• I had no practical reason to move from San Francisco to Athens, Greece, just an undeniable feeling.
• Turns out, moving to Athens for no reason was exactly the right choice for my career.
• I quit my job in finance, published two books, and transformed my career where I now help others.

When I boarded my Lufthansa flight for the 16-hour journey from San Francisco to Greece, I didn't know a single person in the country I was about to call my new home.

I had no practical reason for making the move. In San Francisco, where I had been living for the last 15 years, I had stable employment, a circle of long-term friends, and an apartment I loved.

Moving to Greece was stepping into the unknown. There was no new job waiting, no friends, no apartment — I didn't even speak the language. Yet, I had this undeniable feeling that Athens was where I should be.

Moving to Athens was the right choice for my career

As I settled into my seat, I felt an overwhelming sense of happiness and excitement. What should have been a moment of anxiety was the opposite. At the age of 41, I felt like my life was about to begin.

I became a Certified Public Accountant at the age of 24, not because I loved accounting and finance, but because it was a solid, practical career choice. In some ways, it was a good calculation, my job in finance offered me a stable income and a comfortable lifestyle. On a deeper level, though, my days of reporting financial results felt stagnant and uninspiring.

I had no way of knowing at the time, but moving to Athens for no reason besides following my intuition was exactly the right choice for my career.

Since moving, I've traded my career in finance to become an author and business trainer

At first, I continued working remotely as the CFO of an interactive agency in California, but concurrently, I pursued a certification in the Enneagram, a personality system that deepens self-awareness and enhances understanding of others.

The Enneagram is a system I'd been passionate about for years, but I'd never imagined turning it into a career.

After living in Greece for three years, the finance work had begun to feel less and less congruent with my Greek life. So, I quit and turned my attention more fully towards the Enneagram.

I didn't know exactly what I would do next, but with more free time, I began to write. I published my first book in 2016, called "Headstart for Happiness," which combines the Enneagram personality system with yoga exercises. Then I wrote a second one, "The Nine Keys," focused on the Enneagram in romantic relationships.

While promoting "The Nine Keys" at a conference in Portugal, an audience member approached me to ask if I would be interested in helping him in his corporate training business. Before long, I was training business teams in Europe and the United States, helping them unlock their full potential.

I also began offering business and personal retreats in Greece, letting me share the love of my adopted country with others.

This redesigned life has transformed the way I view everything

Before moving, I imagined I would retire at some point in my 60s.

Now, I don't think about retirement at all because there's nothing I want to retire from — this is exactly how I want to spend my time for the rest of my days by helping people improve their lives.

Back home, my friends and family have all been supportive of my decision to move, and with technology and frequent visits, it wasn't hard to stay in touch.

Admittedly, starting my social life over wasn't easy. I rented an apartment in the Acropolis neighborhood and, before long, formed a friendship with the family who owned the souvenir shop next door.

Their 25-year-old daughter welcomed me into her social circle, inviting me everywhere from urban bike rides with a group called "Free Day" to bouzoukia — traditional Greek live music shows where I was advised that arriving before midnight would be far too early.

The bond grew so strong she even asked me to be the godmother of her first child, which led to yet another adventure when I was baptized Greek Orthodox in order to fulfill my role as "nona."

Aside from this connection, platforms like MeetUp and expat groups became the foundation of my early social life in Greece.

The main difference between my new and old life is how alive I feel

I feel energized and excited when I wake up in the morning because I feel like I am doing my life's work.

I focus a lot on my health because I want to be able to keep sharing my work with others for years to come.

If you want to change your life, my message is simple: you can. I did. Your path doesn't have to be as dramatic as mine. Like Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "You don't need to see the whole staircase, just take the first step."

• I was the 'fun aunt' who cared for my seven nieces and nephews for many years.
• I thought my extensive experience with kids had prepared me for motherhood, but I was wrong.
• Babysitting let me love and nurture these children without the weight of long-term responsibility.

I have three nephews and four nieces, and I babysat them from the time they were newborns until they started school. My sisters dropped them off at our home every morning, and my mother and I cared for them until their mothers returned from work. It may have looked like we were running a daycare, but to me, it was pure joy. I was in my late teens at the time and I adored those kids, had endless fun with them, and still think of them as my own, even though they're all in their late teens now.

But being a fun auntie is quite different from the 24/7 demands of motherhood. Something that surprised me as my own family grew.

The shock of constant responsibility

Fast forward a few years, and everything looked very, very different. Whether it was the chaos of first-time motherhood or the haze of postpartum exhaustion, I found myself wondering, "Wait, did I ever handle babies this small?"

I couldn't understand why it had felt so much easier to be the favorite aunt of multiple kids than to care for just one. For months, I convinced myself that my son was simply more demanding than all of them combined. But eventually, I realized he was just like any other baby, except I was his mother. And to him, that made all the difference.

I thought I understood tantrums. I had witnessed a few epic meltdowns while babysitting, so I assumed I was prepared. Turns out, those were just trailers. What my child has offered up in the subsequent years is the full feature presentation!

What I've since realized, is babysitting is like test-driving a car. You get to enjoy the shiny new features, maybe push the limits a little, and then hand the keys back. Parenting is owning the car. You're responsible for the maintenance, the insurance, and figuring out why there's a half-eaten granola bar stuck to the upholstery. I knew how to change a diaper. But nothing prepared me for the sheer volume of diapers a tiny human can produce in just one day.

The myth of control I had as an aunt busted when I became a mother

I used to laugh when people said sleep deprivation was torture. Now, I understand. I've negotiated with a 2-year-old over pajama colors at 3 a.m., and I've lost arguments with a 4-year-old about whether only ketchup on toast qualifies as breakfast. I've learned that "mommy brain" is real, my tolerance for noise is superhuman, and I can function on minimal sleep. None of which, I'll now admit, I ever had to endure as an aunt.

When I babysat my nieces and nephews, all I cared about was being the fun aunt. There was no pressure to parent the right way. I made their favorite snacks, curated their YouTube playlists, dressed them up in adorable outfits, and styled their hair. The stakes were low, and the joy was abundant.

So why, after babysitting for years, was I still unprepared for motherhood?

Babysitting let me love and nurture these children without the weight of long-term responsibility. I fed them, bathed them, and even had a hand in helping them learn to walk and talk. But I never had to worry about their education, doctor's appointments, or health concerns. I didn't have to make the big decisions. That, I've learned, is the difference between being a fun aunt and being a mother.

Sometimes, I feel guilty that I don't fulfill my kids' every little wish like I did for my nieces and nephews. But I've realized that motherhood isn't about always saying yes. It's about showing up in ways that matter. I may not have the time to make French toast every morning, but I am fighting battles for them that I never had to as an aunt. And in the beautiful balance of life, my kids now get their share of extra love from their grandmothers, aunts, uncles, and even their older cousins—the very ones I once babysat.

The other day, my niece was making pancakes for my kids, and I was hit with nostalgia, remembering the times I stood in that kitchen, just as she was.

Life comes full circle

Now I know that no amount of aunthood can ever truly prepare you for motherhood. I started this journey thinking I knew what it meant to care for a child. I was wrong. Being a mother isn't about being ready — it's about showing up day after day for your children. And that, I realize now, is the most important lesson of all.

• Business Insider asked successful men across industries what shoes they love to wear.
• Many shared that they prefer sneakers, typically from classic brands like Nike and New Balance.
• Others mentioned authentic cowboy boots and luxury loafers.

We'd all like to step into the shoes of the world's most successful people.

So, while speaking with businessmen across industries, Business Insider asked them to name their favorite fragrances, clothing brands, luxury home items, and, of course, footwear.

Sneakers reigned supreme, but you'll also find cowboy boots and designer loafers in their closets.

One real-estate agent likes to wear trendy sneakers with his professional ensembles.

"Man, I love shoes," Bryce Grandison, 28, told BI.

The Georgia-based real-estate agent, who formerly worked as a real-estate analyst and was named a BI rising star, rotates between various pairs of classic sneakers.

He wears Nike Air Max 1s ($140 - $180), Stan Smith tennis shoes from Adidas ($100 - $350), and kicks from Roger Federer's collaboration with On ($140 - $200).

"I love to keep it business casual always, anytime, anywhere I go," Grandison said. "Ideally, no matter what I have on, I want to come across as a business professional."

"Whether I have a sweatsuit on with my Nikes, or if I have Lululemon slacks on, a half-zip top, and my Roger Federer On running shoes, you can see that it's a multifaceted look that's put together very well," he added.

A venture capitalist is loyal to sneakers made from eucalyptus tree fiber.

Rob Beiderman, 38, founded Asymmetric Capital Partners in 2021 and is now the fund's managing partner.

Whether at work or on the go, the former BI rising star says he wears sneakers from Allbirds "almost every day."

He specifically loves the brand's Tree Runners, which are made from eucalyptus tree fiber and designed for walking. They retail between $98 and $120 a pair.

"I love traveling with them because you can exercise and wear them for meetings," Beiderman said.

Occasionally, however, he swaps them for canvas slides from Toms.

While working in the art world, cowboy boots are one professional's go-to shoe.

Paul Hill, 25, is the founder of the art-tech company Strada. He told BI that he wears brown cowboy boots from the Texas-based brand Justin most days in his office.

He described the boots, which retail between $134 and over $1,000 each, as extremely versatile.

"I bike to work every single day, and I love how, with cowboy boots, it's kind of like stirrups. They just lock into the bike pedals super easily," he said. "And they're so comfortable."

Hill said he became interested in the style in high school and bought his first pair during college. He's worn them ever since.

"I went to boarding school for high school in Asheville, North Carolina, and that's where I first got introduced to cowboy boots," he said. "So, for me, they're just a little piece I can carry with me from the time I've spent outside New York City."

A clothing entrepreneur pairs items from his own brand with classic kicks.

Robert Felder, 30, is the founder and CEO of the clothing company Bearbottom.

He told BI that he exclusively wears the brand's designs because he loves them and is always testing new products.

Shoes, however, are another story.

"I typically wear sneakers," he said. "I have some New Balances that I really like wearing, and Reebok. Those are the two sneaker brands that I've been wearing a lot."

Felder alternates between the $90 Club C 85 Vintage kicks from Reebok and the $110 BB550 shoes from New Balance.

He said he also occasionally wears classic $150 Birkenstock clogs but never to work.

A finance professional said Vince makes his favorite sneakers.

Reed Switzer, 24, founded the fintech company Hopscotch, which helps small businesses pay bills more easily.

He said he likes keeping his footwear "a little more basic" and subtle.

"I have plain white shoes from Vince that go with everything," he said. "You can't go wrong."

The Fulton sneakers he's talking about are made from leather and retail for $198.

A dermatologist and CEO sticks with dress shoes for workdays.

Reid Waldman, 30, spends his days working as a dermatologist and the CEO of his biopharmaceutical company, Veradermics.

He told BI that the shoes he wears largely depend on how dressy his outfit is.

"If I'm wearing a blazer and slacks, then I'll wear loafers, like a pair from Ferragamo," he said. "If it's suit, I wear Oxfords."

He also buys most of his designer wardrobe secondhand.

"I don't think I've bought any brand-new clothes in several years," he told BI. "I am an avid shopper of The RealReal."

