• Axle Health just raised $10 million to bring Uber-style logistics to home healthcare.
• Demand for hospital-at-home care is exploding, and clinicians are scrambling to keep up.
• Axle's AI-powered platform matches a provider to the appropriate patient to save time and money.

More hospitals want to bring care into the home, but many are missing the technology to support that shift. Axle Health is building AI that can help.

Before launching Axle Health, CEO Adam Stansell helped launch Uber Eats in the northeastern US, coordinating food-delivery logistics in the new market. He later joined Motive, a logistics software company for trucking fleets.

In 2020, when hospitals were scrambling to enable hospital-at-home care during the pandemic, Stansell, his cofounder Connor Hailey, and some of Stansell's former Uber colleagues set out to create the same intelligence infrastructure for healthcare that the gig economy had built for itself.

Now, Axle Health has raised a $10 million Series A led by F-Prime Capital, Business Insider has learned exclusively. Y Combinator, Pear VC, and Lightbank also participated in the round.

Axle's software uses AI to handle some of the hardest problems in home healthcare: scheduling, routing, and patient engagement. Its logistics engine can coordinate care based on clinical eligibility, patient preferences, clinician license levels, and even cost, all in real time. Its customers now include large health systems, independent home health agencies, mobile phlebotomy providers, and high-acuity dispatch services.

Axle Health originally set out to be a home health provider, powered by its proprietary technology. The company joined Y Combinator's Winter 2021 cohort and quickly scaled to operate in all 50 states, growing to a couple of million dollars in revenue, Stansell said. But in 2023, the startup pivoted to focus on building and licensing its technology for other hospital-at-home providers.

"We realized it's better for us — and better for the industry — if instead of keeping the technology for ourselves, we built tools to empower every home health provider," Stansell said.

Axle Health announced it had raised $4.4 million in funding in February 2024, which Stansell said included seed funding from 2021 and additional funding Axle raised after the business pivoted. In the past year, Stansell said Axle Health has grown its revenue tenfold.

The home health market is growing fast, accelerated by an aging population, clinician shortages, and rising consumer demand for in-home care. Other startups are racing to meet that demand, including by forging ahead with the tech-enabled services model that Axle shelved, like Sprinter Health, which recently landed a $55 million Series B led by General Catalyst to provide at-home preventive care. Later-stage players, acute-care home health provider DispatchHealth and home care tech company Medically Home, merged in March.

Axle wants to differentiate itself both by plugging its tech into the existing home health ecosystem and by building technology that clinicians actually want to use, said Stansell. Axle's AI generates logistics plans that clinicians trust, which is an especially difficult bar to clear. And Axle's team, Stansell said, with its several ex-Uber leads, is a key ingredient in the startup's secret sauce.

Next up, Axle plans to improve its patient engagement capabilities, including rolling out AI-powered voice call features for patients. It's also expanding its integrations with electronic medical record systems and forming more direct connections with other companies contributing to home health operations, like medical equipment suppliers and pharmacies.

"You're not going to have one provider that's going to solve the whole thing," Stansell said. "You need an ecosystem."

Here's the 18-slide pitch deck Axle Health used to raise its $10 million Series A.

• Sergey Brin gave away more than 4 million Alphabet shares worth nearly $700 million.
• The gift is split between Class A and Class C stock, which carry different voting rights.
• Brin has a history of large donations, including one worth $600 million in May 2023.

Sergey Brin just gave away stock worth almost $700 million — but we don't know who to.

The Google cofounder transferred just over 4 million Alphabet shares, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Wednesday.

Brin is 10th on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index with a net worth of about $144 billion. He's behind the likes of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos, and ahead of Michael Dell and Jensen Huang.

The gift was split between Class A and Class C stock. Each A share carries one vote, while C stock have no voting rights.

A stock closed at $168.56 on Wednesday, and C closed at about $170, bringing the total value to just over $693 million.

Shares in the search giant jumped on Wednesday following Google's I/O developer conference the previous day, where about two dozen new models, features, and updates were unveiled.

It said it would launch AI Mode, which allows US users to chat with Google while browsing the web, resulting in a more conversational search experience.

The recipient of Brin's gift could be a charity, a financial vehicle, or a trust.

He has previously made large gifts, giving away stock about $600 million in May 2023 after the launch of Google's AI search, Bloomberg reported. In May and November 2024, he made gifts of shares worth more than $100 million.

Brin has a personal foundation, the Sergey Brin Family Foundation, which disbursed about $250 million in both 2020 and 2021.

He's also donated more than $1 billion to research into Parkinson's disease and funding a nonprofit focused on the climate crisis.

Brin's family office didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

• Chancellor Friedrich Merz pledged to build Europe's strongest military for Germany.
• Germany's shift in defense policy followed Russia's invasion of Ukraine and NATO goals.
• Experts highlighted challenges like underinvestment, recruitment, and political consensus.

Germany's new chancellor, Friedrich Merz, vowed last week that the country will build "the strongest conventional army in Europe."

It comes as Germany and others adapt to the drive for European countries to rapidly rearm in the face of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 — but contrasts with recent decades when the country has preferred soft power over military strength.

So, how feasible is it for Germany to be the continent's biggest military power?

"For now, the money is there, and Germans have deep pockets," Ulrich Kühn, a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Business Insider.

"What is missing is a general cross-party consensus on the issue, including the left wing of the governing Social Democrats, who are more skeptical of projecting military power," he said.

Last month, Germany announced that it was deploying troops to Lithuania on a long-term basis—the first long-term deployment of German soldiers to another country since World War II, another sign of its changing military approach.

Kühn added that the commitment to increase Germany's defense spending "can only be the beginning if the goal is really to position itself as Europe's defense champion."

"What the German arms industry needs are long-term contracts well into the 2030s and state subsidies to rapidly scale up production," he said.

As of May 2024, Germany's army, the Bundeswehr, had 180,215 active-duty personnel.

Jörn Fleck, senior director of the Atlantic Council's Europe Center, told BI that a targeted increase of the German armed forces to 200,000 had been delayed until 2031 "due to lackluster recruitment and an ageing force."

But he said that Germany "has taken important initial steps to rebuild the German military into one of Europe's leading conventional forces."

Fleck cited a €100 billion special fund to modernize the military, announced in 2022, and constitutional changes to partially exempt defense spending from Germany's debt brake, which was imposed after the 2008 financial crisis and limits the deficit to just 0.35% of GDP. By contrast, the US deficit exceeded 6% last year.

But Fleck warned that Germany "will have to overcome two if not three decades of underinvestment in its armed forces."

"The resulting force reductions, readiness problems, capability gaps, and infrastructure challenges will take years to reverse," he added. "They will not be solved by money alone and will require sustained political will and leadership."

One positive for Germany is its thriving defense industry, which includes major players like Rheinmetall and KNDS, along with medium-sized companies and innovative startups.

In 2024, Rheinmetall saw sales related to its defense business increase by 50% year-on-year.

Germany's defense industry strategy, focused on key technologies, greater economies of scale, and the potential of the European market, is a "positive step in the right direction," Fleck said, but he added that the country will "have to fundamentally reform its procurement agency and processes" to boost its defense industry.

He also said that advancing Germany's military capabilities will move the needle across Europe, given the country's political and economic weight on the continent.

This has already been visible when it comes to the REARM initiative that opened the door for countries to spend more on defense, and the proposal for common EU borrowing to fund joint development and procurement.

"If Germany, Europe's reluctant hegemon with its fraught history, can get its act together on defense," Kühn said. "So can others."

• When our first child was born, we decided I would stay home, caring for our baby.
• I had a thriving career, but my pay was low, and childcare was expensive.
• I love being a mom, but staying at home made me miserable.

When I became pregnant with my first child, my husband and I made the difficult yet practical decision for me to stay home.

Even though I had a thriving career in higher ed, my income was low, childcare was expensive, and travel (a requirement of my job) wouldn't be feasible anymore — or at least for years to come.

With a few cuts to our household budget, it just made sense for me to stay home. Besides, motherhood would be the most rewarding experience of my life, right?

I was lonelier than ever

When our first baby was born, I was so in love with him and elated to finally have what I wanted most: to be a mom. In those first weeks, I felt strongly that I would love my new role as a stay-at-home mom and couldn't imagine going back to work. However, after my husband's paternity leave ended and he returned to work, I was home alone with the baby, and reality set in.

I was sleep deprived, exhausted from exclusively nursing, and lonelier than I had ever been. I was jealous of my friends who were still working and could get away to do something other than care for a baby. Desperate for connection, I joined several baby and me classes through my local parks and rec, hoping to make a few friends navigating the same challenges.

The moms I met were kind, but our conversations revolved around our children's sleeping and eating schedules and how we were dealing with our toddlers' tantrums. Somewhere along the way, my interests and identity faded away. I needed more intellectual stimulation, I wanted to do more to connect with the community, and I wanted to use my talents outside of the home.

Staying home wasn't for me

As months turned into years, I felt increasingly isolated. I hired a babysitter once a week in the afternoon so I could escape the monotony of child rearing. One of these afternoons, I remember going to the movies alone and sobbing through "La La Land," not because of the storyline but because it reminded me of what it felt like to be alive and have a sense of self outside motherhood.

When I finally summoned the courage to talk to my stay-at-home-mom friends about my feelings, it felt as if I was violating an unspoken rule. Shouldn't I be grateful for this opportunity to bond with my child without the stress of a career? Wasn't it a privilege to be there for all of my child's milestones?

In fact, I knew how blessed I was to be able to stay home with my children, but I still felt so depressed. Five years of staying home and two babies later, it wasn't until I returned to work with a purpose outside the home that I truly felt like myself again.

I truly love being a mom, but I recognize that staying at home is not my strength. Working outside of the home in the community makes me a better mom, more present, patient, and fulfilled.

