trying to add dependents, needs to add a disability to his award, is going back to active duty, or is asking for help when it comes to homelessness, they put in a claim and it gets routed to an adjudicator like me.

It's a chance for us to really help the veterans.

I'm also a veteran of the US military myself. I served in the Army, with an honorable discharge in 2001. (I graduated from Basic Training in 1998.)

When I was in the military, I had a dream to work for the federal government, and so to finally join this role a year ago, I was so excited to be serving my veterans.

But in the last two weeks, things have been difficult.

First, we got an email last week from the Acting Secretary at the US Office of Personnel Management, which said they're taking steps to close federal DEI initiatives because, they said, it's wasteful in government, it's shameful discrimination, and it's dividing Americans by race.

Then it asks us to tell on our friends who are still doing DEI work and threatens us with adverse consequences if we don't.

This first email caught all of us by surprise, and it really upset me.

Then, this week, we got an email from OPM asking us if we wanted to resign by February 6.

What really upset me was the fact that this email pretty much says to all of us, "We want you gone." It feels like they don't appreciate the value that we bring to the table.

How can it be that I finally got my dream job after so many years, and yet now I have this situation where they want to get rid of me in a sense — not just as a federal employee, but also as a Latino, born from Mexican immigrants, who are legal, and as an Army veteran who's serving my country proudly?

They're telling me I'm no good in the sense that they're telling me I'm not wanted. And the people in the streets that are getting kicked out of the country, I feel like them, like I'm being deported from the federal government.

With the emails that we've gotten, I can tell you people are afraid, people are nervous. Morale has been terrible — to the point where people have been sick a lot in the last couple of weeks. And ever since the election, morale has been different. People are less talkative. It's palpable.

But I'm not afraid. And I have no intention of resigning.

In the military, we learned about bravery, about courage, and about service to our country. But one thing I learned as well — that I think a lot of politicians and a lot of Americans forget — is in the military, we had a rule and it was very clear: If you're given an order that's unlawful, like murder or whatever it is, it doesn't matter who it's from, you are to question that order and bring it up to the higher-ups. That's a very important thing.

In other words, we're soldiers, we're not robots.

Even though you're a military member, you love your country enough to be able to say, "No, this is not right." And so now that I'm serving my country here as a VA employee, that still stands to me.

And that's why I'm not afraid.

• OpenAI said this week that DeepSeek may have used OpenAI model outputs "inappropriately."
• OpenAI has been accused of doing the same thing with copyrighted content.
• What's that old saying about karma? Go ask ChatGPT. Or DeepSeek.

In the brave new world of generative AI, there's a moment that everyone will experience: the realization that your original work is being used to train AI models that could be competing against you.

This moment has arrived for OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman.

The US startup said this week that the Chinese lab DeepSeek may have "inappropriately" used OpenAI outputs to train new AI models in a process called distillation.

Translation: We think you used our content without permission, and that's not allowed.

For some AI experts, these complaints are hypocritical. OpenAI's success is built on a similar process. The startup has for years collected outputs and data from the internet and used that to train its own models. This includes scooping up copyrighted content and other original work from thousands of companies that have not authorized this use.

In fact, this is what most model developers do, according to Nick Vincent, an assistant professor of computer science at Simon Fraser University who studies how data is used in AI.

"These firms are simultaneously arguing for the right to train on anything they can get their hands on while denying their competitors the right to train on model outputs," he wrote in a blog post this week, adding, "Rules for thee, but not for me?"

DeepSeek = just deserts 

Vincent sees the rise of DeepSeek as the inevitable outcome of a training-data free-for-all where AI companies take whatever content they want and ask for forgiveness later.

This has now backfired on OpenAI, which may be having its own outputs plundered in the name of AI progress. The startup "will struggle to defend itself in the court of public opinion on this," Vincent told Business Insider on Wednesday. "There's a reckoning coming."

He hopes this reckoning will encourage tech companies to create a new system that gives appropriate credit and compensation to content creators. 

"So far, none of the AI labs have seriously thought about this, so DeepSeek is their just deserts," Vincent added.

Fair use just for OpenAI, or for everyone?

High-quality training data is a crucial ingredient of powerful AI models. Many of the companies that created this information want to be paid for providing intelligence to these new products. Tech companies don't want to be forced to pay. This dispute is being fought in court.

OpenAI is being sued by authors who claim the startup is breaking copyright law by using their books to train AI models. The New York Times is pursuing a similar complaint.

OpenAI has also been accused of using YouTube content to train its Sora video-generation model. YouTube's CEO, Neal Mohan, said last year that this would violate the video platform's rules.

OpenAI has denied breaking copyright laws, citing the "fair use" doctrine, which allows unlicensed use of copyrighted works in certain situations, including teaching, research, and news reporting.

So would DeepSeek's use of OpenAI's outputs also constitute fair use?

"Very potentially, yes," Vincent said.

Fair use isn't just for yourself when it's convenient. That would be, well, unfair.

I asked OpenAI about all this on Wednesday and it didn't respond. The startup has partnerships with some companies that authorize the use of their content for AI model training. Axel Springer, BI's owner, struck one of these deals in 2023.

Distillation and karma

How do AI model outputs get scooped up for competitive means anyway?

Distillation is the technical term for extracting intelligence buried in one model and weaving it into a new one, Vincent said. AI godfathers, including Geoffrey Hinton, wrote a research paper about this in 2015 called "Distilling the Knowledge in a Neural Network."

Back then, the researchers described a tamer version of this where a lab or company would take its own old models and use their outputs to cleverly infuse a new offering with more intelligence.

Distilling intelligence from someone else's AI model without permission is frowned upon in some research circles but happens a lot, Vincent said.

DeepSeek's research paper about its new R1 model described using distillation with open-source models, but it didn't mention OpenAI.

"We demonstrate that the reasoning patterns of larger models can be distilled into smaller models, resulting in better performance," the Chinese lab's researchers wrote. 

Since these new offerings began rolling out late last year, some AI researchers have theorized that DeepSeek used outputs from OpenAI's new "reasoning" model, called o1, as synthetic data to improve its own models, such as R1.

In December, when DeepSeek was beginning to wow the AI field, Altman seemed to take a dig at his new rival.

"It is (relatively) easy to copy something that you know works," he wrote on X. "It is extremely hard to do something new, risky, and difficult when you don't know if it will work."

What's that phrase about karma? I can't write it here. If you don't know, go ask ChatGPT. Or DeepSeek.

• Christina Haack told Tarek El Moussa about her split from Josh Hall in the premiere of "The Flip Off."
• In an interview with BI, Haack said watching the conversation back still makes her emotional.
• She also said she didn't expect to talk to El Moussa about their past.

HGTV's "The Flip Off" premiered on Wednesday, bringing Christina Haack and Tarek El Moussa back together on screen.

Tarek El Moussa and his wife, Heather Rae El Moussa, were supposed to compete against Haack and her husband, Josh Hall, in a house-flipping competition on the series. However, in July 2024, Haack and Hall abruptly split after filming had already begun.

Hall appeared in the first half of the premiere but vanished after they separated off-screen. Haack shared the news of their breakup with her first ex-husband in a tearful conversation documented on "The Flip Off," during which she decided to finish the competition alone.

Six months later, Haack told Business Insider she still gets emotional watching the conversation back.

Tarek El Moussa and Christina Haack had an emotional conversation on 'The Flip Off'

In the first episode, El Moussa met Haack at her home, where she told him that her relationship with Hall ended after a "blowup fight over nothing."