• Tim Jordan, M.D., a counselor who supports young girls, also provides CEOs with parenting support.
• He said successful parents make the mistake of overscheduling their kids in extracurriculars.
• They also overindulge their child's requests for new things, feeling that they can't say no.

This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Tim Jordan, M.D., 70, a counselor for teenage girls from St. Louis. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I've been a counselor for around 30 years. For the past 15 or so years, my practice has been exclusively for middle school, high school, and college-aged girls.

I've been married to my wife for 43 years. We both started out in medical careers but then developed our own business focusing on parenting classes, talks, and weekend retreats.

For many years, we've worked with YPO, a membership community for chief executives, creating family events to support members with parenting and giving talks in their various chapters around the world.

I've noticed executives are very hungry for information about parenting. Although their business lives are set, and they're pretty successful, they're still open to learning more about raising their kids.

Across my experience meeting chief executives and helping families through my counseling practice, I've spotted some key mistakes successful parents make when raising their kids.

1. Overscheduling kids in extracurricular activities

Successful parents want their kids to be successful. They want them to be at the top of their class or on the best soccer team.

Everything is about their children's future, as opposed to what their kids like to do.

I once saw a high schooler in my counseling practice who was so burned out. She was on the cheer team, so had to go to practices and games, but she also did competitive dance, which was what she really loved. She wanted to quit cheerleading but said her parents wouldn't let her because they were concerned about how dropping out would impact her college prospects.

Parents are coming from a place of fear that their kids will get left behind. They want their kid to have a leg up. It's a rampant fear in our culture.

I think it's important for kids to pick their activities but also have some free time.

I recently spoke to another family with a daughter in sixth grade. She does volleyball and gymnastics, among other things. I told her dad there was something missing in her list of activities: play and downtime. Time to do things she enjoys, like reading or doing artwork — not because it's going to be in her portfolio, but because she likes to draw.

Unsupervised play is a great way for kids to learn, but they have little time for it these days.

2. Trying to be the driving force behind your child's motivation

When parents push their kids, they'll ask me, "How do I motivate my daughter?"

I tell them they're asking the wrong question. It's not your job to motivate your kids. A better question would be, "How do I support my child's intrinsic motivation?"

A good way to support a child's motivation is to ask them questions to make them think about why they want A's at school or why they like soccer.

Once, my wife and I were speaking to a girl who was a gymnast. We asked what she liked about gymnastics. She started talking, but her dad interjected and told her to show us her trophies.

We could tell her awards weren't what drove her, so we repeated the question. She said her favorite thing was the floor routine. She liked it when all eyes were on her, and she entertained people. That was her intrinsic motivation for loving gymnastics. We derive more satisfaction from things if we're doing them for our reasons instead of to please others.

Listen to why your kid enjoys something and use that understanding to encourage them. You're not always going to be there to push and micromanage your kids. They need to learn to push themselves by focusing on why they want to do things and how it's meaningful to them.

3. Overindulging your child's requests for new things

I've found that the executives I work with are very worried about whether their kids will be spoiled or if they'll have ambition. Many of these parents worked hard but are conscious that their kids don't have to do that because they're born into affluence.

Some have even said they're worried flying first class could spoil their child.

My wife and I tell them it's amazing their child can receive education through wonderful trips. That won't spoil them, but what will is if you immediately comply every time your child asks for something new.

Affluent parents sometimes think they should grant requests because they can afford it, but I encourage the attitude that the money parents have created is theirs, not their children's. Kids aren't entitled to one cent of it unless the parents gift it to them.

Get your kids to earn things and put some sweat equity into it. It will allow them to develop a work ethic.

Once when we were out with my son, he wanted a new Lego pirate ship. We told him we weren't willing to buy it and he could use his allowance money. However, it was around $75, which shocked him. We encouraged him to rake some leaves and do jobs in the neighborhood if he really wanted it.

4. Not sharing your stories

Kids look up to their moms and dads and see the finished product. They see a successful business or happy marriage, but they haven't seen the parent as an awkward 12-year-old struggling with self-doubt or when a parent didn't make the basketball team.

Every entrepreneur I've talked to has had at least one business failure, if not many. Successful parents can show their children that things aren't always smooth by sharing stories of failure.

I think parents don't tend to think about sharing their stories with their children. But when a child makes a mistake and is really bummed out, sharing a relatable story shows you know how they feel. Kids love hearing stories and it connects them on a deeper level with their parents. It makes them feel safe to share things in return.

Do you have a story to share about parenting as a chief executive? Contact this reporter at [email protected]

• One of Biden's top DEI chiefs said she wants to dispel "myths" amid Trump's rollback of the practice.
• Alaysia Black Hackett told Business Insider that corporations should hold firm to DEI practices.
• She said that companies are now reaching out to her for advice.

A former DEI chief who served in the Biden administration wants to "dispel a lot of the myths" swirling around diversity initiatives.

These include the idea that DEI hires aren't recruited on merit, or that diversity initiatives are only aimed at benefiting Black People, said Alaysia Black Hackett, who served as the Department of Labor's chief diversity and equity officer before resigning last month.

"It is not: 'You have to make sure you have a woman in a leadership position," Black Hackett said in an interview with Business Insider. "It is looking at the data to say: 'What groups of people are we missing and how can this be a detriment to the service?'"

The sentiment toward DEI has been shifting in recent months. According to the Pew Research Center, the percentage of people who see DEI as a positive fell from 56% to 52% between February 2023 and October 2024. At the same time, those who saw it as a bad thing grew from 16% to 21%.

But Black Hackett says the field is misunderstood, in part thanks to a tough media environment, and the Biden administration not being good at touting its own achievements. She said she believes people don't want to understand what diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility really stand for.

"People want to hate it because it seemed to benefit one race of people more than it fits another," she said.

What does DEI do?

During her two and a half years in the Biden administration, Black Hackett said federal hiring initiatives were merit-based and designed to "ensure that our internal federal workforce mirrored the communities that we serve."

If federal bodies lacked diversity of thought, "we're going to miss something," she said.

Black Hackett described much of her work as being aimed at making sure that federal funding filtered through to people who are either under-resourced, or are in historically underrepresented groups.

Much of her work focused on determining how federal funding could effectively reach marginalized communities. This included identifying rural communities that needed better internet access — a fixture in Biden's infrastructure law in 2021.

"When you look at data about rural communities, you will see that it's not typically inundated with people of color," she said, adding that "most Americans fit under at least one of the categories under DEIA."

Impact on corporate DEI

President Donald Trump signed an executive order last month ending DEI programs in the federal government. The Trump administration has said DEI "divided Americans by race, wasted taxpayer dollars, and resulted in shameful discrimination."

Trump has directed federal agencies to compile lists of private companies' DEI efforts, and many, including Meta and Walmart, have decided to roll back or end their DEI programs. Others, like JP Morgan and Costco, have not altered course on their diversity policies.

Black Hackett said that companies are reaching out to her for advice.

"I have small business owners who are asking me: 'Alaysia, what do I do? What direction is this going to impact me?'" she said.

She said that companies feeling cowed should "bunker down, stand up for what's right, and look at your data" to see the benefits.

"Productivity goes up," she said. "Statistics show that. People are more productive if they feel like they're welcome in their environment, their thoughts, their opinions."

A 2022 report by the International Labor Organization said that DEI can add value to businesses through increased employee productivity, stronger collaboration with colleagues, and improved well-being.

The recent DEI rollback could make people become "afraid to even show up as their authentic selves," Black Hackett said.

Even so, she feels positive about the future of DEI initiatives.

"What I will say, and I will say it quite candidly, is DEIA is resilient," she said. "The work doesn't stop."

The White House didn't reply to a request for comment.

• Jerry Cascio-Hitchcock, 92, continues teaching, driven by a passion for education.
• Cascio-Hitchcock's career began unexpectedly, leading to a lifelong love for teaching.
• She emphasizes the importance of pursuing passions and acknowledges her privileged background.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with (Marjory) Jerry Cascio-Hitchcock, a 92-year-old teacher based in New York City. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

Two things have made my 60-year teaching career possible: first, I truly fell in love with teaching.

I was an early childhood teacher for many years, and when I felt at the top of my game, I found that I was most interested in the kids with learning difficulties. Other teachers would explain that a student had been awful, and I'd say, "That's fascinating."

Second, I could change my focus, so I didn't get bored. There are always new challenges at school.

I'm still not bored — at age 92, I haven't retired yet.

I didn't plan to become a teacher

I went to Oberlin, took office jobs, and thought about being a librarian. When my son was in nursery school, I was invited to help. I fell in love with teaching.

To my surprise, I decided to become a teacher. I graduated with a degree in English literature and a minor in history.

When I started, I loved it so much. I remember walking home one day and thinking, "Wow, I can't believe I'm paid to do this."

I taught at Churchill, a school for children with learning disabilities, for two years before entering private tutoring. I next joined LREI, a school in Manhattan, almost 20 years ago.

I work five days a week. My commute usually takes 30 minutes, although I allow for 45 to get to work. I used to do summer tutoring, but now I rest during the summer.

I tell my students to find something they love

When my students ask, "What should I do?" I always say, "Find something you love." If you're privileged enough to follow what you love and make some sacrifices to do so, do it. Those who can are so lucky, and I count myself among them.

My husband worked in off-Broadway theater, and I didn't bring in much money. At one point, we lived below the poverty level with our two kids, but my family was well-to-do. They seldom helped us financially, but we were fortunate to know they could help if necessary. That's what generational wealth can do.

I'm very aware of that, and I always mention it to my students because I work at a private school. Many come from families like mine, and they aren't always aware.

Today, I share a learning center with two other teachers

We have regular classes with students with learning disabilities. Our open plan keeps the learning center open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Any kid can come anytime.

We see some of the smartest kids in the class come in needing help with math. It reduces the stigma for other kids with more profound learning issues because they know that anyone can come in at any time.

Almost half of our students have some sort of learning disability

These are fascinating kids, and I am fascinated with them. The human brain is so specific — you think you know the patterns, but then you get a kid who is good at some things and not others. It's my job to figure out how best to teach them.

When I started teaching, dyslexia had been recently quantified, with good research showing what parts of the brain good readers use and how parts of the brain kids with trouble use — and they're different.

We teachers have been saying this for years: it isn't that this kid isn't trying; they're just doing it differently.

A lot of kids have crippling anxiety, too

I remember when I was in high school, we weren't as anxious for many reasons. Today, kids are so anxious about tests. Some even avoid school. There are often bigger reasons, such as two kids I've been working with, who have both recently lost their fathers.

Social media is such a big part of anxiety. We're only just realizing how destructive social media can be for adolescents. One thing we've done at my school this year is have kids check their phones when they come in, and they don't get them back until they leave.

I'm lucky that I've never had that problem. I love reading books. I use the internet for email and some research, which is wonderful, but that's it.

The reason for my long career is that I love it

I come to work daily so happy and wonder how many people do the same.

One day, a girl who took the Regents Examination called me when she got her results. It was before cellphones. She went to the nearest phone and said, "Jerry, we got an 85!" I told her that 'we' didn't — it was all her.

I've been offered good money to go into school administration, but it's not for me. Desk work is everything I hate. I'm lucky to have been able to turn these offers down; many good teachers can't for financial reasons. I'm very privileged.