Stay-at-home motherhood isn't for everyone, and that's OK. We need to allow mothers to speak honestly about the complexities of raising children, including the very real feelings of isolation, loss of identity, and emotional debility that often come with motherhood.

• BYD sold more electric cars than Tesla in Europe for the first time in April.
• Sales of the Chinese brand jumped as Tesla grapples with backlash over Elon Musk's politics.
• Tesla's European sales have collapsed this year, despite Musk insisting it doesn't have a demand problem.

BYD just scored a major win against Tesla in one of its biggest markets.

The Chinese electric vehicle giant outsold Tesla in Europe for the first time last month, as Elon Musk's automaker saw its sales collapse amid furious backlash over its CEO's politics.

BYD sold 7,230 battery-electric vehicles in April, compared to 7,165 for Tesla, according to JATO Dynamics data.

It's a major milestone for the Chinese brand, and suggests BYD has taken advantage of Tesla's alarming decline in Europe.

ƒNew Tesla registrations dropped nearly 50% in April compared to the same month last year, while BYD sales surged 169% over the same period, per JATO Dynamics data.

BYD outsold Tesla without even taking hybrid sales into account. The Chinese carmaker sold 12,525 vehicles last month, meaning its total sales comfortably outstripped Tesla, which only sells battery-powered EVs.

Tesla has taken a battering this year in Europe, its third-largest market after the US and China. The automaker's European sales were down 30% in the first three months of 2025, according to JATO Dynamics, despite EV sales rising overall.

The automaker has faced a wave of backlash over CEO Musk's role in the Trump administration and endorsement of German far-right party AfD.

In an interview at the Qatar Economic Forum on Tuesday, Musk denied Tesla was facing a sales slump. That was despite Tesla reporting its weakest quarter for deliveries since 2022 last month as it retooled factories for the launch of its updated Model Y.

"Europe is our weakest market. We're strong everywhere else. Sales are doing well at this point, we don't anticipate any meaningful sales shortfall," said Musk.

By contrast, BYD is racing to launch new models as it seeks to capitalize on its explosive growth in Europe.

The Chinese brand unveiled the Dolphin Surf, the European version of its cheap Seagull EV, on Wednesday.

The compact hatchback will go on sale in 15 European markets in June, with prices starting at 23,000 euros ($26,000) — about $19,000 less than Tesla's cheapest model.

Having crushed Tesla in China, BYD is eyeing aggressive expansion overseas. The EV giant sold 79,000 vehicles outside China last month, nearly double the total in April 2024.

• The nation's disaster response agency has been hit by staffing cuts and leadership changes.
• The new acting chief, David Richardson, told staffers FEMA is ready for hurricane season.
• Several employees told BI that morale is low, as evidenced by some of the reactions to Richardson's town hall.

A week into his appointment, FEMA's new acting chief, David Richardson, held his first town hall for the agency's employees.

His May 15 remarks outlined a planned overhaul of the nation's disaster response operations dubbed "FEMA 2.0," tried to reassure staff that the agency is "to a great degree ready" for the 2025 "disaster season," and made clear he plans to carry out President Donald Trump's agenda.

His speech and answers to employee questions also included several folksy talking points: He used fruits as an example to describe how the agency's responsibilities are structured, made reference to his girlfriend's big red hair, and said he hadn't realized how big Texas is.

If his presentation, which was livestreamed and played on televisions at the embattled agency's headquarters, was meant to improve morale and boost confidence among the rank and file, it may have fallen short.

Two veteran staffers told Business Insider that they saw at least a dozen employees openly mocking Richardson — laughing while he was talking, jeering at the screen, and later circulating memes about him.

Like other federal employees, FEMA workers have been rattled by the Trump administration's staff cutbacks. Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have called for the agency's eventual elimination.

At the beginning of May, FEMA's acting administrator, Cameron Hamilton, lost his job after telling Congress that he thought the agency should continue. His departure paved the way for Richardson to bounce over from Homeland Security's Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office to run the agency.

An emergency agency in flux

These big changes come during a critical period for FEMA. Tornadoes in Kentucky and Missouri left 28 people dead last week. Hurricane season on the Atlantic coast, a six-month sprint of emergencies for the agency, begins in June.

Several FEMA employees who are tasked with helping states prepare for and respond to emergencies ranging from earthquakes to wildfires and beyond told Business Insider they're worried about whether they'll have the resources and support to provide life-saving aid to states when crisis strikes.

The agency is pushing back on criticism.

"Under Secretary Noem and Acting Administrator Richardson, FEMA is shifting from bloated, DC-centric dead weight to a lean, deployable disaster force that empowers state actors to provide relief for their citizens," a spokesperson for FEMA told Business Insider. "The old processes are being replaced because they failed Americans in real emergencies for decades."

Oranges, plantains, and fruit bowl memes

Richardson, a Marine veteran who attained the rank of lieutenant colonel, introduced himself to some of his staff a day after his appointment with bold words, saying he would not tolerate those who resist reforms — a group he estimated would be about 20% of employees based on his past experience.

"Obfuscation, delay, undermining. If you're one of those 20% of people and you think those tactics and techniques are going to help you, they will not, because I will run right over you," Richardson said at the May 9 meeting, according to Reuters. "Don't get in my way... I know all the tricks."

The town hall for all employees came almost a week later. According to a transcript based on leaked audio published by the independent news outlet Drop Site News, Richardson focused largely on conducting a "mission analysis" of FEMA's operations and aligning with Trump. (Two current FEMA staffers confirmed to Business Insider that the Drop Site News transcription of the meeting was accurate.)

In his introduction, before taking questions from staff, Richardson said that FEMA has between 150 and 175 statutorily obligated tasks to conduct, and each one of those specified tasks "can be binned into categories," he said.

"And by bin them, I mean some of those, some of those tasks will be kind of orange-like tasks — and by orange, I mean the fruit orange, but they might be tangerines, they might be blood oranges, it just might be maybe a little bit of grapefruit," Richardson said. "All those will go in one bin."

A FEMA staff member told Business Insider that some staffers watching the livestream began laughing during the remarks about fruit.

Shortly after the meeting concluded, a meme of Richardson's face, looking surprised, and with a basket of fruit on his head, began circulating among FEMA employees. The meme, shared with Business Insider by a staffer, was styled to look like the "Shrek 2" movie poster, with the title "FEMA 2" in green letters with ogre ears. Another meme seen by Business Insider, which was styled as a bingo card for people listening to Richardson's remarks, included a bowl of fruit as one of its spaces.

'Texas is huge!'

During the Q-and-A part of the session, a staff member asked about the plan for this hurricane season, whether the agency is appropriately staffed for emergency response, and the timeline for training staff to respond. Richardson said the agency is in a "transition period."

The process, he said, is "not going to look entirely different of how we did in 2024, but it's not necessarily going to look like how we're going to do it in 2026."

He added that FEMA would begin creating a road map for states to do the bulk of their own emergency response going forward, sharing as much as 50% of costs with the federal government.

A FEMA spokesperson declined to comment on what costs individual states would be responsible for in an emergency and what support the federal government could be expected to provide.

Richardson said he hoped to model future responses after states with good emergency preparedness, using Texas and Florida as examples.

"Some states are pretty good at this," Richardson said, referring to emergency response. "The other day I was chatting with my girlfriend — she's from Texas, she's got like, huge red hair, like she's from Texas."

He continued: "I said, how come it takes so long to drive 10 hours from Galveston to Amarillo? And she said, 'Well, you know, Texas is bigger than Spain.' I didn't know that. So I looked at the map. Texas is huge! I mean, if you put it in the middle of Europe, it takes up most of Europe up. However, they do disaster recovery very, very well, and so does Florida."

One FEMA employee told Business Insider that by the time Richardson mentioned his girlfriend, more than a dozen members of the livestream audience watching from their office had begun jeering loudly at the screen. Some staff members began walking around the office waving pencils in the air, referencing the way Richardson had fidgeted with a writing utensil while speaking, the employee said.

"I've never seen people so mocking of an agency head," the employee said.

It's unclear exactly how much of FEMA's staff has been cut since Trump took office; the most recent estimates from CNN put the total reduction of force at about 20% of FEMA's permanent full-time staff, or about 1,000 workers.

The US Government Accountability Office reported in 2023 that FEMA had an overall staffing gap of approximately 35%, equating to 6,200 employees, which had "affected its ability to achieve its mission."

A FEMA spokesperson told Business Insider that, "under Secretary Noem's leadership, and the efforts of Acting Administrator Richardson, FEMA is fully activated in preparation for Hurricane Season."

The Trump administration has not made a public statement about a permanent nominee to lead FEMA.

The spokesperson added that "complaints about morale, training, and planning come from the same internal class that resisted accountability for decades. This is just another example of a long line of internal leaks from people who clearly couldn't care less about Americans facing disaster and prefer to manufacture petty drama for their own self-aggrandizement."

In the town hall meeting, Richardson said his plan for the agency is to follow "the president's intent," which he described as limiting FEMA's activities to its "mission essential tasks."

"Those of us still remaining were either too committed to go anywhere, not eligible to take the resignation options, or so committed to the mission we do not care what he does," one FEMA staff member said.

• Target said reactions to its DEI moves adversely impacted first-quarter sales.
• Protesters say they're not satisfied with the company's response so far.
• Additional protests are planned for May 25, the fifth anniversary of the murder of George Floyd.

Target is having little success in convincing shoppers of its stance on DEI.

CEO Brian Cornell said Wednesday that public response to changes to its DEI programs — now known as "Belonging" — adversely impacted first-quarter sales, although an exact amount was not quantifiable.

"We faced several additional headwinds this quarter, including five consecutive months of declining consumer confidence, uncertainty regarding the impact of potential tariffs, and the reaction to the updates we shared on Belonging in January," he said.