"Things with Josh have been bad for a long time. Not just kinda bad, like bad," she told El Moussa. "The kids literally asked me to leave. They told me he's not nice to me."

Haack went on to say that El Moussa made Hall "very insecure" and that Hall called her cocky. She also teared up as she told El Moussa that she feels like she's in "a tornado all the time" and doesn't know how to escape it.

"Everything since, like, 2016 has been so hard and so horrible," she said through tears, referring to the year she and El Moussa separated.

Haack also said in an interview with producers that she was the first person in her family to get divorced and thought it was "safer to be back in a relationship."

"But, ultimately, that was not safe either," she said.

Haack also told El Moussa how much it "really, really, really hurt" her not to get to be "a full-time mom" because of their divorce. The exes share Taylor, 14, and Brayden, 9, and Haack has a 5-year-old son, Hudson, from her marriage to Ant Anstead.

El Moussa told producers he knows he wasn't the best husband or father during his marriage to Haack after facing health struggles and addiction.

"It was the day that I met Heather that really got me back on track," he said. They got married in 2021 and share a son, Tristan, who turns 2 on Friday.

Watching the conversation back still makes Haack emotional

When she spoke to BI before the premiere of "The Flip Off," Haack said rewatching her conversation with El Moussa still made her "emotional."

"I'm not a crier by any means, but it still makes me emotional," Haack said. "I just look back to that time and that feels like so long ago, but I was just very stressed, very overwhelmed. And when I watch it, I just honestly feel for me in that situation."

"It still makes me emotional, and I feel so much better now," she added. "I'm in such a better spot. I've learned so many lessons."

Heather Rae El Moussa chimed in to say the conversation was also healing for the Haack and El Moussa's relationship.

"I think it's important, too, for their relationship to talk about certain things that maybe they hadn't talked about in the past, but they just did it now in front of the world," she said.

Although the former "Flip or Flop" stars are now on good terms, Haack and El Moussa's relationship was strained in 2021 and 2022.

People reported in July 2021 that El Moussa yelled at Haack on set, calling her "a washed-up loser." When "Flip or Flop" ended in March 2022, the outlet reported that the show had become "too intimate" for the exes to film together.

Haack was surprised she opened up to El Moussa about their past

Haack said she didn't anticipate talking to her ex-husband about their past when they discussed her divorce from Hall on "The Flip Off."

"Going into that scene, I didn't mean for that — that wasn't set up," she told BI. "No one said, 'Hey, talk about these things.'"

"It was supposed to be, 'Just tell Tarek that you and Josh broke up,' but I was so emotional in general over what I've been dealing with for the past year," Haack said, adding that it turned into a "therapy session."

"I think it's good to show the world that we're not just house flippers," El Moussa told BI about the conversation. "You know, we're humans, and we have feelings and emotions and lives, and we're no different than everyone else."

New episodes of "The Flip Off" will air on Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET on HGTV and be available for streaming on Max the next day.

• The Grammy Award for best new artist is considered a high honor in the music industry.
• Marquee names like The Beatles, Adele, and John Legend have all taken home the award.
• Stars like Taylor Swift, Drake, and Britney Spears were nominated for the award but didn't win.

Winning the Grammy for best new artist is considered a high honor in the music industry.

With iconic musicians like The Beatles, Mariah Carey, Alicia Keys, John Legend, and Adele all taking home the award, it's easy to see why this Grammy is so sought after.

But many of the biggest names in music went on to launch successful careers even though they didn't win the award.

Here are 18 of the biggest stars who were nominated for — but lost — the Grammy for best new artist.

Elton John lost to The Carpenters.

He's now one of the most famous names in the music industry, but in 1971, John lost the award for best new artist to The Carpenters.

John has since won five Grammys. He's also one of few stars to reach EGOT status, meaning he's won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony.

Boyz II Men won their first Grammy the same night they lost the award for best new artist.

In 1992, Boyz II Men lost the award for best new artist to the singer-songwriter Marc Cohn.

The trio didn't leave empty-handed, as they took home the award for best R&B performance by a duo or group with vocals that same night.

The group has earned four Grammys and 15 nominations.

Green Day lost to Sheryl Crow.

At the 1995 ceremony, Green Day was nominated for best new artist alongside Ace of Base, Counting Crows, Crash Test Dummies, and Crow.

Although the award went to Crow, Green Day's album "Dookie" took home the prize for best alternative music performance that same night.

The band has since won four Grammys.

Shania Twain didn't win the award for best new artist, but now has five Grammys.

Known for iconic songs like "Man! I Feel Like a Woman!" and "You're Still the One," Twain's music has sold millions of copies worldwide.

But when she was up for best new artist at the 1996 Grammys, Hootie & the Blowfish took home the award.

Today, Twain has five Grammys.

Britney Spears lost the award for best new artist to Christina Aguilera.

In 2000, Spears was making a name for herself in pop music, coming off the success of her debut single "...Baby One More Time."

That same year, Spears missed out on the Grammy for best new artist, which went to her "Mickey Mouse Club" costar Aguilera.

Spears won her first and only Grammy in 2005 for her song "Toxic."

Avril Lavigne has had success despite missing out on the Grammy for best new artist.

Lavigne was nominated for best new artist after the success of her debut album, which included hits like "Complicated," "Sk8er Boi," and "I'm With You."

During the February 2003 ceremony, Norah Jones took home the award.

Although Lavigne has not yet won a Grammy, she's been nominated eight times.

John Mayer now has multiple Grammys but did not win best new artist in 2003.

Like Lavigne, Mayer also lost out on the title of best new artist in 2003.

He has since taken home seven Grammys, including for song of the year.

Ciara lost the award for best new artist to John Legend in 2006.

In 2006, Ciara was nominated for best new artist alongside Fall Out Boy, Legend, Keane, and Sugarland.

Legend left with the award, but Ciara didn't go home empty-handed. That night, she won the best short-form music video award for her feature on Missy Elliott's song "Lose Control."

Taylor Swift never won best new artist, but she's won many other Grammys.

After her hugely successful Eras Tour, it's hard to imagine a time when Swift didn't win the title of best new artist at the Grammys.

However, when she was nominated in 2008, the award went to Amy Winehouse.

Since then, Swift has won 14 Grammys. She is the only artist in history to win album of the year four times.

The Jonas Brothers lost to Adele.

In 2009, the Jonas Brothers were in a tight race for best new artist alongside Adele, Duffy, Jazmine Sullivan, and Lady A.

Adele took home the prize, but the Jonas Brothers have gone on to have an extremely successful career.

Although they've yet to win a Grammy, they've been nominated for two.

Drake lost the title in 2011 but has since won five Grammys.

Although Drake now has five Grammys under his belt, he lost best new artist to jazz musician Esperanza Spalding in 2011.

Justin Bieber lost the award for best new artist to Esperanza Spalding.

Like Drake, Bieber also lost the award for best new artist to Esperanza Spalding.

He's since taken home two Grammys and earned 23 nominations.

Despite being one of the most successful female rappers, Nicki Minaj lost best new artist in 2012.

In 2012, Minaj lost out on the title of best new artist to indie-folk group Bon Iver. But Minaj made history that night as the first female rapper to perform solo at the Grammys.

Despite being nominated 12 times, Minaj has yet to win a Grammy.

Kendrick Lamar has won 17 Grammys but lost the award for best new artist in 2014.

Although Rolling Stone's Brian Hiatt called Lamar "the greatest rapper alive" in 2017, the musician didn't take home the award for best new artist in 2014.

The award went to Macklemore & Ryan Lewis. But since then, Lamar has earned a whopping 57 Grammy nominations and 17 wins.

