• Over three-fifths of US workers have nightmares about work.
• Common nightmares include being late to work, job loss, and romantic dreams about coworkers.
• Dreams are often a reflection of the inner self, therapists say.

For many people, work extends well beyond the standard 9-to-5. The pressure from their jobs can disrupt sleep, leading to restless nights and stressful dreams.

In a survey of 1,750 working adults in the US conducted by Each Night, a sleep resource platform, more than three-fifths of workers reported having a nightmare about their jobs.

The most common workplace nightmare is being late to work, according to an analysis of global search data conducted by the job search platform JobLeads. Losing your job, getting a new job, and colleague romances were also commonly reported dreams.

Annie Wright, a psychotherapist who operates boutique trauma therapy centers in California and Florida, told Business Insider that dreams are worth analyzing.

The fear of being late to work can signify a sense of uncertainty, she said. "It doesn't terribly surprise me that that's showing up because, you know, we have that classic dream in college and high school of being late for a test," she said.

Through the lens of gestalt psychotherapy — a therapeutic approach that focuses on understanding a person's present experience — every element of a dream, from the setting to the people, places, and objects, can be viewed as a reflection of the dreamer's inner self.

Wright offered a hypothetical workplace dream in which the dreamer sees their boss, closest colleague, and a challenging client. The boss is yelling at the colleague about their interactions with the client.

Wright said she would ask the dreamer to describe the qualities they associate with their boss. "Critical, demanding, and hostile," they might say, she said. Then, they would describe their colleague. "Supportive, kind, but incompetent sometimes," she said.

She would ask the dreamer to think about all these aspects within their self.

"What does it say that the critical, angry part of you is attacking the, you know, supportive but kind part of you," she said. Perhaps the person would realize that the dream was about something else entirely.

"I cannot turn off this critical voice about my inability to get pregnant," she said, as an example. "When we unfold it from that lens, it can become less about the workplace itself or the workplace figure itself and more about what those different parts symbolized by the workplace or workplace figures represent."

Stressful dreams often reflect a person's sense of vulnerability in the wider world, she said. Whether it's the workplace or the middle school hallway — the most common setting for a stress dream — the setting of a dream is like a subject that our mental state seeks out. "In other words, the state of vulnerability seeks that out and gloms on to it," she said.

Here's a closer look at the top most searched workplace stress dreams, according to JobLeads data.

• DeepSeek, an open-source Chinese AI company, has riled Silicon Valley with its rapid rise.
• Meta's chief AI scientist said DeepSeek has benefited from the open-source community.
• Meta's AI program has remained open-source, while OpenAI has shifted to closed-source.

Silicon Valley was on edge this week after DeepSeek, a Chinese AI company, released its R1 model. In third-party benchmarks, it outperformed leading American AI companies like OpenAI, Meta, and Anthropic.

For Meta's chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun, the biggest takeaway from DeepSeek's success was not the heightened threat posed by Chinese competition but the value of keeping AI models open source so that anyone can benefit.

It's not that China's AI is "surpassing the US," but rather that "open source models are surpassing proprietary ones," LeCun said in a post on Threads.

DeepSeek's R1 is itself open source, as is Meta's Llama. OpenAI, which was originally founded as an open-source AI company with a mission to create technology that benefits all of humanity, has on the other hand more recently shifted to closed-source.

LeCun said DeepSeek has "profited from open research and open source."

"They came up with new ideas and built them on top of other people's work. Because their work is published and open source, everyone can profit from it," LeCun said. "That is the power of open research and open source."

When DeepSeek unveiled R1 on January 20, which it said "demonstrates remarkable reasoning capabilities," the company said it was "pushing the boundaries" of open-source AI.

The announcement took Silicon Valley by surprise and was easily the most talked-about development in the tech industry during a week that included the World Economic Forum, TikTok uncertainty, and President Donald Trump's busy first few days in office.

Days after DeepSeek's announcement, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Meta planned to spend over $60 billion in 2025 as it doubles down on AI. Zuckerberg has been an outspoken advocate of open-source models.