The financial results follow weeks of declining foot traffic and sales, punctuated by seasonal holiday bumps during the period. But shifting positions on DEI issues don't appear to doing Target any favors, Global Data retail analyst Neil Saunders said in a note.

"The extent of this should not be overstated as many other factors are driving down Target's sales numbers, but the move has certainly not been helpful," he said.

A Target spokesperson said in a statement to Business Insider that the company is "absolutely dedicated to fostering inclusivity for everyone — our team members, our guests and our supply partners."

"To do that, we're focusing on what we do best: providing the best retail experience for the more than 2,000 communities we're proud to serve," the spokesperson said.

While some supporters of DEI have claimed partial victory in their pressure campaign, leaders including pastor Jamal-Harrison Bryant say they're not yet satisfied with the company's response.

Bryant said his church would hold a protest in front of an Atlanta-area Target on Sunday, May 25, to mark the fifth anniversary of the murder of George Floyd in Target's hometown of Minneapolis.

"We're gonna do it for nine minutes and 40 seconds as the same amount of time they applied pressure to George Floyd that led to his death," Bryant said in a video inviting other churches to join.

Target expanded several diversity initiatives in the immediate aftermath of Floyd's murder, and CEO Brian Cornell said the incident highlighted that more work was needed.

"It happened only blocks from our headquarters," Cornell told the Economic Club of Chicago a year after Floyd's death. "My first reaction watching on TV was that could have been one of my Target team members."

At the time, Target committed to spending more than $2 billion on Black-owned businesses by 2025 by purchasing goods from more than 500 Black-owned businesses and contracting with Black-owned services from marketing to construction.

"As CEOs we have to be the company's head of diversity and inclusion," Cornell told the Economic Club of Chicago. "We've got to make sure that we represent our company principles, our values, our company purpose on the issues that are important to our teams."

Four years later, Target's message on DEI is less clear.

In January, the company said it was rolling back several diversity initiatives, renaming others, and not renewing the spending and sourcing goals it set in 2021.

(Target's spokesperson told BI the announcement did not affect existing brand or supplier relationships, and that the company still recruits from a range of schools, including HBCUs.)

Target also for the first time donated $1 million to President Donald Trump's inauguration fund, filings showed, even as Trump was gearing up executive orders to strip DEI programs from federal agencies and contractors. Tech giants Google, Meta, and Uber also each donated the same amount.

In addition, the company has drastically shrunk its annual LGBTQ Pride collection in recent years, and now offers a small fraction of what it showcased a two years ago.

In a note to employees earlier this month, Cornell acknowledged that "silence from us has created uncertainty," and the executive has reportedly met with Bryant and Reverend Al Sharpton to discuss a path forward.

Beyond the protests, Saunders said Target continues to face a myriad of other challenges, including still-high tariffs on imports, growing competitive pressures from rivals, and a host of other operational difficulties.

"This year will be another soft one and Target enters it in a relatively weak position," he said.

• Kate Collins has worked on an all-female nonprofit team since starting a new job in 2024.
• In the past, she's worked in male-dominated media workplaces with rigid, then lenient, boundaries.
• Collins says that an all-female team brings both a supportive culture and blurred work-life lines.

When I walked into work last year on my birthday, there was an envelope with my name written in cursive on my desk. I was less than three months into a new job and hadn't announced my birthday. Being an introvert, a slight discomfort rose as I opened the envelope.

The discomfort dissipated as I read the personalized messages written by my colleagues. I was grateful for the simple gesture; this was the first time I received a birthday card at work. A few months later, I returned from my honeymoon to find another thoughtful card and a wedding-decorated desk.

My colleagues' acknowledgment of these milestones is proof that after a midlife pivot, I've landed somewhere good. The all-female leadership and team where I work prioritize the organization's mission by fostering a kind, encouraging atmosphere for clients and employees.

While I see the perks, I've also experienced some downsides to an all-female workplace.

I started my career in offices with boundaries

I entered the workforce during an era when professionalism stressed a clear delineation between work and personal lives. In the offices of the media companies where I worked as a photojournalist and reporter, employees refrained from divulging details of their outside lives. I welcomed these boundaries.

By the mid-2010s, successive rounds of layoffs in my industry resulted in a less diverse workplace. Management became mostly men who I remember using sports analogies, mansplaining, and all-caps emails — controlling tactics that diminished my sense of worth.

A decade later, bias issues forced the last media company I worked for to adopt policies stressing safe, inclusive workplaces. The personal became political, and the movement to normalize almost everything took hold. Before long, a workplace culture emerged where revealing intimate personal information was commonplace.

Yet there still wasn't a shift away from the male-dominated culture. Many of my female colleagues who survived layoffs exited the industry. Before long, I was planning my own exit strategy.

It was difficult to separate myself from a profession I once loved

For a few years, I worked on reinventing myself by expanding my skill set through classes and freelance work. I was eventually offered an environmental communications position. While the job didn't last, it launched me into the nonprofit sector.

I live in a region with many nonprofits. The local nonprofits I'm most familiar with are primarily led and staffed by smart women passionate about helping others. This isn't surprising, as studies concerning the differences in personality traits have found that women are more nurturing, tender-minded, and altruistic more often and to a greater extent than men — traits necessary to do lower-paid, sometimes emotionally taxing work.

When I started nonprofit work, I felt acknowledged and supported

I started my current communications manager position in early 2024. Since transitioning to nonprofit work, I've experienced how an all-female team can promote a kinder, more collaborative workplace. Have an idea for something not in your job title? Share it. Need help with a project? There are always offers to assist, even for projects requiring time outside normal schedules.

There's also the celebration of achievements. Our leader frequently shares our team and individual accomplishments publicly. She gifted us with bright yellow smiley face bells to ring when we complete a difficult project. After years without recognition of my professional achievements, it feels good to have my contributions acknowledged.

The professional respect ingrained in our office culture extends beyond job tasks. If we come in late or leave early for an appointment or emergency, we can do so without advance approval. Leadership even encourages us to take personal days when we're feeling stressed.

This kind, empathic leadership style trickles down. Recently one of my coworkers was out for a few days with the flu. Knowing she lives alone, we reached out with "get well soon" texts and offered to pick up her prescription and deliver it to her home.

There are also challenges

While working in an all-female office has been a positive change, certain aspects can be trying. There's inherent pressure to participate in optional group activities such as weekly team lunches and afternoon walks, which can be stressful for someone who cherishes alone time like me.

Recently, a mandatory retreat escalated into a cold plunge. Voiced statements about not liking cold water were countered with emails about "team building." Days before, a colleague said that she couldn't partake due to a medical issue.

In the end, a few of us watched the cold plunge through the window of a warm house. I was already nervous about an overnight cabin retreat. I wasn't fond of the planned kayaking and swimming, but I also didn't want to hurt the feelings of my colleagues planning it.

The blurring of lines between work and play can also result in unexpected workplace tension. When a new colleague joined our team recently, she misinterpreted the relaxed atmosphere as "any topic goes." While I appreciate an informal office, some of the topics she discussed made me uncomfortable. I eventually spoke up about my new colleague's crudeness, and the issue was addressed.

I question whether the easing of professional manners has veered too far off-track

I wonder if a single-sex environment contributes to this. I wonder if my colleague would've acted differently around male colleagues and if a male would've been terminated for similar behavior around female coworkers.

I'm not looking to leave my job. If I ever return to a workplace with both men and women, I'll bring what I'm learning about collaboration, kindness, and celebrating achievements with me.

Kate Collins is a writer and nonprofit communications professional. She lives in Ithaca, New York, with her husband, stepson, and two foster dogs.

• Private equity reps are asking to meet with college seniors headed for jobs on Wall Street.
• These "coffee chats" often lead to interviews for jobs that won't start for two years.
• The May start has soon-to-be bankers on edge at a time when they should be celebrating.

Graduation season is supposed to be filled with commencement speeches, family dinners, and tearful goodbyes. Newly minted graduates headed to Wall Street, however, are finding themselves trading libations for leveraged buyout models.

Soon-to-be junior bankers told Business Insider that they have been summoned in recent weeks to introductory meetings with buyout firms and headhunters for associate jobs that won't start for two years — when their investment banking analyst programs end.

The communications reviewed by BI were for introductory meetings, often referred to as "coffee chats," and informational webinars. They came from employees and headhunters representing firms like Apollo; Hellman & Friedman; KKR; General Atlantic; Clayton, Dubilier & Rice as well as recruiting firms like Ratio Advisors, Gold Coast, CPI, and Amity. Spokespeople for these firms either declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment.

Students said the coffee chat requests, which often precipitate more formal interviews, are taking place earlier than expected — putting them on edge about the industry's infamous recruiting frenzy, known as on-cycle recruiting.

For some, the feeling that official interviews could kick off at any moment has cast a pall over graduation season. Rather than occupying themselves with photo shoots in their caps and gowns, some finance grads are stressing over when interviews could break out.

"It's constantly monitoring your email," said an incoming first-year investment banker about the recent onslaught of meeting requests. She said she and her friends have their notifications on — "calls, texts, everything" — in order not to miss out.

The student, who hopped off the phone with BI just as her own graduation ceremony was commencing, said coffee chat meetings started hitting her inbox in early May, about four to six weeks earlier than classmates who received similar overtures last year.

"It's awful," said the student, who asked to remain anonymous to protect her future employment. "You never get a break."

On-cycle could kick off sooner than ever

Matt Ting, the founder of Peak Frameworks, which helps students prepare for Wall Street job interviews, said he's seen demand for his courses spike in the last two weeks as students gear up for on-cycle to kick off any day now.

"A lot of college grads go on a grad trip around now, which muddies things," said Ting, adding: "Some are still in school. Many firms had issues last year since it kicked off while many grads were backpacking somewhere in Asia."