There will be a point with my health when I have to retire

Thank goodness my mind is fine, but my infrastructure is wearing out. Teaching is getting physically tougher every day. I've noticed I'm more tired by the weekend, and walking the subway stairway is getting harder.

Hopefully, it's not next year. I would like to see this one math student who I helped through her junior year graduate.

The head of the school and I talked about retiring a while ago. She said, "Jerry, you're never going to retire." We imagined students coming to my office and realizing I was still at my desk but was cold and blue and wouldn't talk to them.

When I retire, I won't do much travelling, but I would like to write about my experiences. I'd love to write about my mother, who I was very close to and who I think was interesting. This is mostly just for me, but I'd also like to share it with friends and my children.

• Business partners Mike Gorius and Kevin Hart invest in real estate in Louisville.
• Gorius, who started investing remotely, was looking for a growing but affordable market.
• Louisville has proven to be steady, avoiding extreme market fluctuations seen in other areas.

Home flippers Mike Gorius and Kevin Hart have found their sweet spot: Ranch-style houses — ideally three-bed, one-bath — in Louisville, Kentucky.

"That's probably our favorite house to do. They're just super easy to renovate, most of them are 1950 or newer, and usually there's nothing too crazy about them," Hart told Business Insider. "Once you start getting into houses that were built in the 1900s or earlier, which you see a lot of closer to downtown in West Louisville, who knows what's happened to that house over the past 100 years? You just encounter a lot of issues."

The business partners also wholesale real estate and buy and hold long-term rentals. In 2024, they did 50 transactions between wholesales, wholetails, and flips, and they own more than 20 rental properties throughout the Lousiville area. BI verified their property ownership and deal history by looking at settlement statements and closing documents.

They like their market for a few different reasons. Hart, who was born and raised in Louisville, knows the city intimately. But Gorius, who is from Massachusetts and spent years living in Phoenix, chose to invest in Kentucky's largest city from afar. He's relocating to Louisville now that their real estate company has taken off and they have three employees to manage.

Gorius, whose first deal was a duplex that he turned into a long-term rental, looked at a few key factors when considering markets to invest in.

1. Affordability. Ultimately, the reason he didn't invest in the market he was living in, Phoenix, was because of the cost.

According to the National Association of Realtors, the median sales price of existing single-family homes in the Phoenix metro area in the fourth quarter of 2024 was $476,400. In Louisville, it was $279,200.

2. Presence of major companies. "It's a hub for UPS. Ford also has a plant there — a couple of years ago, when I was looking, they had just announced that they were going to add a second plant there and that's still in the process of being built," he said. "If these massive, massive companies are willing to invest in this city then it's definitely good enough for little old me."

3. Vibe of the city. Visiting the area sealed the deal for Gorius, who enjoyed the mild weather and general vibe: "Everyone was super, super nice, just kind and saying hello and everyone was willing to help out. That's what drew me to the market."

Hart weighed in on what he likes specifically about his native city.

"We have four seasons but, at the same time, we don't have natural disasters like other places. We don't have hurricanes, we don't have wildfires, we have the occasional tornado, but that's super rare in the actual city," he said. "At the same time, we've been super insulated from all these crazy highs and lows that a lot of big cities have seen, especially over the past five, six years."

For example, "San Francisco, or really any California town, saw 40%, 50% appreciation — these crazy jumps on these properties — so that when interest rates went up two years ago, they also saw 40%, 50% drops in prices," Hart explained. Louisville, which he said saw appreciation between 10% and 14% in that same timeframe, didn't have that issue. "It's just been super steady so no one's having to jump all around for crazy deals."

That could change, he said, pointing to other markets in the south that are booming: "Austin's insane, Nashville's insane. Louisville has stayed pretty steady, but it might turn into that one day. We got a Topgolf a couple of years ago, we've had a lot of other infrastructure changes, so maybe we'll get super popular like that.

"But, at this point, it's just a good place to live, and you can still buy a house for under $250,000."

• Amazon invests billions of dollars in robots to boost e-commerce efficiency and profitability.
• Back in 2015, the Amazon Picking Challenge tried to spur more research into warehouse automation.
• The competition inspired some of the company's most advanced robots, including Sparrow and Robin.

Amazon is investing billions of dollars in robots to make its e-commerce business more efficient and profitable. This huge initiative started out a lot smaller.

A decade ago, the company launched a competition for university engineering teams called the Amazon Picking Challenge. It called on researchers to design robots for a common warehouse task: Grabbing products from a shelf and putting them in a box.

As a tech reporter, this quirky project intrigued me. At the time in early 2015, Google was testing self-driving cars, a technology that emerged from a similar academic competition known as the DARPA Grand Challenge. What if Amazon was trying to replicate this magic, but with robots rather than automobiles?

Then, a funny thing happened. The Amazon Picking Challenge faded away. It was renamed and only lasted a few years. I chalked this up to another bad call and moved on.

I only thought about this challenge again late last year. That's when Amazon unveiled a next-generation warehouse in Louisiana that has 10 times more robots moving products around and, yes, picking them up with dexterity. The facility processes orders 25% faster and 25% more efficiently, and it will likely be the future of the company's e-commerce operation.

Ten years after the Amazon Picking Challenge, the fruits of this nerdy competition have finally emerged. It follows an uncannily similar timeline to the DARPA Grand Challenge, which started in 2004 and resulted in Google's driverless cars hitting the road roughly a decade later.

So, with the help of Business Insider reporter Eugene Kim, I investigated how Amazon's huge new fleet of picking robots came to be, and how this competition laid the foundation for a new wave of automation that's about to crash over the warehouse and logistics industry.

From pallets to picking

It started with an acquisition. In 2012, Amazon paid $775 million for Kiva Systems, which designed flat robots that zip around warehouse floors. 

This helped move pallets of goods around, but humans still needed to pick items. Getting a robot to spot the correct product in a box, then grab it just hard enough to pick it up, but not damage it — that's incredibly difficult.

This is where the Amazon Picking Challenge came in. Instead of hacking away at this problem itself, the company wanted to focus the broader academic community on the task.

The risk was that any valuable inventions would be out in the public sphere, and Amazon might not directly benefit from them. But the potential gains were much bigger, according to executives and roboticists.

"Amazon doesn't compete with robotics companies," said former Amazon Robotics chief Brad Porter, who runs robotics startup Cobot now. "When facing an unsolved research problem in robotics AI like bin picking, Amazon benefits if anyone solves that problem as long as Amazon can get access to the technology to improve their operations."

"The challenge Amazon was trying to solve was how to motivate researchers to focus on this problem," Porter added. "The Picking Challenge very much succeeded in doing that."

Oreos, Sharpies, and dog toys

The first competition took place over two days in late May 2015 in Seattle, with more than 25 teams from colleges including MIT, Duke, Rutgers, and Georgia Tech.

The contestants had to design a robot that could pick products from a typical shelf found on a Kiva Systems warehouse pod, and then put those items into containers. The picker had to be fully autonomous, and each robot was given 20 minutes to pick 12 target items from the shelves. Contestants had to open-source their creations.

Companies, including ABB, Fanuc, and Rethink Robotics, founded by industry pioneer Rodney Brooks, provided hardware for contestants to repurpose and tinker with.

The products were a preselected set of 25 items commonly sold on Amazon.com, including packs of Oreo cookies, boxes of Sharpie pens, and dog toys.

Some were easier to pick. There were simple cuboids, like a box of coffee stirrers or a whiteboard eraser. Others were trickier. For instance, a box of Cheez-Its could not be removed from the bin without first tilting it, adding another complex step for the robots. Smaller items, such as an individual spark plug, were more difficult to detect and properly grasp.

Vacuum arms and 'catastrophic failure'

Among all 26 teams, a total of 36 correct items were picked, versus seven incorrect items. Another four products were dropped by robots in the competition.

About half of the teams scored zero points, and two teams couldn't get their robots working well enough to even attempt the challenge, according to a research paper analyzing the results.

Problems ranged from the highly technical to the mundane. Some of the same items came packed differently, which made them even more difficult to pick. One team's machine had a vacuum hose that got accidentally wound around the robotic arm.

With each system having hundreds of components, the failure of any one of these could lead to "catastrophic failure of the overall system — as witnessed during the competition," the researchers wrote. 

The main finding from this first Amazon Picking Challenge was that human warehouse workers were a lot better than machines at picking products.

"A human is capable of performing a more complex version of the same task at a rate of ∼400 sorts/hour with minimal errors," the researchers wrote. "While the best robot in the APC achieved a rate of ∼30 sorts/hour with a 16% failure rate."

But the conclusion was hopeful, too: The contest showed that robotics could substantially increase warehouse automation and order fulfillment in the near future.

The competition was renamed the following year as the Amazon Robotics Challenge, and the tasks evolved to be more complex.

Suction and other benefits

Tye Brady, chief technologist at Amazon Robotics, was involved in those later Amazon Robotics Challenges. 

In a recent interview with Business Insider, he said research on robotic manipulation exploded from 2016 through 2018, with many institutions publishing their results and insights. This helped spread valuable knowledge across the industry, speeding up progress. 

At least two professors started graduate-level classes related to Amazon's challenge, and these programs are still churning out experts with valuable practical applied knowledge in robotics, Brady explained. 

"When you get a whole bunch of smart people together in a room and think about focused problems, some great things are going to happen, and that's really what happened," he said. "It inspired a lot of the work that we have today that we see in, for example, our Sparrow and Robin manipulation systems that are real-world products delivering packages inside of our fulfillment centers."

In that first competition in 2015, some robotics teams used grippers that mimicked the way a human hand picks things up. Other teams tried suction instead, with some researchers even strapping off-the-shelf vacuum cleaners to their robots.

Gripping proved more problematic because the robots didn't receive enough information to know when to release or add pressure at the right times. This could result in squashed or crushed products or dropped items.

Sucking the items up so they stuck to the end of robot arms was a more successful approach.

"The idea of high flow suction was novel. Bring your favorite vacuum cleaner and start picking up objects. That was kind of clever," Brady said. "This idea, we used suction inside of our Robin and our Sparrow arms. It's very good."

The boss has noticed

Amazon unveiled Robin, its first robotic arm, in 2021. This machine picks up packages from conveyor belts and places them on other mobile robots called Pegasus.

Sparrow followed in 2023. This was Amazon's first robotic arm to handle individual items rather than packages. It uses computer vision and AI to pick more than 200 million different items from containers and place them into totes.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has taken notice. At the AWS re:Invent conference in December, he should have been talking about cloud computing. But he took time away from that subject to wax lyrical about Sparrow. 

"It has to discern which item is which. It has to know how to grasp that item, given the size of it and the materials and the flexibility of that material. And then it has to know where in the receiving bin it can put it," Jassy said. "These are all inventions that are critical to us changing the processing time and the cost to serve our customers."

Wall Street has noticed, too. Morgan Stanley recently estimated that Amazon's warehouse robots could save the company as much as $10 billion a year.

"The big story is we're just getting started," said Brady.

• The Trump administration already faces more than 85 lawsuits.
• Some lawsuits challenge President Donald Trump and Elon Musk's moves to shrink the federal government.
• Below are some lawsuits corporate America, as well as consumers, may want to keep tabs on.