Ed Sheeran also lost the title in 2014.

Like Lamar, Ed Sheeran was up for the award for best new artist in 2014.

He later went on to win two of his four Grammys in 2016.

SZA didn't win the award in 2018, but has continued to grow her career.

In 2018, SZA was up against Khalid, Alessia Cara, Lil Uzi Vert, and Julia Michaels for best new artist. The honor went to Cara.

SZA won her first Grammy in 2022 for collaborating with Doja Cat on the hit song "Kiss Me More." She has since won a total of four Grammys.

Rosalía has won both Grammys and Latin Grammys but missed out on best new artist at both ceremonies.

In 2020, Rosalía was nominated for best new artist alongside names like Billie Eilish, Lizzo, Lil Nas X, and Maggie Rogers.

Although Eilish walked away with the award, Rosalía made history that night as the first all-Spanish-language singer to be nominated in that category.

She was nominated in the same category at the 2017 Latin Grammys but didn't win.

She's since won two Grammys and 11 Latin Grammys.

Doja Cat lost the award for best new artist, but won her first Grammy the following year.

In 2021, Doja Cat was nominated for best new artist. She lost to Megan Thee Stallion.

She didn't have to wait long for a Grammy win, though. She won her first in 2022 for "Kiss Me More."

This story was originally published in February 2024 and most recently updated on January 30, 2025.

• DeepSeek's success has put Silicon Valley on edge over Chinese competition.
• After DeepSeek released its latest model, AI investors panicked.
• Meta's chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun, said the market's reaction to DeepSeek was "unjustified."

Silicon Valley is melting down over DeepSeek, an emerging Chinese competitor in the AI landscape, but Meta's AI chief says the hysteria is unwarranted.

DeepSeek caused alarm among US AI companies when it released a model last week that, on third-party benchmarks, outperformed ones from OpenAI, Meta and other leading developers. It did so with subpar chips and, it said, vastly less money.

Data from Bernstein Research shows that DeepSeek priced its models 20 to 40 times cheaper than equivalent models from OpenAI. Its latest reasoning model, R1, costs $0.55 for every million tokens inputted, while OpenAI's reasoning model, o1, charges $15 for the same number of tokens. A token is the smallest unit of data that an AI model processes.

The news hit the markets Monday, triggering a tech sell-off that wiped out $1 trillion in market cap. Chipmaker Nvidia — known for its premium chips, which can cost at least $30,000 — saw its market value cut by almost $600 billion.

Yann LeCun, chief AI scientist for Facebook AI Research, however, says there is a "major misunderstanding" about how the hundreds of billions of dollars invested in AI will be used. In a Threads post, LeCun said the huge sums of money going into US AI companies are needed primarily for inference, not training AI.

Inference is the process in which AI models apply their training knowledge to new data. It's how popular generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT respond to user requests. So the more user requests, the more inference is required, and processing costs increase.

LeCun said that as AI tools become more sophisticated, the cost of inference will rise. "Once you put video understanding, reasoning, large-scale memory, and other capabilities in AI systems, inference costs are going to increase," LeCun said. "So, the market reactions to DeepSeek are woefully unjustified."

Thomas Sohmers, founder and CTO of Positron, a hardware startup for transformer model inference, told Business Insider he agreed with LeCun that inference would account for a larger share of the AI infrastructure costs.

"Inference demand and the infrastructure spend for it is going to rise rapidly," he said. "Everyone looking at DeepSeek's training cost improvements and not seeing that is going to insanely drive inference demand, cost, and spend is missing the forest for the trees."

This means that, as its popularity grows, DeepSeek is expected to handle an increased volume of requests and so will have to spend a significant amount on inference.

A growing number of startups are entering the AI inference market, aiming to simplify output generation. With so many providers, some in the AI industry expect the cost of inference to drop eventually.

However, this only applies to systems handling inference on a small scale. Wharton professor Ethan Mollick said that for models like DeepSeek V3, which provide free answers to a large user base, inference costs are likely to be much higher.

"Frontier model AI inference is only expensive at the scale of large-scale free B2C services (like customer service bots)," Mollick wrote on X in May. "For internal business use, like giving action items after a meeting or providing a first draft of an analysis, the cost of a query is often extremely cheap."

In the last two weeks, leading tech firms have stepped up their investments in AI infrastructure.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced over $60 billion in planned capital expenditures for 2025 as the company ramps up its own AI infrastructure. In a post on Threads, Zuckerberg said the company would be "growing our AI teams significantly" and has "the capital to continue investing in the years ahead." He did not say how much of that would be devoted to inference.

Last week, President Donald Trump also announced Stargate, a joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank that will funnel up to $500 billion in AI infrastructure across the United States.

• I compared spicy chicken sandwiches from Burger King, McDonald's, Chick-fil-A, Popeyes, and Wendy's.
• I thought Burger King's sandwich had a nice kick but not the crispiest chicken patty.
• Chick-fil-A's sandwich took the top spot because it was crispy yet juicy and full of flavor.

While classic chicken sandwiches have long dominated fast-food menus, their spicier counterparts are stealing the spotlight.

For the last couple of years, Gen Z's appetite for spicy foods has been fueling competition in the food market.

In 2025, this trend is expected to intensify, with "complex heat" emerging as the generation's flavor of choice, according to a November 2024 report by Rubix Foods, a food science company. About 48% of 15,000 respondents said they would opt for a spicier version of an item over the original.

Gen Z are also ready to back their preferences with their wallets. The report found that two-thirds of its Gen Z respondents said they were more likely to buy an item if it was advertised as spicy, and 44% would even pay extra for it.

I don't have a high tolerance for spicy food, but still, like other Gen Zers, I prefer a chicken sandwich with a little kick.

To see how popular fast-food chains turned up the heat on their menu, I put their spicy chicken sandwiches to the test, trying and comparing offerings from five major brands.

Here's how they ranked, from my least to most favorite.

5. Wendy's

Cost: $6.39 — excluding tax and tip — at a Wendy's drive-thru in Chicago.

Note: All prices listed here may vary in different markets.

The bun felt stale, lacking the soft, fresh texture you'd expect, and I found the chicken disappointingly dry.

Wendy's introduced its spicy chicken sandwich in 1995, becoming one of the earliest fast-food brands to bring heat to the mainstream chicken sandwich market.

Each burger features a marinated chicken filet tossed in a breading with peppers and eight different spices. The fried chicken is placed atop lettuce, tomato, and mayo.

I'd heard great things about the brand's spicy menu, especially its chicken sandwiches and nuggets, so I was excited to try this.

One bite in, though, I thought the sandwich needed major modifications to compete with offerings from other chain restaurants. From the bun to the veggies, everything felt a bit off to me.

I shared the sandwich with a friend, who felt the sauce was too "liquidy," making the chicken soggy. It also came with limp green lettuce and a lifeless half tomato. In terms of spiciness, I didn't think it tasted any different from a regular Wendy's sandwich.

The only saving grace was that the sandwich came wrapped in foil, which kept it warm and toasty despite the freezing temperatures outside.

While packaging and portion size might win it some points, a great sandwich needs to deliver on taste and texture and this one fell short on both. Even the sauce, which should have added flavor, did little to elevate it.

When I contacted Wendy's, the spokesperson apologized for the bad experience and offered a gift voucher, recommending that I give the sandwich another chance.

4. McDonald's

Cost: $5.89 — excluding tax and tip — at a McDonald's drive-thru in Chicago.

Although well-constructed, the sandwich I tried was stuffed with a very dry chicken filet.