"Part of my goal for the next 10-15 years, the next generation of platforms, is to build the next generation of open platforms and have the open platforms win," he said in September. "I think that's going to lead to a much more vibrant tech industry."

Those who support open source say it allows technology to develop rapidly and democratically since anyone can modify and redistribute the code. On the other hand, advocates for closed-source models argue that they are more secure because the code is kept private.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the closed-source approach offers his company "an easier way to hit the safety threshold" in an AMA on Reddit last November. He added, however, that he "would like us to open source more stuff in the future."

• OpenAI unveiled Operator, its first AI agent, for ChatGPT Pro subscribers in the US.
• It can autonomously complete tasks like booking reservations or buying groceries.
• The agent is powered by a new model built in GPT-4o called CUA.

Experts predicted that 2025 would be the year AI agents go mainstream, and OpenAI is delivering on that forecast.

On Thursday, OpenAI unveiled Operator, a system that can use a web browser to do things like book travel reservations and buy products.

While chatbots like OpenAI's popular ChatGPT use generative AI to respond to queries, Operator is an agent designed to perform tasks autonomously.

OpenAI said Operator would be available Thursday in the US for users of ChatGPT Pro, a $200 monthly plan that provides access to its latest models, including o1. In the coming months, the company said, it will also be made available to subscribers of ChatGPT Plus, OpenAI's $20 monthly subscription tier, and to users in other countries.

During a livestream announcing Operator on Thursday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called the release an "early research preview," adding that it would be refined over the coming months. He said OpenAI would also have more agents to launch.

The interface is similar to ChatGPT. Users prompt Operator with a request, like "book a dinner reservation at 7 p.m." They can select a specific website through which they want to process the request, such as OpenTable, or send the request through a search engine like Google.

Operator summarizes its reasoning process in a sidebar so users can identify steps where it makes mistakes, which OpenAI says it's still prone to do.

Users can also upload a picture of a handwritten grocery list and prompt Operator to purchase the items on the list.

Users can choose a specific site, such as Instacart, for Operator to purchase the groceries from. If no site is selected, it will default to a search engine.

Reiichiro Nakano, a member of the company's technical staff, said in the livestream that Operator was powered by CUA, a new model built on GPT-4o.

It's "trained to use and control a computer in the same way that humans can, by just looking at the screen and using a mouse and keyboard to control it," he said.

Nakano said the model bypassed the need for APIs, mechanisms that allow software components to communicate with each other, and "unlocks a whole new range of software we can use that was previously inaccessible."

He added that the model removed "one more bottleneck in our path towards AGI," or artificial general intelligence.

Still, Operator has a way to go before it matches humans' ability to navigate the web.

OpenAI said that in a benchmark measuring how AI agents navigate common operating systems, like the open-source operating system Linux, Operator scored 38.1%, compared with 72.4% for humans. In another benchmark measuring how AI agents navigate common websites, Operator scored 58.1%, compared with 78.2% for humans.

• McKinsey executive Matthew Fitzpatrick is leaving the firm to become CEO of Invisible Technologies.
• Fitzpatrick led QuantumBlack Labs, developing AI software and tools for companies.
• Invisible Technologies, a company focused on AI training, is valued at $500M, the company said.

One of McKinsey & Company's top executives is leaving the firm for Silicon Valley's new promised land: the AI industry.

After 12 years at McKinsey, Matthew Fitzpatrick, senior partner and global head of QuantumBlack Labs — the software and research and development arm of the firm's AI division QuantumBlack— is stepping down.

During his tenure, Fitzpatrick led teams that helped companies scale AI projects and oversaw the development of tools like Kedro, an open-source analytics and machine learning library that McKinsey said has been downloaded more than 17 million times since its launch in 2019.

In his next role, he will serve as the CEO of Invisible Technologies, a key company in the AI industry that has kept a relatively low profile.

Invisible Technologies specializes in data pre-training, the initial phase of training for large language model developers, and post-training, which helps refine models for companies adopting the technology. Invisible Technologies was valued at $500 million in 2024, according to a press release from the company.