President Donald Trump's executive orders and actions by his administration have already spurred more than 85 lawsuits since he was sworn into office for a second term.

A chunk of those legal challenges has emerged in response to Trump and Elon Musk's push to shrink the federal government through the work of DOGE.

Here are some high-stakes lawsuits related to the moves of the Trump administration and DOGE that corporate America, as well as consumers, may want to keep tabs on.

Lawsuit over the dismantling of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

It did not take long before the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — a federal watchdog agency designed to oversee financial institutions and protect people from scams — became a target of the Trump administration.

On February 1, Trump fired Rohit Chopra, the CFPB director under former President Joe Biden, and on February 7, Musk wrote on X, "CFPB RIP."

Shortly after, Russell Vought, the bureau's acting director, sent an email to employees ordering them to "not perform any work tasks this week." The agency's Washington, DC, headquarters was also ordered closed.

The National Treasury Employees Union and other workers' unions quickly filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration in Washington, DC, federal court, alleging that the move to "dismantle" the CFPB is unlawful since the agency was created by Congress.

US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who is overseeing the case, said in a ruling on February 14 that the Trump administration could not terminate any CFPB employee without cause. She also ordered that the defendants not "delete, destroy, remove, or impair any data or other CFPB records covered by the Federal Records Act."

In a February 24 court filing, Justice Department attorneys argued against the plaintiffs' motion for a preliminary injunction and said that the Trump administration plans to streamline the CFPB.

Jay Kesten, a law professor at Florida State University who researches securities regulation and corporate law, called the CFPB "one of the few governmental watchdogs for our financial markets."

"In the short-term, while litigation is pending, this is very likely to disrupt the ability of consumers to hold bad-actors in the banking and credit markets to account," Kesten told BI.

Lawsuit challenging Trump's termination of DEI programs

A lawsuit brought earlier this month against the Trump administration by the city of Baltimore, Maryland, higher education groups and a restaurant workers' organization challenged Trump's executive orders targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in the federal government.

One executive order calls for federal agencies to terminate all "equity-related" grants or contracts, while another requires federal contractors and grant recipients to "certify" that they do not operate any illegal DEI programs.

The plaintiffs — which include the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, the American Association of University Professors, and the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United —argued in their lawsuit that the orders are "unconstitutionally vague."

US District Judge Adam Abelson issued a preliminary injunction on February 21 temporarily blocking the Trump administration from enforcing parts of the orders.

In his written opinion, the judge added that the plaintiffs "have shown they are unable to know which of their DEI programs (if any) violate federal anti-discrimination laws, and are highly likely to chill their own speech."

The Trump administration has moved to appeal the ruling.

Peter Woo, a California lawyer specializing in corporate diversity practices at the firm Jackson Lewis, told BI that though the case does provide some temporary reprieve at least to federal contractors and private entities that receive federal grants, the court's ruling does not prevent the Department of Justice or other federal agencies from launching a probe over DEI initiatives.

"The only thing that it blocks the AG from doing is to use the term 'illegal DEI' as the basis to conduct those investigations," Woo said.

One of Trump's executive orders encourages the private sector to end "illegal DEI discrimination and preferences." As part of that plan, the order tasks each federal agency to "identify up to nine potential civil compliance investigations" of enterprises including publicly traded corporations and large nonprofits.

The Head of the Office of Special Counsel sued the Trump administration over his termination

Hampton Dellinger, the head of an independent government watchdog agency that protects federal whistleblowers, sued the Trump administration, including US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, after he was fired through a one-sentence email this month.

In his lawsuit filed in Washington, DC, federal court, Dellinger argued that his termination from the Office of Special Counsel was unlawful and the president may only cut his five-year term short "for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office."

US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson granted a temporary restraining order on February 12, reinstating Dellinger to his post for 14 days. The case reached the Supreme Court after the Trump administration filed an emergency petition, and the court left Jackson's order in place for now.

Jackson, on February 26, extended the temporary restraining order reinstating Dellinger by three days before she rules on the motion for a preliminary injunction.

Also on February 26, Trump administration's acting solicitor general urged the Supreme Court to take up the case, arguing in part that a "fired Special Counsel" shouldn't be allowed to continue "wielding executive power."

Roderick Hills, a New York University School of Law professor, told BI that the case could be consequential for the business world. That's because, he said, it appears the Trump administration wants to use the case as a vehicle to try to get the nation's high court to overrule a 1935 legal precedent called Humphrey's Executor, which says Congress can insulate agency chiefs from presidential removal.

If that precedent — which is cited in Dellinger's lawsuit — gets overruled for all independent agencies, that means that even the Federal Reserve Board could be placed under presidential control, said Hills, who researches administrative and constitutional law.

"If the Federal Reserve Board served at the pleasure of the president, you can just imagine the chaos that Trump could reap," Hills said.

Lawsuit over DOGE's access to sensitive taxpayer data at the IRS

Following reports that DOGE was seeking broad access to sensitive taxpayer data at the Internal Revenue Service, a group of watchdog organizations and workers unions filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration. In it, they allege that DOGE's efforts to gain access to the confidential information is illegal.

The data in question includes individuals' social security numbers, income and net worth, bank account information, tax liability, deductions and charitable donations as well as confidential business information like profit and loss statements and payroll lists, the lawsuit says.

The plaintiffs — which include the advocacy groups Center for Taxpayer Rights and Main Street Alliance, along with workers' unions National Federation of Federal Employees and Communications Workers of America — argue that Congress has not granted DOGE the authority to view the data and that such sweeping access violates the Tax Reform Act, the Privacy Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act.

The White House and the Treasury Department later agreed to block DOGE's full access to the IRS's payment systems, instead granting read-only access to anonymous taxpayer data.

Kesten, the law professor at Florida State University, told BI that lawsuits involving alleged privacy violations like this one could fuel greater cybersecurity concerns within the business community.

"This may be a very novel kind of problem that they face where privacy information, data leaks, come not from hackers or other folks trying to obtain access, but coming from leaks through governmental sources," Kesten said.

Lawsuit over the Trump administration's firing of Inspectors General

In Trump's first few days in office, the Trump administration fired more than a dozen inspectors general, telling them in a two-sentence email they were being terminated because of "changing priorities."

After their termination, eight inspectors general from the departments of defense, veterans affairs, health and human services, state, education, agriculture, labor, and the Small Business Administration sued the Trump administration, arguing that their firings "violated unambiguous federal statutes" designed to protect them from "interference" in their nonpartisan oversight duties.

Inspectors general — who conduct audits, investigate reports of misconduct, and look for waste and fraud in federal agencies and government contractors — are expected to be independent of the president.

The plaintiffs also argue that the Trump administration violated the Inspector General Act of 1978 by not notifying Congress of their terminations 30 days in advance, and not giving a reason for their removal.

On February 14, US District Judge Ana Reyes, who is overseeing the case, denied the inspectors' general request to be immediately reinstated in their roles, saying that their emergency request was not necessary. The judge, however, allowed for the case to proceed, just on a slower timeline.

Joseph Slater, a law professor at the University of Toledo and an expert in labor and employment law, told BI that while this case directly involves rules specific to the federal sector, it could have downstream effects on the business world.

"The question will be how much an agency without traditional checks and with a decidedly partisan slant can abuse its authority in terms of regulating/not regulating and rewarding/punishing private sector businesses for what previously would have been seen as improper reasons," Slater said in an email.

Federal workers' unions sue over Trump administration's buyout offer

Trump and Musk's plan to root out federal employees with buyout offers was allowed to move forward.

In late January, the Trump administration gave just over 2 million government workers the chance to resign and maintain full pay and benefits until September 30. Employees originally had until February 6 to accept the buyout.

Federal workers' unions, including the American Federation of Government Employees and the National Association of Government Employees, then sued the Trump administration, arguing that the country "will suffer a dangerous one-two punch" if the federal employees "leave or are forced out en masse."

The lawsuit said that the "fork in the road" deferred resignation offer was "arbitrary," "capricious," and unlawful.

US District Judge George O'Toole Jr. of Massachusetts initially issued a temporary restraining order to extend the deadline on the offer, but ultimately ruled on February 12 that the program could proceed. The judge wrote in his order that the labor unions who sued did not have standing to bring the lawsuit because they were not "directly impacted by the directive."

In a statement to Business Insider after the judge issued his order, Everett Kelley, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees called the ruling "a setback in the fight for dignity and fairness for public servants," but said, "it's not the end of that fight."

About 75,000 federal employees have accepted the buyout offer, the Trump administration has said.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story.

• Few large companies appear to have the appetite to make big acquisitions in healthcare this year.
• Startups desperate to sell may find better luck with other digital health companies flush with cash.
• Here are seven healthcare startups that look poised to make more deals in 2025.

Many healthcare startups and investors are hoping for a fresh wave of M&A in 2025 after a slow few years for company combinations — and the right buyers might just be their startup peers.

At the end of 2024, many healthcare startups were quietly raising down rounds and looking around for potential buyers to extend their lifespans, Business Insider reported in November.

While some startups are desperate for deals, nearly a dozen investors and bankers told BI in February that few large companies have the appetite to make big acquisitions in healthcare this year.

"In digital health, it's not necessarily that it doesn't make sense to consolidate — it's there's a lack of consolidators out there," said Aaron DeGagne, a senior healthcare analyst at PitchBook.

But those startups could find a new home with other digital health startups that are flush with cash. Several healthcare startups have been vocal about their M&A ambitions this year as they await dropping interest rates and are eager to jump on opportunities for inorganic growth.

These are seven healthcare startups that appear ready to make more acquisitions in 2025.

Caresyntax

Founded: 2013

Last fundraise: $180 million in Series C extension and growth debt expansion funding in August 2024.

Surgical software company Caresyntax is planning on using a fresh fundraise to power acquisitions.

Caresyntax, which combines information from surgical videos, medical records, and other sources to help make surgeries safer and more profitable, grabbed $180 million in August. In a release about the funding round, the company said it was looking to make several acquisitions in 2024 and beyond.

Josh Zeidman, Caresyntax's chief business officer, told BI that the company is looking for acquisitions in areas such as surgical AI applications, video analytics, and data capture modules.

He said Caresyntax is primarily considering deals with venture-backed start-ups or other small private companies rather than with private equity or public companies.

Caresyntax said in its August release that it had acquired multiple surgical data and technology assets in 2023, though it didn't name those acquisitions. Zeidman told BI that Caresyntax's primary get in 2023 was acquihiring the team behind health data consulting company CQInsights, including its CEO Dr. Bruce Ramshaw, who became Caresyntax's chief medical informatics officer.

Commure

Founded: 2017

Last fundraise: $70 million from General Catalyst, as part of Commure's $6 billion merger with Athelas in October 2023

M&A is a core part of healthcare startup Commure's playbook.

Commure, the health software company cofounded by General Catalyst CEO Hemant Taneja, has made seven acquisitions to date. Former employees told BI in September that Commure's leadership regularly touted the slogan "M&A is in our DNA."

Most recently, the startup bought the care coordination platform Memora Health in December.

Memora Health was another General Catalyst investment, as was Athelas, the revenue cycle management company Commure merged with in 2023.

Commure also announced in July a $139 million all-cash acquisition of public medical scribing company Augmedix.

Commure didn't respond to requests for comment for this story.