In my experience, McDonald's in the US can be a hit or miss, depending on which location and, at times, what item you order.

Its limited-time spicy chicken nuggets, for example, were a huge hit. The spicy chicken sandwich, on the other hand, was somewhat of a miss for me.

When I received the sandwich, it came warm and wrapped in a cardboard box. Upon opening it, I thought it looked appetizing and filling — it was similar to the Chick-fil-A sandwich, but with a split-top potato bun that included shredded lettuce, Roma tomatoes, a Southern-style fried chicken fillet, and a spicy pepper sauce.

However, when I took my first bite, I was disappointed by how dry and lackluster the burger was. Even in terms of spice, the sandwich did not have much to offer and tasted similar to the McCrispy.

My friend and I agreed that to move up the ranking, this sandwich needed a spicier sauce and maybe some of the punchy seasoning used in the spicy chicken nuggets.

A better alternative and more bang for your buck when you're craving something fried and spicy is the restaurant's Hot 'n Spicy McChicken sandwich. It is perfect as an evening snack, full of flavor, and has the juiciest chicken.

Business Insider contacted McDonald's for comment but did not receive a response before publication.

3. Popeyes

Cost: $4.99 — excluding tax and tip — at a Popeyes drive-thru in Chicago.

The Popeyes spicy sandwich had the juiciest and crispiest chicken filet but lacked seasoning.

Popeyes debuted its chicken sandwich in 2019, offering two flavors: classic and spicy. The sandwich keeps it simple; the crispy chicken filet is packed in a soft brioche bun with cured pickles and spicy mayo.

When my friend and I were doing this taste test, he felt Popeyes deserved a higher ranking for its pillowy soft brioche bun and perfectly crispy, juicy chicken.

While I thought it was a generous sandwich, the underlying taste of oil and the lack of spicy seasoning put me off.

For a sandwich marketed as "spicy," I expected a stronger punch of heat. Instead, the flavor leaned heavily on the richness of the chicken and bun, which, while delicious in their own right, didn't deliver the bold, fiery experience I hoped for. My friend didn't mind the absence of spice, however.

Popeyes has mastered the art of a satisfying chicken sandwich, but for me, the lack of spice kept it from moving higher up in this lineup. A touch more seasoning or a spicier sauce could have pushed it closer to the top.

The brand also serves a ghost pepper sandwich — which, the last time I tried, also did not live up to my spice expectations — but perhaps with some extra sauce, it could be a better option compared to the regular.

When I reached out to Popeyes about my experience, they said they believe its chicken sandwich "stands out as the ultimate choice for chicken lovers because of our perfect balance of flavor, texture, and quality" and that "each bite delivers an irresistible combination of savory, spicy and crunchy."

2. Burger King

Cost: $6.09 — excluding tax and tip — at a Burger King drive-thru in Chicago.

The "fiery" chicken sandwich lived up to its reputation, packing the most heat.

The first thing that hits you when you bite into this sandwich is the kick from the sauce.

So far, all the other sandwiches I'd tasted were either sprinkled with a slight spice mix for a kick, or their fried chicken was coated in a slightly spicier batter.

But Burger King's fiery, crispy chicken sandwich, which was introduced last year, combines both techniques. The triple pepper fiery glaze sauce is also generously spread on both buns, ensuring you taste the spice in every bite.

That generous spread is also where the trouble begins, though. I thought the sauce and the juices from the tomato slice killed the chicken's crispiness, leaving a wet sandwich.

It was also messy to eat, with blobs of sauce and oil dripping out. One of the joys of a good drive-thru burger is being able to eat it without making a mess, but with this one, that was nearly impossible.

On a brighter note, I appreciated that, unlike many traditional sandwiches, this one skips the pickle and features lettuce and tomato instead. The fresh crunch of the vegetables added a nice contrast and helped balance out the meatiness of the sandwich.

In a comment to Business Insider, Burger King said the sandwich "uses a special blend of spices for a bold and balanced level of heat that builds gradually, allowing guests to experience its full flavor profile."

1. Chick-fil-A

Cost: $6.49 — excluding tax and tip — at a Chick-fil-A drive-thru in Chicago.

The perfect seasoning, soft bun, and crunchy chicken landed this in the top spot.

Disclaimer: This has been my go-to order at Chick-fil-A since I first ate at the restaurant in 2022. This sandwich is always served hot, tastes fresh, and is packed with flavor.

This time, when I tried it for the taste test, it was no different. There are two other spicy chicken sandwich variations on its menu, but I prefer the spicy deluxe sandwich because it has vegetables and is more filling.

Visually, this sandwich blew the others out of the water. A large piece of fried chicken was layered between two halves of a soft, buttered bun, topped with one large pickle, a tomato slice, some lettuce, and a slice of pepper jack cheese.

There is no spicy sauce here, but the fried chicken is full of flavor and hits all the right spice notes.

Overall, each sandwich I tried had a distinct flavor profile, varied textures, and different ways of spicing it up.

But Chick-fil-A's chicken sandwich stood out as the complete package. The heat was perfectly balanced: not overpowering, but enough to give each bite a kick. The perfectly seasoned chicken remained crisp and juicy, and the bun held everything together beautifully.

• Lyst has dropped its latest ranking of the hottest fashion brands.
• The fashion search platform's Q4 2024 ranking included brands like Miu Miu and The Row.
• Check out the full list here.

The fashion search platform Lyst has dropped its latest ranking of fashion's hottest brands.

Lyst compiled the list by analyzing its 200 million shoppers' behavior in the fourth quarter of 2024, looking at searches on and off the platform, product views, sales, and social media engagement.

Here's a closer look at the companies that made the top 10.

10. UGG

Q4 saw Ugg make the list for the first time in 2024.

While the company is used to seasonal success, Lyst said the footwear brand saw "unprecedented" demand in Q4, with searches up 358% over the three-month period and up 12% year on year.

Deckers Brands, which owns UGG, said the brand's net sales increased 16.1% to around $2.2 billion in the fiscal year 2024.

UGG also tapped into the Gen Z market, partnering with model Alex Consani and taking advantage of TikTok trends.

Lyst said UGG's Classic Ultra Mini Boots were Q4's second hottest product.

9. The Row

The Row was founded by celebrity twin sisters Ashley Olsen and Mary-Kate Olsen in 2006.

In 2024, The Row reportedly received investments from the Wertheimer brothers — the owners of Chanel — and Francoise Bettencourt Meyers — the billionaire heiress of L'oreal.

The brand has dressed famous faces like Saoirse Ronan, Pamela Anderson, and Dakota Johnson.

8. Moncler

The brand's revenues were around 1.57 billion euros (about $1.63 billion) in the first nine months of 2024, up from around 1.5 billion euros (about $1.56 billion) in the first nine months of 2023.

Remo Ruffini, the CEO of Moncler S.p.A., said the company had focused on building lasting connections with customers and "creating energy and emotions" around its brands, which also include Stone Island.

7. Alaïa

The brand recently opened a new flagship store on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, a high-end street just off the Champs-Élysées in Paris.

It also opened boutique stores in Las Vegas and Costa Mesa in 2024.

Myriam Serrano, the CEO of Alaïa, said in Swiss-based owner Richemont's annual report that retail was experiencing "strong growth" and was being boosted by other store openings in New York, Tokyo, and Shanghai.

6. Bottega Veneta

Bottega Veneta, an Italian luxury fashion house, brought in revenues of 397 million euros (around $413 million) in the third quarter of 2024, up 5% on a comparable basis.