The problem with the industry's on-cycle recruiting process is that no one knows when the hurricane will hit. And once it makes landfall, aspiring private-equity dealmakers are expected to drop everything to participate.

A second-year investment banker recalled getting an email around 10 p.m. when he participated in on-cycle recruiting last June. The firm's representatives asked him to interview the next morning at 8 a.m. Fortunately, he was within driving distance of the company's office. Some of his friends weren't so lucky.

"I personally felt it was too rushed, like I was taking the opportunity just because it presented itself, not because I was very calculated about it," he told BI about the experience.

The second-year banker said there is a clear distinction between coffee chats and official interviews that would signify the start of on-cycle. On-cycle recruiting, he said, only starts when a headhunter uses the word "interview" in their communication with candidates.

"The coffee chats are just an interview to get an interview," he said.

The process used to start after investment bankers got some job experience under their belts, but has been moving progressively earlier every year. Last year, the process kicked off on June 24, before many graduates had even started their jobs. The year before, it took place in July, prompting some investment banking analysts to skip out on training.

The sudden rush of coffee chat requests has students bracing for on-cycle to kick off earlier than ever this year. A college student running a college finance club said he'd heard on-cycle could begin after Harvard's graduation on May 29. An industry recruiter predicted that on-cycle recruiting might not get underway till late June, in keeping with 2024's cycle. They asked to remain anonymous to protect their relationships with prospective employers and private-equity clients.

Inside the coffee chat

Coffee chats, the step before PE firms proceed with formal interviews, may sound casual on the surface. In fact, they're a high-stakes way for recruiters to pre-screen candidates for official interviews, students told BI, so a lot is on the line.

"My advice has always been, no matter what, every coffee chat is an interview, implicitly or directly," said the second-year investment banker who participated in last year's on-cycle process.

These jobs, of which there are a coveted few, can vault early-20s professionals into the highest tier of American earners. Many tout comp prospects of more than $300,000, inclusive of salary and bonus, so the pressure for rookie masters of the universe to leave a good impression on recruiters is palpable.

A recent graduate about to start an investment banking job at a bulge bracket firm agreed. "I've had a firm tell me that I'm shortlisted," he said of his coffee chats, adding, "I've had headhunters follow up with me and say, 'Hey, by the way, this firm had great feedback on you. Let's stay close here,'" he added.

He said he moved to New York City immediately after graduation, motivated in part by the sense that he should be in a position for an early on-cycle recruiting process.

"I don't even have a couch," he confessed, so he spent his first few nights in the big city sleeping on a mattress on the floor. "Now I've got a bed frame."

"But if you want one of these jobs, you've got to play the game," he said. "And I'm just playing the game."

• Microsoft hired ex-Facebook global head of engineering Jay Parikh to lead a new AI unit called CoreAI.
• Internal memos Parikh has sent to employees reveal the unit's early ambitions and accomplishments.
• Parikh's initiatives focus on cultural shifts, operational improvements, and customer focus.

Microsoft envisions an "age of AI agents," and CEO Satya Nadella recently tapped one of Mark Zuckerberg's former top lieutenants to bring it to reality.

In January, Nadella put Jay Parikh in charge of a new AI unit called CoreAI, central to Microsoft's ambition to help developers build digital personal assistants capable of taking over tasks from human workers.

Amid Parikh's first Microsoft Build developer conference in this new role, internal memos reveal his goals for the unit, its early accomplishments, and his advice to address what he sees as problems within the company. Microsoft declined to comment.

A fresh perspective for the 'next phase of Microsoft'

Behind the scenes at Microsoft, Nadella prides himself on hiring outside talent from other big technology companies to add fresh perspective and giving them wide latitude to change how things are done, several people close to the CEO told BI.

Those reports include Charlie Bell, who helped build Amazon's cloud from its earliest days before defecting to Microsoft to become its security boss, and AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman, an ex-Google executive who joined the company from AI startup Inflection.

Parikh joined their ranks in October after running cloud security company Laceworks, acquired in 2024. He previously was vice president and global head of engineering for Meta. Zuckerberg has publicly credited Parikh for many technological achievements during his 11-year tenure at the company.

When Nadella announced Parikh's hiring in an email to employees, he wrote that the "next phase of Microsoft" would require "adding exceptional talent" from outside the company.

In January, when Microsoft reorganized to create a new organization under Parikh. The group, called CoreAI, combined teams from Parikh's new direct reports like Eric Boyd, a corporate vice president of AI platform; Jason Taylor, a deputy CTO for AI infrastructure; Julia Liuson, president of the developer division; and Tim Bozarth, a corporate vice president of developer infrastructure.

Nadella said at the time that Parikh would also work closely with the cloud-and-AI chief Scott Guthrie; the experiences-and-devices leader Rajesh Jha; Bell, the security boss; Suleyman, Microsoft's AI CEO; and Kevin Scott, the company's CTO.

A copy of Parikh's latest org chart viewed by Business Insider shows he has nearly 10,000 reports, most of whom (about 7,000) are in the developer division under Liuson.

Parikh's 'agent factory' vision

Four months in, Parikh has started to make his mark on Microsoft with a vision to create an AI "agent factory." In the early days of Microsoft, cofounders Bill Gates and Paul Allen had ambitions to create the world's first "software factory," a company full of programmers who would build everything from applications to operating systems.

Parikh said he met with Gates and discussed his own concept, a production line for AI agents and applications.

"Building our vision demands this type of culture — one where Al is embedded in how we think, design, and deliver," Parikh wrote in an April 14 email to his team. "The Agent Factory reflects this shift — not just in what we build, but in how we build it together. If we want every developer (and everyone) to shape the future, we have to get there first."

The memos reveal some of the developments at CoreAI since Parikh's arrival.

Since January, Foundry — Microsoft's AI platform for developers — has "delivered $337 million of favorable COGS (cost of goods sold) impact year-to-date, with a projected $606 million on an annualized basis," according to one of Parikh's memos.

Microsoft won new customers for its AI programming tool GitHub Copilot, deploying "5,000+ Copilot Business seats" for Fidelity with 5,000 more expected, another memo stated. Copilot Business sells for $19 per user per month, which would make the deal worth as much as $2.28 million annually at full price, though customers often get discounts for large deals. Fidelity declined to comment.

Startup Harvey AI, meanwhile, has agreed to a two-year $150 million commitment to consume Azure cloud services, according to one of Parikh's memos. Harvey AI declined to comment.

Making Microsoft think macro

The memos viewed by BI show how Parikh appears to be taking seriously his mandate to introduce a new perspective to the company and fix procedural problems that Microsoft may not be able to see that it has.

In a May 10 email to his team, Parikh said shifting the company's culture is "essential" to its future, and outlined progress toward priorities like accelerating the pace at which employees work, breaking down siloes to work better as one team, and making products more reliable and secure.

"One of my early observations coming into Microsoft is that we sometimes treat symptoms rather than systems," Parikh wrote in a May 5 email. "We often focus too much on the micro, which results in band-aids and bolt-ons vs taking a broader system view (which may mean thinking beyond what one team directly owns). This often leads to more complexity and operational burden. We'll help each other get better at this."

Parikh's plan to get Microsoft to focus on the macro is to create a "learning loop" with a debrief after every product launch, incident, customer meeting, internal meeting, or decision. He's started new processes to make this happen, according to the memos.

Parikh has an "Ops Review" series, going team by team to make specific improvements but also to "find common patterns of engineering pain that need broader improvements," he wrote. The reviews, he explained, focus on longer-term operational metrics to help with strategy. "We are zooming out and taking a more end-to-end view of a team's operational setup, creating space for an open discussion around what's working and what's not." The reviews began in April with the App Services team.

Also among Parikh's mandates: more customer focus. His organization is required to conduct reviews of major incidents, like outages, that could impact customers, and chart how quickly the teams identified the problem and deployed a fix.

He also started "get well plans" for unhappy customers after he "encountered a couple of fairly unhappy customers" in recent meetings, according to an April 26 email. His solution? Weekly reviews to "understand where we went off track, identify solutions, and execute the recovery plan," tracking progress until the accounts "get well again."

What Parikh thinks Microsoft should change so far

In the May 5 email, Parikh shared "several recurring themes and insights" within Microsoft that he believes the company should seek to change or simplify.

First, he encouraged his organization to engage engineers from outside their direct team because "different perspectives help."

In his view, Microsoft also takes too long and the process is too hard to deprecate, or discourage use of, old versions of software. "Supporting too many versions is unattainable," Parikh wrote. "We are following up with C+Al (the Cloud + AI organization, under Scott Guthrie) to brainstorm how we can modernize and streamline this."

Incident reviews are overloaded with metrics that don't have enough value, Parikh wrote, and Microsoft sends out too many alerts, which creates noise. "It's important to periodically zoom out and audit how your monitoring is running and to simplify if you are overloaded on alerts and metrics. Use Al to help triage complex alerting situations," he urged.

Parikh encouraged his teams to "see the forest for the trees on scalability," and to organize brainstorming sessions when faced with a traffic load they can't support to see what it would take to support five or 10 times as much traffic. "You may be stuck in a local maxima with incremental improvements, and it might be time to brainstorm how you can get a step function more scale," he wrote.

He also recommended employees seek to address classes of problems, not just one-offs. "Quick fixes lead to complexity," Parikh wrote. "Instead of band-aids, we should aim for broader system improvements that solve whole categories of issues and boost long-term efficiency."

"We're building muscle in spotting patterns, not just patching symptoms," Parikh wrote. "And that's a big deal."

Got a tip? Contact the reporter Ashley Stewart via the encrypted messaging app Signal (+1-425-344-8242) or email ([email protected]). Use a nonwork device.