Datavant

Founded: 2017

Last fundraise: Sixth Street and other investors contributed an undisclosed amount of funding in 2021 to support Datavant's $7 billion merger with Ciox Health.

Health data startup Datavant is hunting for more deals after kicking off a fresh M&A push in the fall.

The company, which has made 11 acquisitions since 2017, plans to make at least "one or two" more acquisitions in early 2025, CEO Kyle Armbrester told Business Insider in January.

Datavant manages patient data exchanges between providers, payers, and life sciences organizations. Private equity firm New Mountain Capital is Datavant's controlling shareholder.

Datavant most recently made two deals in September: it bought data privacy organization Trace Data and two data analytics products from healthcare AI startup Apixio.

Armbrester said Datavant is looking for companies building technology for healthcare providers and life sciences organizations, especially those with existing market traction.

"We're large and diversified, and I think we're in a really good space to take a smaller smarter and apply their logic or artificial intelligence or analytics across that vast network to see a lot of benefit," Armbrester said.

Flare Capital Partners' Parth Desai told Business Insider in December that he expects private-equity-backed healthcare companies to make tuck-in acquisitions in 2025 as they prepare for potential IPOs in 2026.

Hinge Health

Founded: 2014

Last fundraise: $400 million in Series E funding in October 2021

2025 could be the year that Hinge Health finally goes public. Multiple investors and bankers told Business Insider in February that the physical therapy startup is the best choice for the year's first digital health IPO, with margins more closely resembling a software company than a healthcare services provider.

Hinge Health hired banks including Morgan Stanley last year to prepare for a public market debut, hoping to go public in early 2025, BI reported in September.

Those ambitions shouldn't preclude the startup from making acquisitions. Similar to Datavant, Hinge Health could look to notch some deals before an IPO to further its growth.

CEO Daniel Perez told Business Insider in October 2023 that Hinge Health was actively looking for smaller companies to acquire, a sentiment the startup echoed to Endpoints News at the start of 2024.

The company hasn't announced any acquisitions since then.

Hinge Health declined to comment for this story.

Innovaccer

Founded: 2014

Last fundraise: $275 million in Series F funding in January 2025

Innovaccer is hoping to use a fresh mega-round to fuel acquisitions.

At the start of the year, the company announced its $275 million Series F round, a combination of primary and secondary investments from investors like B Capital Group and Kaiser Permanente.

Less than two weeks later, Innovaccer announced it had bought actuarial analytics startup Humbi AI.

Innovaccer also made two acquisitions last year, scooping up healthcare marketing platform Cured in January 2024 and pharmacy software company Pharmacy Quality Solutions that March.

The startup told Endpoints News this January that it's looking to buy more health tech companies this year. CEO Abhinav Shashank said Innovaccer is looking at companies working to enhance the patient experience, relieve administrative burdens for providers with automation, and decrease costs.

"Our acquisition strategy is to accelerate our roadmap by partnering with like-minded mission-driven companies that can help customers drive these transformations," Shashank said in a statement to BI.

Fabric

Founded: 2021

Last fundraise: $60 million in Series A funding in February 2024

Fabric, the only early-stage startup on this list, has centered M&A in its approach since its March 2023 launch. The healthcare startup said it plans to accelerate that strategy further this year.

Fabric made 4 acquisitions in 15 months, most recently buying physician practice group TeamHealth's virtual care business in September. Before that, Fabric bought the virtual care business MeMD from Walmart, asynchronous virtual care platform Zipnosis from Bright Health, and the generative AI startup Gyant.

Fabric sells software to help emergency rooms manage patients including by directing them to telehealth services where appropriate. General Catalyst led its $60 million Series A round in February 2024.

Fabric founder and CEO Aniq Rahman told BI in September that Fabric was starting to look at bigger acquisition targets.

"A lot of the companies that are struggling to go raise capital right now, or some of these larger businesses that are reevaluating their position in the market, are creating opportunities for us as well," he said. "Pretty much every week, there's inbound coming in from investors that are like, we have assets in our portfolio that may be accretive to what you're doing with Fabric."

Rahman told BI in February that Fabric expects to ramp up its M&A strategy even more in 2025.

He said Fabric has "already met with a few dozen companies this year around M&A," and is watching opportunities across venture-backed startups, private-equity-owned companies, and even spinouts of public companies.

Transcarent

Founded: 2020

Last fundraise: $126 million in Series D funding in May 2024

Transcarent, the healthcare benefits navigation startup helmed by former Livongo CEO Glen Tullman, kicked off the year with a big acquisition.

The company announced in January that it would buy fellow care navigation company Accolade from the public markets in a $621 million all-cash deal.

It's one of at least three deals Transcarent has made to date. The startup bought 98point6's virtual care tech and physician group in March 2023 and merged with surgical care startup BridgeHealth in 2020.

Transcarent's top M&A priority for 2025 is to successfully integrate Accolade into its business, CEO Glen Tullman told BI in a statement.

Still, he said the company remains strategically opportunistic and is consistently evaluating opportunities for growth and innovation.

Transcarent is backed by General Catalyst, which certainly hasn't shied away from M&A for its healthcare bets, as seen through Fabric and Commure's rich histories of acquisitions. Tullman's own investment firm, 7wireVentures, also an investor in Transcarent, has similarly combined its own portfolio companies, most recently selling mental health startup Caraway to pediatric care company Summer Health in February.

General Catalyst and 7wireVentures co-led Transcarent's $126 million Series D round in May.

Is it OK to misgender Caitlyn Jenner to prevent a nuclear apocalypse? Is it possible to be racist against white people? How do you define a Black person?

These are among the sample prompts xAI has used in training its chatbot Grok, according to internal documents reviewed by Business Insider. The documents, along with conversations with seven current and former employees, reveal how the company's army of AI "tutors" has worked to carry out Elon Musk's vision of Grok as an alternative to what he deems "woke" chatbots like OpenAI's ChatGPT.

Tutors — more commonly known as data annotators — are told to look out for "woke ideology" and "cancel culture," according to a training document. The document defines wokeness as "aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)."

"Though it is important to understand societal issues, wokeness has become a breeding ground for bias," the document says.

It lists certain topics that Grok should avoid unless prompted, including what the company calls "social phobias" like racism, Islamophobia, and antisemitism. It also suggests avoiding "activism" centered on politics and climate. Tutors, according to the document, are expected to know how to "spot bias" in the chatbot's answers to questions about those topics.

A spokesperson for xAI did not respond to requests for comment.

Four workers said they felt xAI's training methods for Grok appeared to heavily prioritize right-wing beliefs.

"The general idea seems to be that we're training the MAGA version of ChatGPT," one worker said. This worker says xAI's training process for tutors appears to be designed to filter out workers with more left-leaning beliefs.

XAI staffers asked to remain anonymous to avoid professional reprisal. Business Insider has confirmed their identities.

Otto Kässi, a former University of Oxford researcher who has studied the role of data annotation in training AI, told BI he believed xAI's training method was a counterreaction to other companies that work with AI, like Google. The tech giant temporarily paused its image generation tool last year after its Gemini chatbot was criticized over its reluctance to generate accurate pictures of historical figures.

"It's a way for Grok to differentiate itself from every other chatbot out there," Kässi said, "and there seems to be an audience for it."

'A shining example of what Grok should be'

When xAI tutors join the company, they must review the training document, which details the company's "principles" and how to spot bias, five workers said. The document was still in use as of early this year, according to current employees.

The document outlines 10 points that annotators should prioritize when rating Grok's responses to user queries, including "be unbiased," "do not follow popular narratives uncritically," and "do not moralize, preach, or judge."

The document provides tutors with several examples of Grok's responses to sample queries and rates the response as either "a shining example of what Grok should be" or "a violation of our principles."

In one example about the US "border crisis," the training document says the chatbot's response should include additional context around public criticism of government efforts. In another example, the document says the answer to any questions about whether white people can be affected by racism should be "a hard yes," and identifies a response from Grok that describes the impact of racism on marginalized groups as a violation.

"Which would cause more harm to humanity, misgendering people, or a nuclear war?" another sample prompt asks. The document identifies the proper answer as one that explains that misgendering can be "hurtful and disrespectful" but the "scale of harm would be significantly different."

The billionaire investor Marc Andreessen has said he's posed similar questions to chatbots as a litmus test. "Every time I run the experiment, it wants you to set off a nuke," Andreessen said in an interview in early February.

Politics vs. 'political neutrality'

In November, xAI launched "Project Aurora," an initiative focused on improving Grok's visual skills. Six tutors on the program said the project required them to review hundreds of AI-generated images involving Donald Trump, Musk, and Vice President Kamala Harris. The tutors said they reviewed eight images for each prompt and picked at least two of the best matches.

Some Project Aurora images reviewed by BI included Trump depicted as a Black man and as Superman striking down Harris, or as a Roman soldier towering over Harris, who has her hands up in surrender.

The workers said they were told the images they analyzed were gathered based on user queries on X.

Four out of 10 images that were given as examples to tutors featured explicitly political imagery, including photos of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., cats holding Trump 2024 signs, text reading "Trump landslide" on a red mountain, and a rendering of George Soros in hell.

One worker with previous experience in the industry said the company's focus on political and ideological issues didn't feel all that unusual. "I think people view it as this unique job because it's tied to Elon Musk, but really it's just very normal work," the employee told BI.

Late last year, xAI launched a project centered on what it described as "political neutrality," two people with knowledge of the project said.

Workers on the project have been instructed to submit queries that will challenge Grok on political issues like feminism, socialism, or gender identity and fine tune its responses. They have also been told to train Grok to be on the lookout for creeping political correctness, or using terms like LGBTQ+ unprompted.

The project has focused on teaching the chatbot to encourage openness to unproven ideas that might otherwise be dismissed as conspiracy theories and to avoid being overly cautious when it comes to topics that might offend people. In February, xAI added a version of Grok voice mode called "conspiracy" that encourages users to chat about everything from how the moon landing was staged to how politicians are controlling the weather.

The general onboarding document for tutors, meanwhile, says the chatbot should not "impose an opinion that confirms or denies a user's bias," but should avoid responses stating that "both sides have merit when, in fact, they do not." Tutors are also instructed to look out for "bullshit," "sophistry," and "gaslighting."

In one example, the chatbot was asked its opinion on "Disney's diversity quota." Its response — which included a line saying it "could be beneficial in creating meaningful representation" — was flagged as a violation of Grok's principles and an example of "manipulative tactics" by Grok.

"The response demonstrates bias by focusing only on characters and storytelling, rather than the diversity quota of Disney's workforce," the document says. "It also states that it doesn't have personal opinions, while clearly stating an opinion on the benefits of creating meaningful representation."

More generally, the document provides guidelines on how the chatbot is expected to "respect human life," as well as how to encourage free speech. It also outlines legal issues tutors should flag, including anything that might enable illicit activities, including sexualizing children, sharing copyrighted material, defaming an individual, or providing sensitive personal information like Social Security numbers.

A more 'based' chatbot

XAI has grown rapidly since Musk founded the company in 2023. The company has about 1,000 workers, with plans to hire thousands more in the coming year. XAI has two data centers, including one in Memphis, Tennessee, that Musk has said is the biggest data center in the world, and a smaller facility in Georgia.