The brand's owner, French multinational Kering, said Bottega's performance continued "to be buoyed by the outstanding success of its Leather Goods range."

5. Coach

Coach finished 2024 hot, moving up 10 places in Lyst's ranking from Q3 to Q4.

Lyst said the brand's rise reflected "an exceptional quarter across all of our key Index metrics," with demand increasing 65% quarter on quarter and 332% year on year.

The brand also targeted the Gen Z market with products such as its cherry bag charm, Lyst said.

Lyst's hottest product of Q4 was Coach's Brooklyn shoulder bag.

4. Loewe

Loewe is a luxury fashion brand from Spain known for its ready-to-wear clothes, accessories, shoes, and fragrances.

2024 was a big year for Loewe. The brand sponsored the Met Gala and dressed celebrities including Ariana Grande and Jamie Dornan. It also dressed the stars of Luca Guadagnino's "Challengers."

Loewe is owned by parent company LVMH. In its annual report, LVMH said its fashion and leather goods section showed "solid resilience" in 2024.

"Loewe was buoyed by growing brand awareness and the bold creativity of its collections," it said.

3. Prada

Prada held a spot in Lyst's top three hottest brands all year round.

The brand saw retail sales rise by 4% year on year in the first nine months of 2024.

Andrea Guerra, the CEO of Prada Group, said in an October press release that the Prada brand had "recorded a solid performance" and showed "resilience against sector headwinds."

2. Saint Laurent

While Yves Saint Laurent's third-quarter 2024 sales were down 12% on a comparable basis, the brand's reputation was bolstered by its segue into film production, with Saint Laurent Productions' "Emilia Pérez" receiving multiple Golden Globes and Oscars nominations.

1. Miu Miu

Miu Miu was the big winner of 2024, however. The brand claimed the No. 1 spot in three out of the four quarterly Lyst rankings.

A sister brand to Prada, Miu Miu saw retail sales up 97% year on year in the first nine months of 2024.

The brand also had the third-hottest product in Lyst's Q4 ranking, a gray fleece sweatshirt.

• Fintech startup Crowded raised $7.5 million in funding led by Flashpoint.
• The fintech startup aids nonprofits in financial management, boasting over 35 institutional clients.
• Crowded's fundraise comes as the White House withdraws its federal grant freeze.

Miami-based fintech startup Crowded, which provides financial management for nonprofits, just closed a new funding round.

The 35-person company clinched $7.5 million in Series A funding led by London-based firm Flashpoint, the startup told Business Insider exclusively. Florida Opportunity Fund and Wilson's Bird Capital also participated in the funding round, along with Sarona Ventures and The Garage.

Crowded helps nonprofits track spending, deposit funds, and generate tax forms. The startup has over 35 customers, including the Pi Kappa Alpha Fraternity and Harvard Athletics, which uses the platform to manage funds for student-athletes.

Crowded will use the funding to build out its sales and marketing teams, co-founder and CEO Daniel Grunstein said. "We really want to double down on what's worked for us, which is that in-person, field sales approach," he said.

The investment follows a $6 million seed round led by The Garage in October 2022, bringing Crowded's total funding to $13.5 million.

Before co-founding Crowded, Grunstein worked in financial services at JP Morgan, where he helped out with products for donor-advised funds. There, he noticed that nonprofits lacked resources on how to manage finances, like banking and tax filing. "This recurring theme kept coming up," Grunstein said. "There was a lot on how to get money and not a lot on how to manage the money you've raised."

Grunstein's co-founder, Darryl Gecelter, previously worked for Graduway, an alumni networking startup that merged with Gravyty, a fundraising startup, in 2021. Gecelter's higher education contacts from Graduway helped Crowded secure collegiate clubs and fraternities as early clients, Grunstein said.

Crowded's fundraise comes amid increasing uncertainty for government funding of nonprofits, says Grunstein. President Donald Trump's administration temporarily paused the payment of billions of dollars of federal grants and loans on Tuesday. On Wednesday, the White House Office of Management and Budget pulled the memo.

Still, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a post on X that President Trump's executive order on federal funding would "remain in full force and effect," adding to confusion over the funding freeze.

Many nonprofits depend on these federal grants for their operations. While the funding freeze memo was scrapped, the sudden shakeup is "coming out of left field," Grunstein said.

Despite the potentially uncertain future for government funding for some nonprofits, Grunstein still expects these organizations to see an uptick in reporting and compliance requirements.

Crowded is one of a handful of companies attempting to streamline nonprofit financial management. Givefront, a startup in Y Combinator's Winter 2024 cohort, also does bookkeeping for nonprofits.

• Elon Musk brought up fairy tales, trains, and toddlers during Tesla's fourth-quarter earnings call.
• The carmaker's CEO also touched on telescopes, Superman, and inventors shouting "Eureka!"
• Scroll down for Musk's nine best quotes from the call.

Elon Musk touched on everything from fairy tales and toddlers to trains and telescopes during Tesla's fourth-quarter earnings call on Wednesday.

The automaker's CEO nodded to "The Boy Who Cried Wolf," joked about people shooting lasers out of their eyes like Superman, and said he wanted to "make manufacturing cool again."

Here are Musk's nine best quotes from the call:

1. "Some of these things I've said for quite a long time, and I know people have said, 'Well, Elon is the boy who cried wolf like several times.' But I'm telling you, there's a damn wolf this time, and you can drive it. In fact, it could drive you. It's a self-driving wolf." (Musk was joking about how he'd repeatedly pushed back the release of Full Self-Driving.)
2. "For a lot of people, they, like, their experience of Tesla autonomy is like — if it's even a year old, if it's even two years old — it's like meeting someone when they're like a toddler and thinking that they're going to be a toddler forever. But obviously they're not going be a toddler forever. They grow up. But if their last experience was like, 'Oh, FSD was a toddler.' It's like: 'Well, it's grown up now. Have you seen it? It's like, walks and talks.'"

3. "It's one of those things where I think long term, Optimus will be — Optimus has the potential to be north of $10 trillion in revenue, like it's really bananas. So, that, you can obviously afford a lot of training compute in that situation. In fact, even $500 billion training compute in that situation would be quite a good deal." (Musk was discussing how much it might cost to train Tesla's humanoid robots and how lucrative they could be for the company.)

   

4. "Now, with Optimus, there's a lot of uncertainty on the exact timing because it's not like a train arriving at the station for Optimus. And like, we're literally designing the train and the tracks and the station in real time."
5. "There is no company in the world that is as good at real-world AI as Tesla. I don't even know who's in second place. Like you say, like, who's in the second place for real-world AI? I would need a very big telescope to see them. That's how far behind they are."

6. "The Hollywood thing is like, it's like some lone inventor in a garage goes 'Eureka!' and, suddenly, it files a patent and, suddenly, there's millions of units. I'm like, listen guys, we're missing really 99% of the story.

   "Hollywood shows you the 1% inspiration but forgets about the 99% perspiration of actually figuring out how to make that initial prototype manufacturable and then manufactured at high volume such that the product is reliable, low cost, consistent, doesn't break down all the time, and that is 100 times harder at least than the prototype."

7. "Obviously, humans drive without shooting lasers out of their eyes — I mean, unless you're Superman."
   (Musk was explaining why he doesn't believe LiDAR is the best technology to enable autonomous driving.)
8. "Well, at Tesla, obviously, we think manufacturing is cool. SpaceX, we think manufacturing is cool. But in general, for talented Americans, they need to — beyond my companies, beyond me and my teams here, in general, we need to make manufacturing cool again in America. And like, I honestly think people should move from like law and finance into manufacturing. That's my honest opinion. We have too many — this is both a compliment and a criticism. We have too much talent in law and finance in America, and there should be more of that talent in manufacturing."
9. "But yeah, we're in this perverse situation where people will turn the car off autopilot so the computer doesn't yell at them, check their text messages while steering the car with their knee and not looking out the window."
   (Musk was discussing how Tesla's autopilot warns drivers not to look at their devices for safety, leading some to enable manual driving and then check their texts and emails.)