• Jamie Dimon says he's a "full-throated, red-blooded American patriot capitalist."
• But the JPMorgan CEO said China has "done an enormous job" uplifting its people.
• Dimon said JPMorgan is a "long-term investor" and will not pull back from China.

JPMorgan's CEO Jamie Dimon says he recognizes China's accomplishments in uplifting its people, even though he considers himself an "American patriot capitalist."

"They have done an enormous job over the last 20 years lifting up their people," Dimon told Bloomberg in an interview in Shanghai on Thursday local time.

"That doesn't mean I personally agree with everything they did. I'm a full-throated, red-blooded American patriot capitalist. But I understand that they can lift up their country," Dimon continued.

This isn't the first time Dimon has acknowledged China's economic accomplishments.

"Over the last 20 years, China has been executing a more comprehensive economic strategy than we have," Dimon wrote in his annual letter to shareholders last month. "The country's leaders have successfully grown their nation and, depending on how you measure it, have made China the largest or second-largest economy in the world."

"What China does so well is manage its country as a whole — coordinating government and business so that they are able to further some of their strategic goals," Dimon wrote in his letter.

When asked if China remains a "priority market" for JPMorgan, given the geopolitical uncertainty, Dimon said to Bloomberg that the bank is a "long-term investor."

"Yes, there's all these other issues causing consternation, but we have to deal with the world that we have, not the world we want, and we'll continue to grow," Dimon said on Thursday.

"We are not going to pull back," he added.

Last week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the US and China have agreed to lower their tariffs by 115% for 90 days. Bessent said the US would reduce its tariffs on Chinese goods from 145% to 30%. China said it would lower its tariffs from 125% to 10%.

"The consensus is that companies are going to be doing business here. There could be some adjustments because of the trade negotiations, but I don't think the American government wants to leave China," Dimon told Bloomberg on Thursday.

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

• Elon Musk is stepping back from DOGE to focus on Tesla, as the company faces many challenges.
• BI spoke to four people who worked with him about what the billionaire is like as a company leader.
• One said Musk was Tesla's "product manager," but questioned whether he is what the embattled company needs.

Elon Musk is turning his attention back to Tesla — and apparently for the long haul. The question is whether Musk's re-dedication to Tesla is what the electric carmaker needs right now.

The billionaire said this week he was committed to leading Tesla for the next five years, adding he would only stop running it "if I'm dead."

Investors have applauded Musk's renewed commitment to Tesla, with the stock up more than 40% since he signaled he was stepping back from the Trump administration and its DOGE cost-cutting efforts.

Musk's DOGE work — and the ensuing vandalism and protests that targeted his company — had normally bullish analysts urging him to refocus on Tesla. Days after Musk announced he was stepping back from DOGE to do that, Tesla's chair denied a report it had explored replacing him as CEO.

Business Insider spoke with former employees at Musk's companies — three Tesla, one SpaceX — about what he is like as a business leader and what his re-dedication to Tesla means at a time when the company is suffering from falling sales, growing competition from rivals like BYD, and a critical robotaxi launch next month.

Tesla and Musk did not respond to requests for comment.

The innovator in chief

Musk's importance to Tesla is undeniable.

Chris Walti, who led development of the Optimus humanoid robot before leaving Tesla in 2022 to found robotics startup Mytra, said he saw how the company's flat management structure meant Musk had a larger influence over Tesla's product direction than most CEOs.

He said that during his time at the company, Musk was "the product manager for the whole company." "That direction comes down, and then the engineers execute," he added.

Gene Berdichevsky, a former Tesla tech lead and the company's seventh employee, worked there when Musk was a major investor and board member. He said the billionaire brought a fanatical attention to detail even before he became CEO in 2008.

Berdichevsky recalled when the company was building the first prototype of its Roadster. "We spent the afternoon after the board meeting driving it around the parking lot and getting into all the details," he said.

He added that having Musk more focused on Tesla would up its chances of beating rivals to "the next big thing."

"The revolutionary product isn't obvious when it first shows up. But I think that Elon's always pushing for something revolutionary, and you don't have to always be right, because when you are, you get really, really good outcomes," said Berdichevsky, who now runs battery materials firm Sila Nanotechnologies.

Scrappiness vs scale

Tobias Kahnert, the CEO of powertrain startup EFT Mobility, was a senior Tesla software engineer when the company was struggling to ramp up production of the Model 3.

Musk has previously said he slept on the factory floor as Tesla grappled with the "production hell" of scaling the mass-market EV.

Kahnert told BI that Musk and other Tesla leaders pushed to balance the "scrappiness" of innovating quickly with the need to convert Tesla's startup mentality into "something that actually scales."

"Even being there, you sometimes thought, 'OK, this isn't the normal way of how we would do it.' Then often it only turned out a lot later that this approach was the right one," he said.

Musk is famously demanding. Walti said he would get "texts on Sunday at 3 a.m. and was expected to respond in 15 minutes."

"That's not for everyone. Some people just get burned out," he said.

While Musk runs companies with a range of focuses, Tesla will benefit from him being an "extremely good design engineer," said Quincy Lee, who worked at SpaceX for six years and helped roll out its Starlink satellite network.

"I've been in meetings with him, and I spent a lot of time with his executive staff," said Lee, who now runs EV charging startup Electric Era.

"He's extremely good at physics, and he's really good at manufacturing. And of course, he's a good businessman, and he's able to pull all of that into a really strong set of skills," Lee told BI.

Difference-maker or distraction?

Musk is known for pushing Tesla in ambitious new directions. But when the company's Q1 delivery figures showed it was in trouble, none of the analysts BI spoke to said it needed to take a big swing to make a comeback.

They said it should launch new models, improve its battery tech, and advertise more. The company has not launched a new vehicle since the Cybertruck in 2023, and sales of the electric pickup have underwhelmed.

Walti told BI Musk seemed "kind of bored with just building good products that the market needs."

"If it's not audacious, and if it's not against the grain, it feels like it doesn't personally interest him," he added.

"His connection with the customer 10 years ago was awesome. Elon had a really good sense of what the customer wanted. I don't know if that's the case anymore," Walti continued.

Tesla is racing to launch a robotaxi service in Austin next month, and Musk has said that Tesla's future lies in self-driving cars and Optimus.

Tesla has said it will also launch an affordable electric car model this year, but has not provided details. Reuters reported in April that the new EV could be a stripped-down version of Tesla's Model Y.

Walti said that he'd like to see the company build more mass-market EVs, but added, "Part of me is like, I don't know if Musk is the right person for the role. Not because he couldn't do a good job, but because I don't think he is genuinely excited about it."

But Kahnert said that Musk had an ability to push through decisions that others wouldn't agree with, making him a "differentiator" that other carmakers lack.

He said it is hard to say whether that was what the company needed, adding it was, "always hard, even while you are inside Tesla, to see and to acknowledge how much he benefits Tesla at times and how much he is distracting Tesla at times."

• Sean "Diddy" Combs' former assistant testified that he tried to ambush Marion "Suge" Knight in 2008.
• Diddy and Suge have been feuding since the '90s, when they both launched hip-hop record labels.
• Here's what to know about their feud and how it relates to the deaths of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G.

The sex-trafficking trial of Sean "Diddy" Combs heard that the hip-hop mogul planned to ambush his long-term rival, Marion "Suge" Knight, with guns at an LA diner in 2008.

If Diddy succeeded, he could have reignited a long-running beef between the East and West Coast hip-hop communities.

Last week, Cassie Ventura, Diddy's ex-girlfriend, testified at his trial in Manhattan that he left his rented mansion in LA during a "freak-off" in 2008, after learning that Suge was at a diner nearby.

Cassie said Diddy and other men covered their heads, grabbed guns, and drove to the diner.

On Tuesday, David James, Diddy's former personal assistant, testified that he drove him and a trusted security guard to the restaurant, but Suge left before they arrived.

"It was the first time I realized my life was in danger," James said, adding that he quit soon after the incident.

Here's what to know about the feud between Suge and Diddy.

Suge and Diddy were at the centre of the '90s hip-hop rivalry linked to the deaths of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G.

Hip-hop originated in 1970s New York City, but by the '80s and '90s, multiple rappers, including Dr. Dre and Ice Cube, emerged on the West Coast.

A rivalry soon emerged between Suge's Death Row Records on the West Coast, which he co-founded in 1991, and the East Coast's Bad Boy, founded by Diddy in 1993.

In 1994, Tupac Shakur, a West Coast rapper, survived being shot five times at Quad Studios in Manhattan during a robbery.

Tupac believed the Notorious B.I.G. (Biggie) of Bad Boys Records and Diddy were involved, which they denied. In response, Tupac joined Death Row Records in 1995, and the it released his diss track "Hit 'Em Up" in 1996, which targeted Diddy, Biggie, Bad Boy Records, and other East Coast rappers.

In 1996 and 1997, respectively, Tupac and Biggie were killed in drive by shootings.

Both crimes remained unsolved, with many speculating without evidence that Diddy and Suge were involved, which they both deny. In 2023, Duane Keith "Keffe D" Davis, a former leader of a California street gang known as the South Side Compton Crips, was charged with murder, with prosecutors alleging he organized Tupac's death.

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department told People in 2024 that Diddy was never considered a suspect for Tupac's murder.

After Tupac and Biggie died, rappers on both sides, including Snoop Dogg, Diddy, Nas, and Ice Cube, attempted to cool down tensions between the two rap communities.

Suge is serving a 28-year sentence for manslaughter

The beef faded from the public eye, and major stars like Dre and Snoop Dogg left Death Row Records in 1996 and 1998, respectively, and the company filed for bankruptcy in 2006. In 2022, Snoop became its new owner.

Suge is in prison in San Diego, after he was charged over the fatal hit-and-run of Terry Carter, a business associate, while on the set of the 2015 movie "Straight Outta Compton." In 2018, Suge pleaded no contest and was sentenced to 28 years in prison.