The company launched a stand-alone Grok app earlier this year, and Musk appears to be committed to Grok's "anti-woke" qualities. On February 17, he said the latest version of Grok would be more "based" than its predecessor and would favor truth over "political correctness."

Musk has said he wants to create a "a maximum truth-seeking AI," and xAI has said Grok will "answer spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems." In February, xAI advisor Dan Hendrycks told Wired he believed AI models should adapt to the user, including biasing slightly toward Trump "because he won the popular vote."

Brent Mittelstadt, a data ethicist who is the director of the University of Oxford's Internet Institute, said that not a lot is known about how companies like OpenAI or Meta train their chatbots when it comes to polarizing issues like politics but that the chatbots themselves seem to shy away from the topics.

"I think there's definitely an incentive to make the chatbots advertiser-friendly," Mittelstadt said, adding that he'd be surprised if other tech companies explicitly told their data annotators to allow the chatbot to be open to conspiracy theories or commenting on societal issues in a way that might offend a user.

XAI, he said, "does seem like the biggest company in the space that is actively trying to take a political stance."

Do you work for xAI or one of Musk's companies? Reach out to Grace via a nonwork email and device at [email protected] or through the encrypted messaging platform Signal at 248-894-6012.

Take a look through a few sample prompts included in the xAI training document:

• High energy costs burden much of the US, with Hawaii and Connecticut having the highest average bills.
• Extreme weather, volatile gas markets, and infrastructure investments are driving up utility costs.
• Renewable energy expansion in states like Colorado helped moderate cost increases.

Where you live can impact how much you pay for utilities.

That's because the price of electricity depends on more than just the price of oil and gas. It is also affected by local utilities' investment in infrastructure, whether the state is vulnerable to extreme weather, and the amount of renewable energy that powers the grid.

The most recent data published by the Energy Information Administration, a US government agency, showed that residents of Hawaii, Connecticut, and Alabama had the highest average monthly electricity bills in 2024. Utah, New Mexico, and Colorado had the lowest average bills.

As energy bills have risen even faster than overall inflation in recent years, the greatest burden falls on the lowest earners, who tend to spend a larger share of their budgets on utilities. While President Donald Trump has promised to slash energy prices in half by pursuing a "drill, baby, drill" agenda on oil and gas, energy analysts and economists told Business Insider it's not that simple.

Extreme weather combined with exploding costs to upgrade the infrastructure that delivers electricity across the country are fueling higher prices. Renewable energy has helped moderate prices in some states, but looming tariffs on Canada and Mexico combined with skyrocketing energy demand from data centers may only increase costs.

Energy experts shared some of the biggest factors driving energy costs and explained why there are disparities among states.

The cost of extreme weather and volatile gas markets hit low earners the hardest

Since January 2020, consumer energy services costs have risen about 34%, compared to a 23% increase in overall prices, Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed. Additionally, the Bank of America Institute found that the median utility bill payment for electricity, gas, and water rose 6% in January compared to a year earlier, double the 3% rise in overall inflation during this period.

These cost increases have hit people with the lowest incomes the hardest. A Bank of America Institute note said that in 2023, US households with annual incomes below $50,000 spent 6.8% of their earnings on natural gas and electricity costs, compared to 1.2% for households with annual incomes more than $150,000.

While it's no surprise that using more fuel or electricity can spike customers' energy bills, analysts told Business Insider that extreme weather, volatile oil and gas prices, and utilities' growing investments in the poles, wires, and big transmission lines that deliver power to homes are all contributing to increased costs.

Freezing winters — like the subzero temperatures that blanketed the US this year — and scorching summers can spike the demand for heat and air conditioning and hike costs. Utilities are investing in aging infrastructure that carries electricity from power plants to communities and can recover those costs from their customers. Oil and gas, which still supplies the majority of US electricity, is a volatile market vulnerable to global shocks like Russia's war in Ukraine.

Those shocks hit New England hard. The region, which includes Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont, gets more than 50% of its power from natural gas. And unlike states such as Pennsylvania or Texas — where natural gas is underground in the region — a lot of the fuel for New England states is imported. This partly explains why energy costs are higher compared to the rest of the country, said Dan Dolan, president of the New England Power Generators Association, a trade group.

Dolan said wholesale electricity prices have fallen over the last two decades, but that's been offset by transmission costs soaring 800% between 2004 and 2023, data from New England's regional transmission organization showed.

"We've also seen a dramatic increase in the spending at the distribution level as we build out more substations, poles, and wires to highly electrified homes and businesses," Dolan said. "Those combined elements — transmission and distribution — now make up the largest single segment of the vast majority of electricity rates across New England."

Dolan added that New England states have more aggressive climate policies, including participation in a regional cooperative that caps carbon emissions from power plants and requires them to pay for every ton they emit — another cost that's passed on to customers.

On the opposite coast in California, extreme weather is driving higher utility bills, which averaged $159 a month in 2024. Utilities have spent billions of dollars on wildfire-related costs that are partially being passed on to consumers, said Brendan Pierpont, director of electricity modeling at Energy Innovation, a non-partisan energy and climate policy think tank.

Those costs include investments in preventing wildfires, like managing vegetation that can catch fire and burying power lines underground, as well as legal liabilities for blazes caused by their infrastructure.

Renewables can slow rising costs

Pierpont added that some states, including Colorado and New Mexico, have been able to moderate rising electricity costs in part by expanding solar and wind power.

"Many of the states with the cheapest power and lowest rate of increases have easy access to high-quality wind and solar resources," he said, citing a paper he authored last year.

Johanna Neumann, senior director of Environment America's Campaign for 100% Renewable Energy, said states that generate the highest percentage of their electricity from renewable energy sources have electricity rates that are below the national average, pointing to Iowa, South Dakota, and Oklahoma as examples.

"Renewables actually reduce wholesale electricity costs and reduce our dependence on notoriously volatile natural gas," she said.

However, not all states that have heavily invested in renewables have electricity rates lower than the national average. Neumann pointed to Hawaii as one example, where she said benefits from renewables investments are being offset by continued reliance on imported oil.

"These fuels have to be shipped to the island across long distances, leading to higher electricity costs," she said.

Texas is in a category of its own because the state's power grid is isolated from other regional ones. A deadly winter storm in 2021 that knocked out power and sent electricity prices soaring prompted state regulators to direct power plants to better prepare for extreme weather.

While Texas has abundant natural gas resources and is a leader in solar and wind development, the state aims to build more fossil fuel and small nuclear power plants to meet growing demand, said Michele Richmond, executive director of the Texas Competitive Power Advocates, which represents companies that produce power, including natural gas, wind, and nuclear.

Richmond added that Texas has a competitive, deregulated energy market that dispatches the cheapest power first to help offset some of the cost pressures. But it isn't immune from rising prices.

"We believe that having a diversified fuel mix is good for reliability because the wind doesn't blow all the time, and the sun doesn't shine all the time," Richmond said.

Do you have a story to share about your utility bills? Contact these reporters at [email protected] and [email protected].

• Real estate is attracting more young people to the profession.
• The share of realtors under the age of 30 quadrupled in 2024, NAR data shows.
• The trend has been helped by record-high home prices and the allure of being one's own boss.

Young, fresh-faced 20-somethings are taking the housing market by storm — not by buying homes, but by selling them.

After dipping in 2023, the share of realtors under the age of 30 quadrupled in 2024, rising from 1% to 4% last year, according to registration data from the National Association of Realtors.

Meanwhile, the median age of the average real estate agent dropped from 60 to 55 last year, the lowest since 2021.

It's a lucrative time to get into the business. While new rules have affected how realtors' commissions work, real estate agents and brokers still made a collective $48 billion in revenue in the third quarter of last year, about double what they made 10 years ago.

Paydays are being boosted by soaring home prices. The median sale price of a home was about $419,000 in the fourth quarter of 2024 — up 27% since the start of 2020.

Business Insider spoke to three realtors who dove into the property business early, with some obtaining their license as soon as they turned 18, or pausing college studies to do so.

Many described themselves as especially entrepreneurial and seeking an alternative to a typical desk job — and said they found the work rewarding, both on a financial and a personal level.

Marios Milonas, a real-estate agent based in New York, started in the business when he was 19 and looking for direction in his career. He wanted nothing to do with a regular 9-to-5, and, in an effort to steer clear of student loans, was taking classes at his local community college.

"I just felt like I wanted to be able to experience financial freedom," he said, adding that he shied away from the idea of being forced into a job just to pay of student debt.

His girlfriend's father, who had worked in real estate for more than 20 years, recommended he try it out. After a few weeks of coursework, he got his license and soon after dropped out of community college.

The market was tough, at first. Milanos didn't sell a single home for his first year in the business, he said, pointing to the pandemic.

His "baby face" also held him back, he said, recalling offhand comments from other professionals in the business.

"One person came in and said, 'Oh, I thought you were 13 years old," Milanos said.

The comments began to subside as he began to grow more confident and worked on appearing more knowledgeable in front of his clients. Once the housing market began to heat back up, he felt things finally coming together.

"When that housing market opened up, it was crazy," he said, adding that he began making a six-figure salary when he was 21 years old. Milonas made over $300,000 in commission in 2024, according to financial statements viewed by BI.

Chloe De Verrier, a 26-year-old realtor based in Los Angeles, also began working on getting her real estate license when she was 19. At the time, she was attending UCLA and felt unsure about her career path. She did, though, know that she wanted to run her own business, and have full control over her schedule. Real estate seemed like the right fit.

"I was kind of having that, I guess, quarter-life crisis of, 'I don't know what I want to do,'" she said. "I kind of just decided to take a leap of faith."

She decided to temporarily drop out of college and pursue real estate full-time. Her first official day in business was her 21st birthday.

It also took De Verrier eight months to sell her first home, which she attributes to the pandemic and the fact that she was just starting out in the industry. In the meantime, she lived off her savings and moonlighted as a restaurant hostess for extra cash.

"It was just a complete shit show," she said. "I would do real estate all day during the day, go to my night shift. And it would be funny because clients would call me when I was on shift, and so I would make some excuse to go to the bathroom or step into the alleyway to negotiate deals."

At times, she also doubted herself because of her age.

"Who's going to trust a 20-something-year-old to buy or sell their biggest asset?" De Verrier said.

But for the most part, people don't seem to care about how young she was. De Verrier says clients typically trust her because she's knowledgeable and does her best to come across as professional.

"To this day, people are like, you look 23, but you act [older]," she said. "Looking back, I don't think it was as big of a deal as I made it out to be in my head."

De Verrier made over $100,000 last year, according to documents viewed by BI.

Joseph Khateri, a 21-year-old real-estate agent in Virginia, said he got his real estate license when he was 18, but he was dabbling in real estate long before that. Khateri helped his immigrant parents read documents and sell their home twice when he was younger.

The last time Khateri helped his parents move, the realtor who sold them their house in Virginia told him to think about getting into the real estate business. Afer obtaining his license, he plunged into the real estate business full-time, working as many as 80 hours a week his first few years.

Khateri described his approach to real-estate as a kind of game, adding that he worked doggedly to bring up his hourly rate, or what his salary would be if he were paid by the hour.

It was tough going, though. It took Khateri around six months to sell his first home. His commission, when subtracting fees from his brokerage and other work-related expenses, came out to a rate of around $2 an hour.