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After the Fed cut rates three times in the second half of 2024, savings account interest rates started falling, and it doesn't look like that will change anytime soon. But that doesn't mean you're out of opportunities to earn.

Business Insider's senior personal finance reporter, Jennifer Streaks, explains what the Fed's latest decision means for your savings, how to lock in a high rate before they slip further, and why high-yield savings accounts are still worth your time.

Read more:

• The Best High-Yield Savings Accounts Right Now

• Savings Rate Forecast 2025: Will Rates Go Down?

• The Best CD Rates Right Now

• An American Airlines flight collided with a Black Hawk helicopter in Washington, DC.
• The nation's capital is home to some of the most congested and highly governed airspace.
• Reagan National Airport has the US's busiest runway, with over 800 flights a day, the MWAA says.

An American Airlines flight and a military helicopter collided late Wednesday in one of the most congested and tightly controlled airspaces in the country.

Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, just outside Washington, DC, is home to the country's busiest runway, with over 800 takeoffs and landings a day, the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority says. It's the closest of three area airports to the city, about 3 miles south of the White House.

Military helicopters also frequently fly low over the nearby Potomac River, transiting between military bases close by and the Pentagon, about 1 mile north of the airport.

Flying into and out of the airport, with short runways and such heavily restricted airspace nearby, is "like threading a needle," one pilot previously told Business Insider.

"It's a beehive of activity," Dennis Tajer, an American Airlines captain and spokesperson for its pilot union, told The Washington Post. "It's extremely compact, and it's a high volume of traffic."

Search efforts for the 64 people on board American Eagle Flight 5342 continued through the night. At a press conference Thursday morning, Washington, DC's fire chief said that no survivors were expected.

The Bombardier CRJ700 was operated by PSA Airlines, a regional subsidiary of American Airlines. It collided with a military UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter carrying three people.

Along with New York's LaGuardia Airport, Reagan is one of two in the country subject to a perimeter rule. At Reagan, this limits routes to a distance of 1,250 miles — though Congress has increasingly approved more slots to operate beyond this, which has made the airport busier.

Unions and regulators have raised concerns about the country's air traffic system after several near-misses in recent years.

"We've had so many close calls with runway incursions and commercial flights almost colliding, and when something repeats over and over again, we call that a trend," Anthony Brickhouse, a US aviation safety expert, told BI.

"We've been trending in this direction for two or three years now, and unfortunately, tonight, it happened," he added.

The National Transportation Safety Board, Federal Aviation Administration, and the Pentagon have announced investigations.

The crash brings an end to a remarkable period of aviation safety in the US.

It is the first major fatal crash on US soil since 2013. Three people died in July that year when Asiana Airlines Flight 214 crashed short of the runway at San Francisco International Airport.

Wednesday's collision was the first involving a US airline on US soil since February 2009, when a Colgan Air Bombardier Q400 crashed into a house near Buffalo, New York.

Fifty people died after the aircraft entered a stall and the pilots failed to respond appropriately.

The Federal Aviation Administration consequently revised its pilot-fatigue rules and required that all airline pilots hold an airline pilot transport license — the highest level of certificate.

Since 2013, two flights on US soil had led to fatalities before Wednesday. One Southwest Airlines passenger died from her injuries in 2018 after she was partially ejected through a broken window.

And in 2019, a man died when PenAir Flight 3296 overshot the runway while landing in Alaska.

• I tried a $38 gel-manicure kit and compared it to my usual $110 professional gel set.
• In a time crunch, I could see why the at-home kit could be useful, but it's a lot of work.
• For quality alone, I'd rather pay nearly three times as much to get my nails done professionally.

I get my nails done about once a month, which can certainly dig into my budget, so I'm always looking for money-saving hacks.

My standard structured-gel manicure costs $110, and I wanted to see if a $38 at-home polish kit could come close to the professional results.

I compared the manicures based on their application processes, aesthetics, longevity, and nail health upon removal.

Here's how they stacked up.

The at-home kit took some effort.

I'm not too experienced with applying gel polish, so the Le Mini Macaron at-home kit took me about an hour.

I started with cuticle and nail prep before applying two coats of polish and curing each individual nail under the UV lamp.

I'm used to lengthy nail appointments, so I wasn't surprised or bothered by the amount of time this took — especially since I could do it from the comfort of my home.

I was much more relaxed during the professional manicure, even if it took longer.

My structured manicure took a total of two hours and involved cuticle and nail prep, three coats of gel polish, and nail art. It didn't feel that long, but I also had to travel 20 to 30 minutes to my nail tech and back.

Similar to the at-home manicure, the first coat of polish was a thin layer followed by a thicker one. However, in this case, the layers built up the apex of my natural nail to hopefully avoid long-term breakage.

Gel can sometimes be tricky to work with and even cause allergic reactions if applied improperly, so I was able to relax much more during the professional manicure.

I went with a very simple set at home.

My at-home kit came with nail stickers, but I chose to stick with a uniform light blue on every nail.

Although it was simple, the polish still had that authentic, shiny gel look. I liked how it had a fresh salon-quality feel, too.

I let the nail artist work their magic on the design.

For my structured manicure, I went for a gaudy look with gold chrome powder and colorful gemstones.

This added to the length of the appointment and took creative collaboration between me and my nail tech during the appointment, but I loved it.

The flashy mani was definitely more up my alley, but I could see both manicures being great fits for different occasions.

My at-home set started to chip fairly quickly.

The one major downside of my at-home manicure was its longevity.

The kit says that the polish can last up to 14 days, but I used it ahead of a trip to Mexico and noticed chips early in my travels. In the end, I noticed imperfections appearing within five days.

Luckily, the kit's mini lamp is small enough for travel and allowed me to do immediate touch-ups on chips. Some of my cover-ups came out bumpy from the uneven layering, but it wasn't an all-around awful look.

A structured manicure's strong suit is longevity.

Structured manicures are supposed to last three to four weeks, and mine made it the full four while staying mostly intact.

Although there was obvious nail growth and a handful of gems fell off, the polish didn't chip at all.

Removing my gel at home was simple.

Le Mini Macaron's at-home kit came with gel-removal packets for each nail.

I thoroughly loved the user-friendly design of the removal process. I just inserted each nail into a packet, wrapped it tightly around my finger, and waited as the liquid broke down the polish.

Although there were some bits left over that I had to file off, it was refreshing not to have to go to a salon to properly remove gel polish.

After, I thought my nails looked a little thinner and felt more malleable than before.

I think my nails looked better after the structured manicure.

I knew I'd have to go to a salon to remove my structured manicure, especially due to the 3D gel and gemstones. The removal took about 45 minutes and cost $15 — raising the total cost of the experience to $125.

When my manicure was removed, I noticed the tips of my nails looked thin. However, the majority of them seemed stronger and healthier than after I used the at-home kit.

Despite the price tag, I ultimately preferred the structured manicure.

Le Mini Macaron's at-home gel kit was super user-friendly. The directions were clear and easy to follow, making an expensive experience more accessible.

Plus, you can use the kit again and again, making it an even better value for future manicures.

However, overall, I prefer a professional structured manicure for its longevity and nail-health benefits.