Despite his feud with Diddy, Suge told NewsNation's show "CUOMO" in September 2024 that he was not celebrating his rival's arrest.

"I don't jump and cheer for no Black man or any other human being going to prison," Suge said. "That man has kids, and whatever affects him definitely affects his kids."

Suge alleged at the time that Diddy was sexually abused by other people in the industry and said Diddy repeated that abuse on other people.

Legal representatives for Diddy declined to comment when contacted by Business Insider. Legal representatives for Suge did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI.

• Walmart is laying off staff to "remove layers and complexity" in the company.
• In a memo to staff, executives said roles in the global tech team would be cut.
• This comes as companies in the US have been cutting out middle managers and flattening their structures.

Walmart is laying off corporate staff in the US to "remove layers and complexity."

The retailer will lay off 1,500 employees, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter. Bloomberg, citing anonymous sources, reported that the layoffs were in the company's Arkansas headquarters and other offices.

The retailer's US CEO, John Furner, and global technology chief, Suresh Kumar, announced the layoffs in a Wednesday memo to corporate staff titled "Building for the future," seen by BI.

"We are reshaping some teams in our Global Tech and Walmart U.S. organizations where we have identified opportunities to remove layers and complexity, speed up decision-making, and help associates innovate rapidly," the memo wrote.

It added that the technology team would be slimmed down to simplify its structure and "facilitate speed and innovation."

Aside from the layoffs, Walmart will also be opening new roles that align with its business priorities and growth strategy, the memo read.

Walmart is not the only company flattening its corporate structure. Big Tech companies, like Amazon, Google, and Intel, have been cutting middle managers to boost efficiency.

On the retail side, Amazon said in September that it would increase the ratio of its workers to supervisors by at least 15%.

The news of Walmart's layoffs comes about a week after the retailer announced in an earnings call that it would increase the prices of its products due to President Donald Trump's tariffs.

Walmart said it imports a third of what it sells in the US from outside the country, such as China, Vietnam, and Mexico. Although Trump has paused his additional tariffs, Walmart's CFO said reduced tariff rates are still "too high."

"Even at the reduced levels, the higher tariffs will result in higher prices," CEO Doug McMillon said in the earnings call.

Walmart reported a 2.5% revenue growth in its latest quarter compared to the year before, with sales of $165.60 billion.

The days of revenge travel are over. After years of being cooped up at home, travelers rushed into the world with a vengeance, sparking a major travel boom from 2022 to 2024. But years of rising prices and a slew of new tariff threats have cast uncertainty over the economy.

A summer vacation survey by Bankrate in March found that only 53% of Americans said they planned to take a vacation this summer — about the same as last year but a drop from 2023, when 63% planned to take a vacation. Of those forgoing travel this year, 65% cited cost as the main factor; and of those opting to travel, almost a third said they plan to take on debt to do so.

But not everyone feels equally squeezed. A Deloitte survey conducted in early April found that even after President Donald Trump's sweeping tariff announcement a few days earlier, estimated travel budgets for the summer on average remained 13% above similar estimates for last summer. Through its surveys over the last few years, Deloitte has identified a trend: High-income Americans have made up an increasing share of those planning summer travel. Nearly half of respondents who said they planned to travel this summer made over $100,000, up from 35% in 2023.

To cater to the growing share of high spenders, the luxury segment of the travel industry is outpacing every other segment. As the middle class cuts back on travel spending, many high-earners are still going all out for their summer vacation.

Over the past year, more and more middle-income Americans have decided to stay home or pivot their plans to save money. Las Vegas, which largely caters to middle-class travelers, has seen a major drop-off. Mark Wayman, the owner of an executive recruiter company with knowledge of the Las Vegas market, says bookings in Sin City this year through September are "the worst I've ever seen."

Some of the anxiety is new, with uncertainty over how tariffs might affect prices and the broader economy. But even before then was the compounding effect of years of price increases. Multiple travelers told me that they have noticed that hotels and flights now include fewer services bundled into their price tags. Southwest Airlines, for instance, recently made headlines in March by changing its long-standing policy of allowing flyers two free checked bags. As a result, people are feeling like their dollar can't go as far.

Reycie Gallardo, a 39-year-old IT project manager in Los Angeles, says that these kinds of changes really shrink the scope of what you can do when you travel. A few years ago, he and his wife might have taken a long weekend as an opportunity to fly to a national park and stay for a few days. Now they'll drive somewhere close, like Santa Barbara or San Diego, and not even stay the night.

Makarand Mody, an associate professor of hospitality marketing at the Boston University School of Hospitality Administration, has noticed others making the same decision. Nearly a quarter of survey respondents in April told Deloitte that high prices had prompted them to drive rather than fly in the past year. Deloitte also found that lower-income travelers have driven up demand for more affordable accommodations in the past few years, including RVs, bed & breakfasts, and camping.

Talon Windwalker, a 56-year-old grief counselor in Janesville, Wisconsin, has been making a similar compromise. When planning his trip to South Carolina, the travel enthusiast's 50th state to visit, earlier this year, driving was a clear way to save on costs. But "you make a lot of sacrifices" in the tradeoff, Windwalker says. Driving requires much more planning, and the long days at the wheel can be difficult. "I was gone for a week, but four days of those were just driving to get there and back," he says.

Home-swap platforms like HomeExchange and Kindred have also been seeing huge swells in popularity. Advertised as more affordable, community-oriented alternatives to hotels or short-term rentals, these platforms help members arrange stays at each other's homes. HomeExchange says it facilitated 43% more house swaps in 2024 than in 2023 and finalized 47% more exchanges in January 2025 than the same time last year. Kindred, which launched in 2021, a factor that could account for some of its growth, reported more than 500% more nights swapped in 2024 compared with 2023.

And yet, companies like airlines, hotels, and home rentals are still seeing "some pretty healthy bottom lines," Mody says.

For one, because prices have been steadily rising, companies can still grow their revenue even if demand falters. But also, wealthy people are getting wealthier while maintaining a strong appetite for travel, he says. A recent analysis from Moody's estimated that the top 10% of households had come to account for half of all consumer spending. As high-income Americans travel and spend more, it can offset pullbacks by lower- and middle-income segments of the population that are seeing prices stretch too high for comfort.

This is evident in the booming luxury travel market. The American Hotel & Lodging Association's latest report said the luxury category of accommodations experienced the fastest rate of growth in terms of new construction in 2024. Bram Gallagher, the director of economics and forecasting at AirDNA, an analytics firm that tracks the short-term-rental market, says that demand for stays priced over $1,000 a night has more than doubled since 2019, and bookings in the $1,000 to $1,499 range were up nearly 15% year-over-year in 2024.

Not only is demand for luxury accommodations going up, but prices are too. "We're actually increasing divergence between the bottom and the top of the short-term rental market," Gallagher says. AirDNA data shows that more expensive listings are increasing in price faster than less expensive listings. From February 2024 to February 2025, the average price of "luxury" listings (the most expensive 20% of all listings) increased by more than 5%, whereas the price of "budget" listings (the least expensive 20%) fell by about half a percentage point. Analyses have found that recent growth in the short-term rental market has largely been driven by luxury listings, adds Gallagher.

Roy Madhok, a senior vice president of revenue and distribution at Highgate, a real estate investment and hospitality management company, says that while travel in the budget and middle range is tapering, there's no sign yet that the same applies to luxury travel. As far as he can tell, travel for the highest income groups isn't slowing down.

The growing divergence between budget and luxury travel is leaving a massive middle ground of people who just can't afford how steep prices are getting. While that could mean many of us are left scraping together vacations from a combination of airline miles and staying with friends, there are signs this stark divide might not last forever. Some companies are already starting to tap into this market and win back cash-strapped middle-income travelers.

Madhok sees the adjustment as a kind of "re-normalization" for the travel industry. The recent travel boom wasn't necessarily normal or sustainable, he says. Now, demand seems to be finding a more stable balance. After years of steep price increases in Vegas restaurants, hotels, and shows, for instance, Wayman says that "prices are already becoming more affordable." And if demand continues to stay this low, prices will continue to drop in tandem.

Data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics supports Madhok's theory of renormalization. According to the Bureau's consumer price index, the cost of airfare this year so far is about on par with airfare last year, which is in line with 2019 prices. Hotels are slightly cheaper this year than last year, though still higher than pre-2020. "After the vibrant rebound in post-pandemic demand, the US hotel industry has been navigating a period of stagnation," reads the recent AHLA report, "signaling a shift toward normalization in travel patterns."

Despite middle- and lower-income travelers feeling priced out of certain options, it's clear that they still have an appetite for travel, Mody says. "There's a really tremendous opportunity" for hotels and other brands to beef up their midscale offerings, he adds. Hotels have started realizing that "this is where people want to be from a price perspective," Mody says, and so creating options for people to travel within that more affordable range will be really important. Over the past year, companies like Hyatt, Hilton, and Marriott have announced plans for new hotel brands aimed at those middle-tier travelers.

Will that be enough to narrow the travel wealth disparity? Probably not, Mody says. After all, the travel economy is a reflection of the greater economy, and wealth inequality is still a growing concern. Despite ongoing economic uncertainties, the most luxurious travel experiences are still growing ever further out of reach for the majority of travelers.

Hannah Seo is a Korean-Canadian journalist based in Brooklyn, New York, who writes about health, climate, and social science.

William Fischer was in Peru, about to embark on a motorcycle tour around South America, when he got an offer he couldn't refuse — a job offer, that is. A US-based fintech startup reached out in spring 2024, and Fischer was intrigued. The only hiccup: They were 100% in office, no exceptions. The mandate didn't jibe with his LatAm-by-bike plan, or the digital nomad lifestyle he'd lived since 2021, working remotely while traveling to Spain, Mexico, and South Africa, among other locales. He tried to negotiate with his soon-to-be employer, asking to split time between New York and South America and pointing out that he'd already successfully worked remotely for two other companies, but the firm wouldn't budge.