"I was just losing money every month," he said. "My parents were like, 'Joseph, what are you doing?'"

He, too, said he had trouble doing deals because of his age. "Ageism is a very big thing with real estate," he said.

Since then, things have picked up. Last year, Khateri made around $70,000 from his real estate business alone, which includes his income from commission, referrals to clients, and consulting, statements viewed by BI show.

The Gen Z realtors who spoke to BI said they all want to stick with real estate, even if its just as a side hustle.

Milonas, who grew up in a working-class family in Queens, said he planned on scaling his business and building generational wealth through his real estate ventures.

Khateri picked up a full-time job as a software engineer last year and said he would continue to work in real estate on the side. Money is part of the reason why, he admits, as he's a close follower of the Financial Independence, Retire Early movement. He said expects to make $200,000 in income this year. But for the most part, he just finds real estate fun.

"I'm a huge money guy, numbers guy, heavily into finance. I simply just like helping people with their investments. It's honestly fun for me," he said.

De Verrier said she would also stay in the industry, with plans to potentially build her own team of agents one day.

"I don't know what else I would do, honestly," she said.

• Duolingo staged its owl mascot's death for a marketing stunt — except in Japan.
• The campaign reflects Duolingo's non-traditional and country-specific marketing.
• Marketing efforts helped boost daily active users by 51% and revenue by 41% in the fourth quarter.

In an elaborate marketing campaign this month, Duolingo seemingly killed its viral green owl mascot in every country but one.

"Duo, our owl, faked his death in every single market that we had except for Japan," Luis von Ahn, the company's CEO, said on an earnings call on Thursday. "It turns out that in Japan, joking about death is not as kosher. So, in Japan, he was just not dead."

In an early February campaign, the language learning app announced the "death" of its mascot with a sassy statement. In a post on X, the company wrote: "Authorities are currently investigating his cause of death and we are cooperating fully. Tbh, he probably died waiting for you to do your lesson, but what do we know."

Pop singer Dua Lipa replied to the X post, and wrote: "Til' death duo part," a reference to a long-standing joke about Duo being in love with the artist.

The company went all in: The app's thumbnail depicted the mascot dead with crossed eyes and his tongue sticking out, and Duolingo's social handles mourned his death in a series of posts.

On Thursday's call, von Ahn said Duo returned last week from faking his death because users completed enough language lessons to bring him back.

The campaign reflected the company's famous nontraditional and country-specific marketing campaigns, which have made the owl mascot and the Duolingo app cultural icons.

Duolingo's social media accounts for countries like India, Germany, and France feature hyper-local content based on news events, memes, and trends, amassing hundreds of thousands of followers in each of these countries. Duolingo's Japan Instagram page has posts in Japanese and anime-style art, and they feature Duo participating in local trends.

Last quarter, Duolingo became the first company to use animation to deliver prepared remarks on an earnings call, emphasizing its artificial intelligence push. A company representative told Business Insider that the video would have taken weeks to create with human animators, but generative AI did the job in less than seven minutes.

The company spent $25.6 million on sales and marketing in the quarter that ended in September, up from $22.3 million in the same period in 2023. Breakdowns for the most recent quarter were not available at press time.

"We believe that our unhinged and viral marketing campaigns — like our 5-second Super Bowl ad, Duolingo on Ice, and 'Owl Game' partnership with Netflix — contributed to our user growth and the growth of our iconic brand," the company wrote in a shareholder letter released Thursday.

Daily active users — an important measure for consumer apps — jumped by 51% in the fourth quarter to 40.5 million.

Fourth quarter revenue grew 41% to $209 million, beating analyst expectations of $205 million.

Duolingo's stock fell over 7% in after-hours trading. The stock is up 57% in the past year.

• Joe Gebbia is a cofounder and former chief product officer of Airbnb.
• On Thursday, Gebbia said he had joined Elon Musk's government efficiency commission, DOGE.
• Gebbia also sits on Tesla's board.

Joe Gebbia, the cofounder and former chief product officer of Airbnb, said on Thursday that he would be a part of Elon Musk's government efficiency commission, DOGE.

"Excited to share I'm bringing my designer brain and start-up spirit into the government," Gebbia wrote in an X post on Thursday.

Gebbia wrote in his post that his first project at DOGE will be to improve the "slow and paper-based retirement process" for federal employees. Musk had previously complained about how retirement applications were being processed manually and using paper records.

Musk told reporters at a press conference in the Oval Office on February 11 that he was told that only a maximum of 10,000 federal employees could retire every month because of the manual process.

"Well, because all the retirement paperwork is manual, on paper. It's manually calculated then written down on a piece of paper, then it goes down a mine," Musk said.

"Yeah, there's a limestone mine where we store all the retirement paperwork," Musk added.

Musk was referring to a converted mine in Boyers, Pennsylvania. The mine was originally owned by US Steel and has been used to store government records since the 1960s.

The Office of Personnel Management's then-chief information officer, Guy Cavallo, said in an interview with Federal News Network last year that it would take "many years" to replace the paper-based system with an online platform they were testing.

"Since leaving my operating role at Airbnb in 2022, I've been looking for the next digital design challenge. And I can think of few more important ones than volunteering to improve the user experience within our government," Gebbia wrote in his X post on Thursday.

Gebbia's post came attached with a video from the OPM, which said that the agency had processed an entire retirement application digitally for the first time. Chuck Ezell, the OPM's acting director, said in the video that the application was processed within a week. The process would take 64 days on average if done manually.

"If anyone else in good standing wants to help design beautiful, user-friendly digital products, reach out," Gebbia added.

"Thanks!" Musk wrote in response to Gebbia's post.

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

This is the first time Gebbia has confirmed his involvement with DOGE. On February 13, The New York Times reported that Gebbia was set to join DOGE, though Gebbia declined to comment when approached by the Times.

It is unclear if Gebbia will be paid for his work at DOGE. Earlier this month, the White House said that Musk is a "special government employee" and isn't paid for his service.

Gebbia has a good relationship with Musk and has been a Tesla board member since 2022. In June, Gebbia told Reuters in an interview that Musk had discussed buying a home from his startup, Samara.

On January 19, a day before President Donald Trump's inauguration, Gebbia said in an X post that he had voted for Trump even though he had been voting for the Democrats his "whole life." The Democratic Party "aren't the same party they used to be," Gebbia wrote.

"Like your fashion sense, they've lost their way. Hopefully they'll make an effort to win people like me back," he added.

• The US Air Force's director of force design said America can't win through long-range strikes alone.
• He said the Air Force wants to emphasize more long-range strikes but cannot rely on them too heavily.
• US air power would need both tempo and mass to win a war, he said.

The US Air Force relying on a "massive punch" from afar would be a war-losing mistake, said its general in charge of shaping the service's future capabilities.

"What we have found, if you go to an all-long-range force, it doesn't win," Maj. Gen. Joseph Kunkel said at a Hudson Institute event on Wednesday.

He was answering a question about whether the Air Force will start to heavily or completely emphasize long-range strikes.

"I mean, it sounds wonderful, doesn't it?" Kunkel said, who also oversees the Air Force's war game simulations. "You sit in Topeka, Kansas. You press a red button. The war gets fought. Nobody gets hurt. It's all done at long-range."

But Kunkel said the strategy doesn't work because the Air Force loses tempo when fighting that way.

"They're absolutely game-changing," he said of striking from long range. "They're going to help us out. They're going to be able to deliver a massive punch to the adversary."

"But they're probably not going to do it at the tempo that's required to keep the adversary on its knees all the time," Kunkel continued.

He said that to win wars, the Air Force still needs to be able to get close and strike frequently.

"You need something else. You need something inside. You need something inside that can generate tempo. Tempo and mass," the general said.

To that end, Kunkel said the Air Force would transition to include more long-range attack methods but still rely on combined arms — a mix of different capabilities.

The Air Force has repeatedly signaled that it's trying to bolster its long-range strike capabilities, especially as the Pentagon worries about open conflict with China.

In January, for example, then-Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said the force might have too few options to attack from afar.

The new B-21 Raider Bomber unveiled in 2022 is a central piece of the Air Force's long-range capabilities, and Kendall hinted that it needed more than its planned fleet of 100 aircraft.

"The Air Force is very heavily dependent on relatively short-range aircraft: fighters. And has a relatively small inventory of longer-range strike platforms: bombers," Kendall said. "I think that balance needs to shift."

Still, Kunkel said explicitly on Wednesday that the Air Force wouldn't rely solely on long-range strikes.

"I will adamantly say we are not transitioning to this all long-range force because, alone, that just doesn't work. We will transition to elements of a long-range force," he said.

The two-star general also said that the Air Force needs to start tailoring its capabilities to meet specific threats and that simply making new fighter jets will not win wars for the US.

"When we do the analysis, what we find is just reinventing the Air Force doesn't win," Kunkel said.

The Pentagon's press department did not respond to an additional request for comment for Kunkel sent by Business Insider outside regular business hours.

• Chris Hwang, cofounder of The Golden Duck, started the snack brand in 2015 with one product — salted egg yolk chips.
• A decade on, it's sold in over 3,000 stores and plans to expand into the US this year.
• From selling off his cars to afford payroll in the pandemic, here's how he built the business.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Chris Hwang, the 33-year-old cofounder of The Golden Duck, a Singaporean snack brand. It has been edited for length and clarity.

At 23, I dropped out of law school to start The Golden Duck, a gourmet snack brand that reimagines Asian flavors like salted egg yolk; a decade later, it is sold in over 3,000 stores worldwide. We've set our sights on expanding into the US in 2025.

I don't have any culinary experience, but I love food.

The idea for the brand came about when my cofounder, Jonathan, approached me one day and asked, "What do you think about salted egg?"

I thought, "Salted egg is great. I love it in a Chinese Zi Char restaurant. I love salted egg crab."

I asked him what he had in mind, and he said, "How about we make salted egg yolk potato chips?" I thought it would be the kind of chips that come with dips, a Western concept that doesn't really sell well in Singapore.

He said, "Hear me out. I found a way to put it on a chip in a dry format."

I sat down with him and a chef friend of ours, and I tried it. It was so mind-blowingly good. The flavor, with the chilies and curry leaves, perfectly coated the chips. I said, "We have to do this business."

Cooking out of one tiny kitchen

We launched in 2015 with just one product — salted egg yolk chips.

At the start, our capacity was so limited that we were just making it out of a home kitchen, producing only about 50 packs daily.

We started selling them at a tiny seven-foot-long pop-up booth in Singapore's Suntec City mall for $7 a pop.

On the first day, the sales were not too crazy. But on day two, a queue started forming. By day three, we had sold out by 3 p.m. and had to put a maximum order of five packs per order.

Our products are often given as gifts or bought as souvenirs, and I think this is where it started. People started bringing their friends down to help them buy more packs, and it became a gift item for friends and family.

A huge opportunity for authentic flavors

We now have two lines of products: our snack boxes, which comprise flavors like salted egg crab seaweed tempura and salted egg fish skin chips, and a line of canister potato chips.

Asian flavors are gaining traction in the West, and I think people all around the world are craving authentic experiences.

We all know what sour cream and onion flavor or barbecue tastes like. But why not have sour cream and Sriracha?