Paying nearly three times more for the professional application, builder gel, nail art, and removal was worth it to me.

• Investors are opening their wallets to social-shopping startups as TikTok's US future sits in limbo.
• Companies like Whatnot and ShopMy have raised rounds in the tens of millions of dollars.
• Upstarts are also making acquisitions and launching creator funds to capitalize on the moment.

The moment is ripe for social-commerce startups in the US.

Investors are betting big on platforms like Whatnot and ShopMy. In January, Whatnot said it closed a $265 million fundraising round after crossing $3 billion in livestream sales in 2024. ShopMy also said it closed a new round worth $77.5 million after reaching profitability.

"The timing of this raise aligns with a fundamental shift we're seeing in the market — creator marketing is evolving from an experimental channel into a core performance driver for brands," ShopMy's CEO Harry Rein told Business Insider.

Part of the category's momentum stems from TikTok. Over the past year, the company helped popularize livestream selling and connect thousands of merchants with influencers via its e-commerce tool, Shop.

But the app's US future is uncertain. It's disappeared from app stores and faces other fallout from a divest-or-ban law that requires its Chinese owner to separate from its US assets. Some e-commerce partners are testing alternative platforms to diversify where they sell.

Outside ShopMy and Whatnot, apps like Flip are gaining steam this month. Flip, a TikTok-like app focused on user-generated product reviews, recently landed in the top 10 in Apple's app-store rankings. Flip could benefit from a TikTok ban if the company fails to find a path forward by an April deadline set by President Donald Trump.

"If the TikTok ban does move forward, these platforms have a huge opportunity," said Ollie Forsyth, a former senior manager at investment firm Antler who now writes the newsletter New Economies. "Not only can they acquire huge volumes of creators, they can also acquire a huge number of new consumer users."

How social-commerce startups are seizing the moment

On top of investors pouring cash into social-commerce startups, startups themselves are spending now to capitalize on a moment of flux in the US market.

Flip pledged to offer equity grants to creators, for example, to encourage them to engage more on the platform.

Attracting new users in large numbers will be key to filling the TikTok void if a ban were to go into effect, said Matt Nichols, a partner at Commerce Ventures.

TikTok Shop succeeded because it had a unique combination of a large user base and an algorithm that could match those users with products they were likely to buy, Nichols said.

"Twenty years ago, retailers dictated what consumers purchased, and there was a long sales cycle," Nichols said. These days, there are "more quickly changing demand trends based on influencers, which has worked really well for TikTok Shop, but also hyper-fast retailers like Shein."

As an investor, he sees the best opportunities in startups working to help retailers and influencers succeed on other platforms that already have similarly big user bases, like Instagram and YouTube.

Former TikTok e-commerce leader Sandie Hawkins said in a recent interview with BI that the shopping experience TikTok made popular is likely to be imitated elsewhere.

She said social shopping creates a "community environment" where friends tell you what they think you should buy. "You're taking those recommendations right there, and you're closing the loop instead of having to send them to go someplace else," she said.

Here's a breakdown of some of the big deals announced in January in the social-commerce category:

• Livestream shopping app Whatnot closed a $265 million Series E round at a roughly $5 billion valuation. DST Global, Avra Capital, and Greycroft led the round, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Durable Capital Partners, among others.

  Whatnot's CEO Grant LaFontaine told BI the company planned to use its new funding to scale marketing, product, and engineering and expand into new markets like Australia.

• Gloss Ventures, an investment company focused on launching creator brands through social commerce and other channels, raised $15 million from private-equity firm Peterson Partners.

  Gloss Ventures' cofounder Quinn Roukema told BI the new funds would support its marketing efforts and plans to expand retail sales globally.

• Creator-affiliate platform ShopMy raised a $77.5 million Series B round led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Bain Capital Ventures. Menlo Ventures participated, as did previous investors Inspired Capital and AlleyCorp.

  Rein, ShopMy's CEO, told BI the company planned to use its funds to expand into new categories like hospitality and health and wellness, as well as to scale its performance marketing tech with new data analytics and measurement features.

• Influencer-marketing firm Later announced a $250 million acquisition of affiliate company Mavely. The deal was funded with a strategic investment from growth equity investor Summit Partners. CEO Scott Sutton told BI the purchase aimed to help Later offer clients a fuller picture of their marketing spend.
  
  He said Mavely has 120,000 creators driving sales of over $1 billion in merchandise value.
  
  "All of that data and all of that ability to track what's happening in the creator economy helps us to make money for creators, helps consumers discover the right types of products, and helps us deploy ad dollars for marketers in a really seamless way," Sutton said.

• The US economy grew more slowly in the fourth quarter of 2024.
• Real GDP increased at an annualized rate of 2.3%, below the forecast of 2.7%.
• Economists think the economy was strong in 2024 and the chance of a recession in 2025 is low.

US real gross domestic product increased at an annualized rate of 2.3% in the fourth quarter, well below the forecast of 2.7%.

That growth indicates a cooler economy than in the second and third quarters of the year.

"Compared to the third quarter, the deceleration in real GDP in the fourth quarter primarily reflected downturns in investment and exports," the Bureau of Economic Analysis said on Thursday.

Gross private domestic investment fell at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.6% in the fourth quarter after rising by 0.8% in the third quarter.

Consumer spending largely accounted for the overall real GDP growth in the fourth quarter. Personal consumption expenditures increased at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.2%, compared with 3.7% in the third quarter.

While the overall growth in the fourth quarter was cooler than in the second and third quarters of 2024, the 2.3% figure is an advance estimate, so it could change.

Real GDP growth for the full year was on par with the previous year's increase. Real GDP rose by 2.8% in 2024, compared with 2.9% in 2023.

Scott Helfstein, the head of investment strategy at Global X, said the GDP figures "provide further justification for the Fed pause." The Federal Reserve held interest rates steady this week after several consecutive rate cuts in 2024.

"The economy continues to grow at a healthy rate despite higher interest rates," Helfstein said. "While investment cooled a little, that was offset by a pickup in consumption around the holidays. Seems like a good time to ride the wave."

Matt Colyar, an economist for Moody's Analytics, told Business Insider before the publication of the new GDP data that the 2024 economy was strong.

"Inflation is still above the Fed's target but moderated throughout the year, and this happened without any meaningful increase in joblessness," Colyar said. "The increase in the unemployment rate was driven by an increase in labor supply. This helped ease some of the inflationary pressure coming from the labor market via wage growth."

Average monthly job growth was 186,000 in 2024, personal spending continued to climb, and a recession was avoided.

While it's still early in the year and President Donald Trump's second term has just begun, Elizabeth Renter, a senior economist at NerdWallet, argued that the risk of a recession this year is low.

"The issue is there is much we don't know right now about how the year will unfold," Renter said in a statement to BI. "Some potential policies, such as tariffs, stand to be inflationary. Others, such as those that could reduce the workforce, may slow economic growth. Most potential economic policies will take time to implement, and even more time to influence the economy, so my outlook for the 2025 economy remains on solid footing."

Colyar said Moody's Analytics expected cooler GDP growth this year.

"We expect growth slows closer to 2% in 2025 and is a little bit stronger than that in the first quarter," Colyar said. "That's not a concerning number. Consumers have grappled with higher inflation, and there are some budding signs that people are pulling back."

• Hackers are using the Gemini chatbot in their operations, per a report from Google.
• It said that hackers from Iran, China, and North Korea are using Gemini to boost productivity.
• But hackers hadn't achieved any major breakthroughs using the tech, the report said.