Ultimately, Fischer decided the startup opportunity was too good to pass up, especially since the company was offering juicy stock options. So he packed it in and headed to New York. "I think you could argue I took a pay cut because of the tax increases and the cost-of-living differential that occurred," he says. "In my case, I did it because of the equity potential."

For now, the motorcycle tour is on the back burner — the bike is still sitting in Peru.

The pandemic jumbled the global labor market, causing big shifts in how and where people worked. It gave way to the explosion of remote work, which afforded workers an unprecedented opportunity to move around. Some people adopted a full-on digital nomad lifestyle, while others just quietly typed from the beach in Mexico for a month. Countries launched special visas to lure in footloose foreigners and make up for lost tourism traffic. In the immediate wake of the pandemic, people picking up jobs in other countries surged, too, as travel restrictions were lifted and cross-border movement normalized. The superhot job market also meant more workers and businesses were looking abroad for prospects.

Now the party's over in terms of working abroad. Return-to-office mandates have dampened the digital nomad phenomenon, and many companies are paying closer attention to workers' comings and goings. International job searches are slowing, too, as economic uncertainty takes hold and some countries tighten their immigration policies. Part of the swing back to a more "normal" work arrangement is people staying in their home countries, including many white-collar workers who only recently got their first taste of freedom, locationwise.

Globalization isn't going away, but it's in a cooling-off period that may lead to more workers staying put.

A recent analysis from the jobs platform Indeed found that job seekers' interest in foreign roles declined steeply between 2024 and 2025. Looking at job posting clicks from IP addresses outside the country of the job in question, Indeed found that the global postpandemic surge had reversed to pre-2020 levels. The reversal shows up in a slew of countries around the globe — including the US, Canada, Germany, and Australia.

"We're seeing less dynamic labor mobility, really, globally," says Cory Stahle, an economist at Indeed.

Stahle attributes the drop-off to economic and political factors. Hiring in general has slowed, no matter where you are, and the cost of living has increased, making moving abroad onerous and expensive. Stahle says international roles in tech, architecture, and knowledge work are where the job seeker drop-off has been most acute, which tracks, given the "white-collar recession." "Why keep looking for jobs if the jobs are increasingly not there because of the slowing labor markets?" he says.

"We did see a postpandemic surge in shortages and labor migration as things opened up again," says Kate Hooper, a senior policy analyst with the Migration Policy Institute. "And then that sort of settled down a little bit. In some cases, that was linked to a little bit of an economic downturn, but in other cases it was also tied to a more saturated labor market."

She offers up the example of Europe, which has seen a slowing economy, a decline in arrivals from outside the continent, and a wave of refugees from Ukraine. "Some employers are actually looking to hire from among that population, rather than necessarily opening up to international recruitment, which is a bit more expensive," she says.

More restrictive immigration policies from some countries, including the UK, Canada, and the US, could be keeping foreign workers out. But even for countries that have put in place policies trying to welcome foreigners, such as Germany, that pitch may not make it to job seekers. "It takes time for some of this information to trickle down," Hooper says.

Overall, it may just seem like a safer bet for some workers to stay put. That's the case for Arghya Das, a supply chain consultant who spent years studying and working in the US before returning to his home country of India in 2020. Dealing with the US visa process had become taxing, and he started getting some job offers that made him consider moving back. He was never hell-bent on living in America for the rest of his life, anyway. One of his friends, also from India, just got laid off from Microsoft, and he's scrambling to find another job so he can stay in Seattle, where he's got a wife and a mortgage. "If you get laid off in your own country, at least you can go back to your parents'," Das says.

Uncertainty may have many workers reranking their priorities. In a recent survey of 5,000 workers worldwide by Randstad, a staffing agency, two-thirds of respondents said they prioritized employability — meaning the ability to stay relevant and secure — over the ability to work remotely. More than half said they would rather control their work hours than their work locations.

Remote work during the pandemic opened up a lot of possibilities for working from abroad. A supertight labor market also made it hard for companies to be too demanding of their workforces, so they loosened the reins when it came to monitoring people's whereabouts. The digital nomad trend became so popular in some places that there was a backlash from locals against foreign squatters. The good news for those locals is that many of their not-so-welcome visitors are now being called back home.

Return-to-office mandates mean fewer opportunities to work from elsewhere — you can't commute from Spain to San Francisco, whether you have to be in the office five days a week or two. When companies had to compete harder for workers, remote work was one way to sweeten the deal. A labor market that's less favorable to workers means many employers feel that they can pull back on those types of enticements.

Even companies that allow remote work aren't so keen on it in places where they don't have offices. When the pandemic hit, many companies didn't have a lot of experience with remote workforces and treated working abroad as a gray area. They've since gotten better at monitoring their employees' locations and putting in place more specific guidelines about where people can be and for how long. It's not just a control issue — though many workers would argue it is — but also about compliance, says Brendan Coggan, the senior vice president of global services at Envoy Global, an immigration services consultancy. Many countries have started to more tightly monitor what foreigners are doing on their visits to ensure they're following immigration laws, not overstaying their visas, and paying taxes where required.

"Governments are able to actually better manage who's coming in, who's coming out, have all their biometric data, an easier way of tracking, and then AI is coming," he says.

Many countries have also formalized their pitch to foreign workers. Digital nomad visas offer remote workers a path that's more kosher, compliancewise. Hooper, from the Migration Policy Institute, says these types of visas haven't seen an enormous amount of uptake. They're helpful for extended stays, not for people traveling for a month or two and combining work and tourism. They also take time to get, and money, which a true digital nomad who bounces from place to place may not be willing to deal with. To some extent, the digital nomad visas are a marketing tactic. Even if the numbers aren't high, digital nomad visas "plant the flag, in a way, saying that we've got all this infrastructure in place that allows you to work remotely," Hooper says.

Marisa Meddin, a cofounder of Beach Commute, which helps people find remote jobs, says a lot of people got a "taste of freedom" over the past few years and feel like employers are now ripping that away. Her business tries to get people work-from-anywhere opportunities without them having to sneak around, which are usually at smaller operations. "There are very few companies that actually let you work from anywhere," she says. A big barrier is taxes. "That's why so many of the big companies are like, 'We can't even deal with it,'" she adds.

Some companies are embracing more business travel in lieu of sending (or allowing) employees to work full time in other countries. It's often more cost-effective, and it lowers their risk of running into legal trouble.

"People are working from other countries a lot, just in a different way," says Charlotte Wills, a partner at Fragomen, an immigration services firm. "Maybe in a more short-term way, for a temporary reason, before they either go back to their normal country of residence or where they're employed."

To some extent, the cat is out of the bag on people working from other countries. Globalization is a fact of the economy, and technology makes it easier for workers to be wherever, from freelancers to full-timers. But the cat is — kicking and screaming and scratching — going a little bit back into the bag.

Some of this is a natural cycle. People do the expat thing for a while, get tired of it, and go home. Two of the guys traveling in Fischer's cohort of digital nomads have also packed it in — one moved in with his girlfriend in Atlanta; another bought a house in Florida. Another made the official move to Spain with a digital nomad visa — he met a girl, the classic story.

Kristin Wilson, a blogger and consultant on working and living abroad, has planned her life destination by destination since 2012. She's finally slowed down and has been in Miami for about a year. "I got tired of living out of a suitcase, living out of backpacks, starting and stopping," she says. Ironically, she's become more set in place as her business grows, thanks to the surge in the pandemic-driven interest in working and living abroad, which resulted in the publication of her book "Digital Nomads for Dummies." Still, Wilson recognizes the growth won't be linear, and there's a level of normalization going on. "Remote work is here to stay, but the method of implementation during the pandemic was just completely contrary to the normal human rate of change and evolution," she says. "We're just kind of going back to a new baseline."

International job opportunities are still there, but workers may be more hesitant to grab onto them, and companies may be thinking twice about the rigamarole of bringing on someone from abroad. The brief WFH renaissance and the global opportunities afforded there appear to be a little bit over. Even if your company doesn't have an RTO mandate, it's probably paying closer attention to the IP address you're signing in from and rolling back that unacknowledged "don't ask, don't tell me if you're low-key in Colombia" stance it took in 2022.

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

• Some Americans are secretly working multiple remote jobs so they can retire early.
• Four job jugglers shared how working multiple jobs has helped pad their retirement savings.
• They also shared the downsides of working multiple jobs, including burnout.

To retire early, some Americans aren't climbing the corporate ladder to earn more — they're secretly working multiple remote jobs simultaneously and banking the surplus earnings.

Last year, Daniel earned about $280,000 juggling two remote roles in the medical field. Before becoming overemployed in 2021, he wasn't sure retirement was even realistic: With expenses like his children's college tuition looming, he said it was hard to put enough toward long-term savings. However, his net worth grew to $1.6 million from $1 million since 2022, and he's aiming to retire around the age of 59.

"I will be able to retire when I want, and perhaps earlier, if everything continues to fall into place," said Daniel, who's in his late 40s and based in Texas. "Before this, retirement was looking like wishful thinking."

Over the past two years, BI has interviewed more than two dozen overemployed workers like Daniel who've used their extra income to travel the world, pay down debt, and accelerate their retirement plans. These workers hope to escape the retirement challenges many Americans face — and protect themselves from rising costs, stock market volatility, and the potential threat of layoffs.

Four current and former job-jugglers shared how their strategies are giving them the financial means to retire earlier than initially planned. All did so on the condition that pseudonyms would be used, citing fears of professional repercussions. BI has verified their identities and earnings.