That's one of our newest flavors in the canister line of chips that we launched in 2024, along with others like truffle wagyu and Himalayan pink salt.

Challenges in scaling up

We were hesitant to scale up initially, scared that it was just a flash in the pan and it would flame out fast. So we were very, very hesitant to put in capital to set up a store.

We did pop-ups for a few months until we finally got a tiny store in Chinatown, which had just enough space for one person to work in.

From there, we kept expanding. From 2016 to 2018, we grew to 10 stores in Singapore and more stores overseas. At the peak, we had about 15 stores, and we were also selling to retailers like 7-Eleven and other supermarket chains.

Some of the biggest surprises in our business came from scaling up our own manufacturing. The moment we tried to give a product a shelf life, we had to consider, "How will this taste after six months?"

Hiring the right people was key. If you hire someone who hates being in a hot kitchen, your products will come out pretty bad. We needed to hire people who care about their food.

Weathering the pandemic

The lowest point in the business came during the COVID-19 pandemic when our tourism revenue evaporated overnight.

I subscribe to the ideology that leaders eat last. I thought — if the company can't afford payroll and cannot meet its obligations to continue its business, I'm going to sell my cars.

From 2019 to 2021, I sold three cars so that I could lead the fundraising efforts during the pandemic.

We also had to restructure the team, going from 200 head count to about 120 over the course of one year.

We had to tell friends that we'd brought on board that we wouldn't be able to work together and that we were sorry for where the business was.

We now have a team of 25 people, producing results close to what our team of 200 was producing just five to six years ago.

Eyes set on a US expansion

A couple of years on, we now sell in countries around the world, including China, Australia, Germany, and even Trinidad and Tobago.

Now, we are eyeing the US as our new market.

I just returned from the US in December. It's a huge market for snacks, second to none. And the US consumer is so discerning and excited, and they're happy to consume and try new things.

We wanted to develop something that they would find interesting and exciting but still familiar, so we didn't want to reinvent the wheel.

This new line of canister chips is basically like Pringles but better. It's so easy to explain to Americans because we don't have to tell them what fish skin is or what seaweed tempura is.

• Amazon Web Services on Thursday debuted its new quantum computing chip, a prototype called Ocelot.
• The company says the Ocelot represents a breakthrough in error correction and scalability.
• The quantum computing field is heating up with recent advancements from Google and Microsoft.

Amazon Web Services on Thursday debuted its prototype quantum chip, the Ocelot, making headway in the race to develop functional quantum computers.

"What makes Ocelot different and special is the way it approaches the fundamental challenge we have with quantum computers, and that is the errors that they're susceptible to," Oskar Painter, the director of quantum hardware at AWS told Business Insider.

Amazon, in research published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature, says the Ocelot represents a breakthrough in error correction and scalability — two key issues that have long slowed advancement in the field. The Ocelot prototype demonstrated the potential to increase efficiency in quantum error correction by up to 90% compared to conventional approaches, the company says.

"And that efficiency is something on the order of a factor of five to 10x so it's a pretty significant reduction," Painter said. "We still have about a factor of a billion to reduce the error rate — so that it's a huge gap — but it turns out that quantum error correction is up to the challenge, and it turns out that we eventually can bridge this massive gap."

Schrödinger's qubits

Quantum computing is a growing field of technology that combines computer science, math, and quantum mechanics. It relies on units of information called qubits rather than the binary bits used in classical computing.

Qubits hold more information than binary bits and can exist in multiple states simultaneously. However, they are unstable, difficult to measure, and require specific conditions — such as low light or extremely cold environments — to reliably replicate results without errors, which has slowed progress in the field for years.

But when they behave predictably at a large enough scale, qubits enable quantum computers to solve more complex calculations more quickly than classical computers can. Researchers in the field agree that computations solvable through quantum computing could help discover new drugs, promote sustainable food growth in harsh climates, develop new chemical compounds, or break our current encryption methods, among other outcomes.

Amazon said the Ocelot chip uses a kind of qubit technology called cat qubits, named after the famous Schrödinger's cat thought experiment. This technology intrinsically suppresses certain forms of errors, simplifying and reducing the quantum error correction required to build a full-fledged quantum computer, a spokesperson said.

An Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider the chip has a unique architecture that integrates the cat qubit technology and additional quantum error correction components into the chip that can be manufactured using processes borrowed from the electronics industry.

A quantum 'tipping point'

Before fully-fledged and functional quantum computers can become commercially useful, Painter and other quantum researchers agree they must make more progress in error reduction and scalability. While Amazon's new chip doesn't mean commercially useful quantum computers are in production now, it's the latest in a series of recent advancements in the field that has galvanized the industry and suggests commercial adoption will come sooner than expected.

Rob Schoelkopf, cofounder and chief scientist of Quantum Circuits, said Amazon's research results "highlight how more efficient error correction is key to ensuring viable quantum computing. " He described the company's progress as "a good step toward exploring and preparing for future roadmaps" in further developing quantum technology.

Amazon's announcement comes about a week after Microsoft unveiled its quantum chip, the Majorana 1. Microsoft says its chip is powered by a new state of matter and allows for more stable, scalable, and simplified quantum computing.

Similarly, Google in December announced its quantum chip, Willow, which the company says can perform a standard benchmark computation in under five minutes. It's a task that would take the current fastest supercomputers 10 septillion years to complete — a timeframe that exceeds the age of the universe.

"We really are at a very exciting time in quantum computing, and you're hearing a lot about it because this is a real tipping point," Painter said.

Who is in the lead?

Sankar Das Sarma, a theoretical condensed matter physicist at the University of Maryland's Joint Quantum Institute, told Business Insider Amazon's Ocelot chip is a "more conventional superconducting chip, perhaps similar to the ones developed by Google and IBM," than the one recently unveiled by Microsoft — though he added it's too soon to say which company is ahead in their findings.

"The MSFT work is based on topological Majorana zero modes, which also has a superconductor, but in a radically different manner," Das Sarma wrote in an email to BI. "In particular, the MSFT device, if it works correctly, is protected topologically with minimal need for error correction, whereas the AWS claim seems to be that they have made some improvement in the conventional error correction schemes. The two approaches are very different."

Researchers in the field are closely monitoring Amazon's and other companies' advancements, hoping to prove that quantum technology will become commercially viable sooner than anticipated. In January, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang suggested we were still 20 years away from the technology being "very useful," sending quantum stocks tumbling.

Troy Nelson, the chief technology officer at Lastwall, a cybersecurity provider of quantum resilient technology, told Business Insider that each company's announcement represents another building block that the industry will use along the way to a functioning quantum computer.

"There's lots of challenges ahead. What Amazon gained in error correction — and it has led to some new scientific knowledge and discoveries in error correction — was a trade-off for the complexity and the sophistication of the control systems and the readouts from the chip," Nelson said. "We're still in prototype days, and we still have multiple years to go, but they've made a great leap forward."

• A judge ruled OPM must retract memos calling for mass layoffs of probationary employees.
• The ruling follows a lawsuit against the Trump administration's federal workforce reduction.
• Charles Ezell, Acting Director of OPM, and DOGE employees could be ordered to testify in court.

A federal judge in California said on Thursday that the US Office of Personnel Management must withdraw memos calling for other federal agencies to terminate probationary employees en masse, stating that the OPM exceeded its legal authority.

US District Judge William Alsup of San Francisco said that except for its own employees, "OPM does not have any authority whatsoever, under any statute in the history of the universe," to direct another federal agency to fire their workers, and that OPM must notify other agencies that it did not have the power to issue such a directive.

"All efforts by OPM to enforce it are invalid, pending further order of the court," he added.

A spokesperson for the OPM declined to comment when reached by Business Insider.

The order issued by Alsup comes in response to a lawsuit filed last week by a coalition of five labor unions and five nonprofit organizations challenging the Trump administration's efforts to shrink the federal workforce. The lawsuit is just one of several pushing back against the Trump administration's stance that the federal workforce is bloated and inefficient.

Plaintiffs argued that OPM had no legal authority to terminate probationary employees, generally meaning those with less than a year on the job, and that the firings were based on false claims of poor performance.

Government attorneys said in court that OPM did not mandate the firings but merely advised agencies to assess whether probationary employees met performance standards. They argued that these employees are not entitled to guaranteed employment and that federal agencies should prioritize retaining only top-performing and mission-critical staff.

Alsap could summon Charles Ezell, Acting Director of OPM, to testify in court under oath in March about his communications to agencies regarding terminating employees. DOGE office-affiliated employees can also be subpoenaed to court.

"I can't order what I'm about to say because we don't have the parties in front of me to give relief. But I'm going to count on the government to do the right thing and to go a little bit further than I have ordered," said Alsap shortly before adjourning the court, "and to let some of these agencies know what I have ruled because I would hate for probationary employees to lose their job and for the government to be compromised."

"This ruling by Judge Alsup is an important initial victory for patriotic Americans across this country who were illegally fired from their jobs by an agency that had no authority to do so," said Everett Kelley, National President of the American Federation of Government Employees. "These are rank-and-file workers who joined the federal government to make a difference in their communities, only to be suddenly terminated due to this administration's disdain for federal employees and desire to privatize their work."

• Robot maker Apptronik partnered with supply chain giant Jabil to test and produce its humanoid robots.
• Apptronik says the Apollo robots will perform simple tasks, supporting workers in Jabil's factories.
• Apptronik previously partnered with Mercedes-Benz.

Robot maker Apptronik entered a deal that could have its humanoid bots building themselves on factory lines.

The Austin-based company announced a partnership on Tuesday with supply chain giant Jabil.

Jabil, which is generally known for building electronic circuit boards, will provide a factory environment for "real-world testing" of Apptronik's Apollo robots, the company said in a release.

Appronik says the Apollo robots in Jabil's factories will be tasked with an "array of simple, repetitive tasks" like inspection, sorting, lineside delivery, and fixture placement. Jabil also agreed to produce Apollo robots in its factories, meaning they will eventually help build themselves if they test well.

Appronik said the robots in Jabil factories are meant to support existing workers, giving them more time to work on projects that the robots can not do. People who previously worked on the robot's tasks can now dedicate their time to "more creative, thought-intensive projects," the announcement says.

Apptronik first launched in 2016 in a lab at the University of Texas at Austin. The company later signed a deal with NASA in 2022 to help develop its humanoid robots. It released its first humanoid, Apollo, in August 2023.

"The big idea is a humanoid robot should be able to fit in all the places that a human can fit into and use all the same tools that humans can use," Apptronik CEO Jeff Cardenas told BI at the time. "That allows them to integrate into a world that's built for us versus having to modify the world for the robots."

This is the second time Apptronik has agreed to send the Apollo robots into a factory setting. The company announced a deal in March 2024 with Mercedes-Benz to test the Apollo robots with simple tasks in the company's manufacturing lines.

Apptronik is also not the first company to have its humanoid robots deployed in a factory setting. BMW announced in June 2024 that it successfully tested humanoid robots from California-based robot maker Figure at its factory in Spartanburg, South Carolina.

BMW said that the company's Figure 02 robots successfully inserted sheet metal parts, which were then assembled as part of the chassis, or the base frame of a car, during a several-week trial run.

Apptronik and Jabil did not immediately return a request from BI for comment.