Businesses are using AI to improve their productivity — and it's no different for hackers from Iran, China, and North Korea, according to a report from Google.

The tech giant's Threat Intelligence Group said in a report on Wednesday that while hackers were using its Gemini chatbot to operate more efficiently, it wasn't yet a game changer for new capabilities.

"Threat actors are experimenting with Gemini to enable their operations, finding productivity gains but not yet developing novel capabilities," it said.

"Rather than enabling disruptive change, generative AI allows threat actors to move faster and at higher volume."

Google said that state-backed hackers were using the tool for tasks including generating code, researching targets, or identifying network vulnerabilities. Promoters of disinformation, it said, were using Gemini for developing fake personas, translation, and messaging.

The company's cybersecurity unit added that rapid advances in large language models, or LLMs, meant that hackers were constantly devising new ways to use the tools.

"Current LLMs on their own are unlikely to enable breakthrough capabilities for threat actors. We note that the AI landscape is in constant flux, with new AI models and agentic systems emerging daily," the report said.

The report said Iranian hackers were the biggest users of Gemini, employing it to craft phishing campaigns or conduct "reconnaissance on defense experts and organizations."

Chinese hackers were mainly focused on using the technology to troubleshoot code and obtain "deeper access to target networks," Google's report said.

Meanwhile, North Korean actors have used the technology to craft fake cover letters and research jobs as part of a plan to secretly place agents into remote IT jobs in Western companies.

US officials last year said that North Korea is placing people in remote positions in US firms using false or stolen identities as part of a mass extortion scheme.

Google said Gemini's safeguards prevented hackers from using it for more sophisticated attacks, such as accessing information to manipulate Google's own products.

Analysts have long warned that generative AI, which produces text or media in response to user requests, has the capacity to make hacking and disinformation operations more effective.

A report by the UK's National Cyber Security Center last week echoed Google's conclusions on the impact of the tech on cybercrime. It said that while AI would "increase the volume and heighten the impact" of cyber attacks, the overall impact would be "uneven."

• Liang Wenfeng is the founder of AI lab DeepSeek, whose AI chatbot shook tech stocks this week.
• In a rare interview in 2023, he gave insight into his hiring strategy.
• "Experience is not that important" when aiming for long-term success, he said.

Liang Wenfeng, the founder of the Chinese AI lab DeepSeek, has an unusual take on hiring: favoring creativity over experience.

Liang rarely gives interviews, but he has come into the spotlight since DeepSeek startled the tech world with its cost-efficient AI models that appear to match the capabilities of US rivals despite using less advanced chips.

In 2023, the year he launched DeepSeek as an offshoot of his hedge fund, he gave an interview to 36KR, a Chinese tech publication, where he shared insight into his hiring strategy and why he doesn't think "experience" guarantees long-term success.

Liang was asked whether he'd consider recruiting talent from overseas and possibly within the pool of employees at US AI giants like OpenAI and Facebook's AI Research.

"If you are pursuing short-term goals, it is right to find people with ready experience, "he said. "But if you look at the long-term, experience is not that important. Basic skills, creativity, and passion are much more important. From this perspective, there are many suitable candidates in China."

When asked why he didn't think experience was so important, he said, "Having done a similar job before doesn't mean you can do this job."

"Our core technical positions are mainly filled by fresh graduates or those who have graduated one or two years ago," he said.

He continued, "When doing something, experienced people will tell you without hesitation that you should do it one way. But inexperienced people will repeatedly explore and think seriously about how to do it, and then find a solution that suits the current actual situation."

"We will not deliberately avoid experienced people, but we look more at their ability," he added.

In a separate interview with Chinese media in July last year, Liang said his company's selection criteria "have always been passion and curiosity."

"So many people have some unique experiences, which are very interesting," he added. "And a lot of people thirst for the opportunity to do research — and that desire far exceeds their need for money."

Since the market's DeepSeek-induced sell-off on Monday, AI stocks such as Nvidia have steadied. DeepSeek has been a hot topic on earnings calls as tech companies, including Meta and Microsoft, face questions over their huge AI infrastructure investments in the face of DeepSeek's more efficient approach.

Sam Altman, the CEO of ChatGPT maker OpenAI, said that his company would accelerate the release of "better models" in response to DeepSeek. On Wednesday, the company said it was reviewing whether DeepSeek "inappropriately" replicated "advanced US models."

• Stacey Black opened too many credit cards as soon as she was eligible.
• Getting a job at a credit union helped her realize her financial mistakes.
• She teaches others to save and use credit wisely.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Stacey Black, lead financial educator and Certified Financial Education Instructor at BECU, a Washington and South Carolina credit union. It has been edited for length and clarity.

When I was about 18, I was at the mall when a store offered me a credit card. I had no clue what it was or how to use it responsibly. Before long, I had a credit card for every major store. I messed up my credit big time.

My parents never taught me about money. Instead, I learned from observing them.

I thought my dad was rich with his stack of credit cards. As I got older, I realized he was probably just in debt. My parents were divorced, and I lived with my mom. She would often talk about her financial worries but still splurge. Having those examples of money management really messed me up financially.

I learned about finances by working at a credit union

Luckily, when I was in my early 20s, I started working as a teller at BECU, a credit union. I didn't even know what a credit union was at the time. But I started seeing the signs that financial responsibility was important.

This wasn't nearly 30 years ago, so there weren't as many financial resources readily available. Luckily, I had access to a whole financial education team at work. I could seek them out and ask questions. That felt very lucky. I didn't know how other people my age were learning about finances since it was never discussed in schools, and most parents I knew didn't discuss it.

My mistakes benefit me as an educator

I still had some bumps in the road. When I went to buy a house in my early 30s, my poor credit came to haunt me. But eventually I got a hold of my finances. A big breakthrough was thinking about periodic expenses — car registration and inspection that aren't recurring monthly expenses but still add up fast. Once I learned about those, I could create a budget that accounted for all my spending.

When I started working at BECU, I was in school to become a teacher. I pivoted to become a financial educator, helping people from all backgrounds learn about money. I also talked with my two children and many foster children about finances. Whether it's my kids or clients, I tell people I can speak to this because I've made all the mistakes.

I tried to lead through actions, not just conversations

Conversations are important, but kids can shut down if they know you're trying to educate them. So, I tried to lead through actions, not just words. When my kids were younger, I'd point out prices like I'd point out colors. Later, I brought them into major financial decisions, like helping me research a car.

I urged kids to track their spending

I've always encouraged my biological and foster children to track their spending. Kids and teens often don't love this, but it gives them a tool to look back on and understand where their money went. Then, they can discuss whether they wish they'd done things differently. It also lets them see their progress toward financial goals.

I gave them a means to make money

I wanted my kids to learn that if they needed money, they could earn it. So, I posted chores with a set dollar amount on the fridge. Someone who needed $10 for a movie could mow the lawn. This approach worked so well that my kids' friends even started coming over when they needed to earn.

I made loans with interest

My financial troubles started with credit cards, which were uncontrolled borrowing. So, when my kids came to ask me for money, I made it a formal arrangement. When my son was in sixth grade, he wanted money to buy a Go-Cart. I had him sign a contract outlining interest payments. He didn't purchase a Go-Cart, but the conversation came in handy when he needed a car a few years later.

I was OK with making mistakes

Lots of parents shy away from money conversations because they feel like they don't have it all figured out. That's OK. I made mistakes and needed to adjust my approach to each child. It's also okay for kids to make mistakes while they have the safety net of living with you.

Finding out what works for your family might take some time and effort, but the effort will be worth it when you send your kids into the world with financial know-how.