To be sure, working multiple jobs without employer approval could have professional repercussions and lead to other consequences, like burnout. But many job jugglers have told BI that the financial benefits generally outweigh the downsides and risks.

Job juggling is making early retirement possible

George, who's 39 and based in the Southeast, is on track to earn about $250,000 this year by secretly working two full-time remote IT roles. Early retirement has long been his "north star" because he hasn't enjoyed working.

Before he started job juggling about two years ago, George said he and his wife had a net worth of about $1 million, and he hoped they could reach $2.1 million by age 55. He said their net worth has since grown to $1.5 million, and he's now projecting they'll hit $3.2 million by age 48. His goal is to retire at age 50.

"I don't know that I would really stop before 50," he said. "I think I'd rather just pad the account, because I'd rather have too much than not enough."

Burnout and spending can impede overemployment

For some overemployed workers, holding multiple jobs isn't a perfect fix.

Adrian, a California-based data analyst in his early 40s, earned about $110,000 in 2023 by secretly working two full-time remote jobs. When the contract for one of his jobs came to an end last year, he decided not to look for a new role: Job juggling had become too stressful.

However, Adrian's roughly yearlong overemployment stint allowed him to make significant progress toward his retirement goals: He said he earned about $50,000 in additional income, all of which he invested in index funds that he's allocating for his retirement.

Adrian, who has about $323,000 in savings, said he's started exploring retirement plans that fit within his and his partner's budget.

"My partner and I are hoping to retire in about three years and move to a cheaper cost-of-living area," he said.

Kelly, who's in her late 40s and based in Arizona, also hopes to retire soon, but several hurdles stand in her way.

She's on track to earn nearly $300,000 this year by secretly working two full-time remote engineering jobs. However, she said her stock market investments have underperformed lately, and that she's had to support several family members financially.

"I am pretty much the sole provider for a lot of my family members," she said. "So I'm basically working to support others."

Kelly has about $42,000 in savings. Still, she's hopeful that her multiple income streams will make an early retirement possible.

"I would like to retire in five years from now," she said. "I'm trying to pay down all of my bills and invest more."

Do you have a story to share about secretly working multiple jobs or discovering an employee is doing so? Contact this reporter via email at [email protected] or Signal at jzinkula.29.

• Sergey Brin said he has used AI for leadership tasks, including delegating and promotions.
• Brin returned to Google in 2023 to develop AI products amid competition with OpenAI.
• Executives like Nvidia's CEO and Duolingo's CTO also use AI daily.

AI can help write boring emails, speed up coding, and even decide who gets promoted at one of the world's largest companies.

In an episode of the "All In" podcast released on Tuesday, Google cofounder Sergey Brin said he has been using AI for some of his leadership tasks since returning to the company.

"Management is like the easiest thing to do with the AI," Brin said.

Brin cofounded Google with Larry Page in 1998 and served as its president until stepping down in 2019. He returned to the search giant in 2023 to help develop AI products as the company races against startup competitors like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Perplexity.

On the podcast, Brin shared two ways he has been using AI for managing people at Gemini, Google's large language model team: delegating tasks and finding top performers.

Brin used an AI to condense group chat messages.

"It could suck down a whole chat space and then answer pretty complicated questions," he said. "I was like: 'OK, summarize this for me. OK, now assign something for everyone to work on.'"

Brin said that there were a few giveaways that he was using AI when he pasted things back into the chat, but it "worked remarkably well."

Brin said he also asked the AI tool who in the group chat should get promoted.

"It actually picked out this young woman engineer who I didn't even notice, she wasn't very vocal," he said. "I talked to the manager, actually, and he was like, 'Yeah, you know what? You're right. Like she's been working really hard, did all these things.'"

"I think that ended up happening, actually," Brin said of the promotion.

In the wide-ranging discussion about AI, Brin said AI could do certain things "much better" than humans, including tasks he is skilled at, such as math and coding.

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

How tech execs use AI

Brin joins a number of executives incorporating AI in their day-to-day work.

Earlier this month, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said he uses tools like ChatGPT and Gemini like a "tutor" every day.

"In areas that are fairly new to me, I might say, 'Start by explaining it to me like I'm a 12-year-old,' and then work your way up into a doctorate-level over time," Huang said.

This week, Duolingo's chief technology officer said that AI is part of his three-step leadership principle. Once he decides a task must be done, he tries to see if it can be automated with ChatGPT.

Still, not every tech executive is ready to outsource their management duties to AI just yet.

LinkedIn's chief operating officer, Dan Shapero, told Business Insider last month that he still likes to do the "human parts" of his job.

"While AI has shown that it can synthesize information, I'm not sure that it's shown that it can inspire a team or that it can connect with people at a deeper level," Shapero said.

• It's Ukraine's turn to adopt an unusual battle tactic from Russia: motorcycle assaults.
• One unit has formed its first motorcycle attack company for storming Russian positions quickly.
• It said its troops have trained "hundreds of hours" to shoot assault rifles from off-road bikes.

As the battle with drones continues, motorcycles have become a rising star in Ukraine's war.

The Ukrainian military's 425th separate assault regiment, nicknamed "Skala," announced on Tuesday that it had officially formed the country's first motorcycle attack company.

"As a result, we now have a modern 'cavalry' whose main task is to rapidly break through to enemy positions, conduct assault operations, and quickly shift the direction of attack," it said on its Telegram channel.

The use of motorcycles to carry troops into battle is well-documented in Ukraine. Since early last year, Russian troops have been increasingly seen riding on light vehicles such as ATVs and motorbikes as both a means of transport and a way to attack Ukrainian positions rapidly.

Their rise is largely viewed as a direct consequence of drone warfare, since armored vehicles are often vulnerable to exploding drones on Ukraine's flat terrain.

While motorbikes leave the rider more exposed, they're faster, nimbler, and smaller, which makes them better able to evade attacks from small drones.

"Russia's increased use of motorcycles is an adaptation in response to pervasive Ukrainian drone strikes against Russian armored vehicles and the unsustainable armored vehicle losses that Russian forces suffered in late 2023 and 2024," the Institute for the Study of War wrote in early May.

Ukraine's troops initially balked at the attack method, which the Russians used in suicide assaults to wear down Ukrainian defenses and munitions.

But the 425th's announcement on Tuesday means that some Ukrainians are now adopting the same tactic.

In its statement, the 425th said its motorbike-riding troops had trained for "hundreds of hours" to shoot while on the move. The statement did not indicate whether the unit has started fighting or when its motorcycle troops will hit the front lines.

The 425th released a video of about two dozen soldiers riding tandem on off-road motorbikes, with each pair involving one driver and an infantryman wielding an assault rifle.

"The goal is to ride in, strike quickly at enemy positions, dismount, storm in, secure a foothold, and complete the mission successfully," a Ukrainian soldier says in the video.

Deploying motorbikes in a direct assault is an unusual tactic for modern war, where such vehicles are typically used for reconnaissance or infiltration. US special forces, for example, have used commercial bikes to navigate difficult terrain or traverse deserts in the Middle East.

But in Ukraine, the number of motorbikes sighted on the front lines has grown dramatically. In April, Ukrainian troops said they repelled a Russian assault on Pokrovsk that involved over 100 motorcycles.

Several Russian motorized attacks last month were also reported to be comprised wholly of motorcycles and civilian vehicles. The latter have been increasingly appearing in the warzone, with Moscow's troops often sighted traveling in sedans and tractors at the rear — a likely sign of strain on Russian logistics and resources.

Analysts from the ISW said in late April that it's likely Russia will start further incorporating motorcycles into its tactics for future attacks.

Lt. Col. Pavlo Shamshyn, spokesperson of Ukraine's ground forces in Kharkiv, told local media that week that Kyiv believed the same.

"Our intelligence records the fact that in training centers on the territory of the Russian Federation and in the units themselves, active training of motorcycle drivers is taking place, and all this indicates that the assault operations of spring-summer 2025 will be carried out on motorcycles," Shamshyn told Ukrainian outlet Suspilne.

• Urban Outfitters will be bringing in its fall products early this year.
• The company's CFO said this was to circumvent any future supply chain issues caused by Trump's tariffs.
• It could also "gently and sparingly" raise some product prices.

Urban Outfitters says fall is coming early this year.

The retail corporation announced in its earnings call on Wednesday that it would bring in fall products earlier, anticipating supply chain issues resulting from President Donald Trump's tariffs.

"While our teams continue to focus on increasing inventory turns, the uncertainty around tariffs means we are likely to bring in fall product a bit earlier," said the brand's finance chief, Melanie Marein-Efron.

Marein-Efron said to save costs, the brand shifted its mode of transporting stock from air to boat, a change which added about 30 days to delivery time.

The change in delivery method also comes with the risk of the fashion not being "as accurate as we would like it to be," she said.

"While there is some fashion risk of bringing product in early, we believe that it is prudent planning to bring in fall inventory, which is less sensitive to fashion, early, given the uncertain tariff outlook and any potential supply chain disruptions that could occur in the future," she said.

Representatives for Urban Outfitters did not respond to BI's query about whether customers would be able to shop fall fashion in-store earlier.

The company, which also owns retail brands Anthropologie, Free People, and Nuuly, sources its products mainly from India, Vietnam, and Turkey, Marein-Efron said.

Per Trump's announcement on April 2, 10% tariffs would be applied to goods from all countries entering the US. Goods from India, Vietnam would be subjected to additional 26% and 46% "reciprocal" tariffs, respectively, he said.

But on April 9, Trump announced a 90-day pause on the additional tariffs to allow room for trade negotiations.

She also said Urban Outfitters may consider "gently and sparingly raising some prices" to mitigate tariff effects.

The company reported a 10.7% revenue increase in the last quarter compared to the same period last year, with $1.33 billion in net sales.

Its shares were up more than 17% in after-hours trading on Wednesday.