Fitzpatrick said he believes Invisible can help businesses tackle one of the biggest challenges of the moment — effectively integrating AI into their operations.

"Despite the hype around AI, we're at a point where fewer than 10% of AI models reach usage and production because enterprises don't have the experience to evaluate, train, and operationalize them," Fitzpatrick said in the company's press release. "That's where Invisible shines. I'm bullish we can help customers cross the chasm and realize the massive potential of AI."

Fitzpatrick told BI the move came about through conversations with Invisible's founder, Francis Pedraza, whom he met through a networking organization.

"It's the most under-the-radar critical AI company in the US that I've ever seen, and it's been involved in all of the model training for the last five years but has done very little publicity of any kind around that," he said.

He said he sees companies having a strong demand for Invisible's services. The challenge, however, is "not growing too fast that we in any way sacrifice quality," he said.

Somesh Khanna, a former colleague of Fitzpatrick's, told BI Fitzpatrick built a reputation for changing McKinsey's talent pool, bringing more engineers and employees with quantitative skills into the fold. McKinsey told BI that it now employs 7,000 people as technologists, designers, and product managers. Fitzpatrick was responsible for overseeing 1,000 of them, a rep for Fitzpatrick told BI.

"The biggest thing is that in the McKinsey model of the past it was very hard for atypical profiles such as PhDs or data engineers or scientists to integrate into the culture of the firm. McKinsey's philosophy centered around acquiring amazing talent and teaching these individuals the McKinsey approach to problem-solving and client service," Khanna, a senior partner who retired from the firm in May after almost three decades, told BI.

"These guys, the new team that Matt was hiring and developing, were even more different — people who basically were hands-on keyboards guys, not power pointers."

Khanna said Fitzpatrick was critical in integrating this new breed of talent with deep technical skills into the firm.

Fitzpatrick will be succeeded at QuantumBlack Labs by McKinsey senior partner Tomás Lajous.

• TikTok restored services in the US after 12 hours of downtime, easing some creators' concerns.
• Creators rely on TikTok for income, from product sales and ad deals to the app's affiliate program.
• With TikTok's future still uncertain, some creators are planning to diversify how they sell online.

TikTok restored services in the US on Sunday, easing the concerns of content creators and entrepreneurs who make their living from the platform — at least for now.

The platform was down for 12 hours starting late Saturday night and was restored following a Truth Social post by President-Elect Donald Trump, who said he'd issue an executive order on Monday to delay the ban. TikTok's future remains unclear, as its China-based parent company, ByteDance, has so far refused to divest from the app as required by law, but for now, the economy driven by TikTok can continue to churn.

"My whole livelihood was on the line this weekend," Live shopping host Kimberly Balance told Business Insider. "Never experienced anything like this the entire time that I've been a business owner."

Balance, who goes by KIMMIEBBAGS, sells luxury consignment goods on TikTok, Instagram, and the marketplace platform Whatnot. Last week, she relocated her business from Florida to California to expand her live shopping operations.

Balance was set to host a six-hour live shopping show on TikTok on Saturday as part of a new live shopping partnership she had struck with Reunited Luxury. On Thursday evening, TikTok informed her that her Friday meeting with the platform's luxury sales manager was canceled. Her show on Saturday was canceled soon after, in a blow to her business' revenue.

Since it launched in 2023, TikTok's online marketplace, TikTok Shop, has quickly become a prime source of revenue for creators on the platform. The app also has an affiliate program where creators can earn a commission for sales they help drive by tagging products in videos or live streams. Creators can also package products from different sellers on their profiles for users to search through. TikTok takes a cut of each transaction.

In its April 2024 economic impact report, the company said TikTok "brings tens of billions of dollars to the US economy," including $15 billion in revenue to small businesses that use the app, supporting more than 224,000 jobs. Business Insider could not independently confirm these internal statistics.

Before TikTok "went dark" on Saturday night, some creators on the platform told Business Insider they worried the ban could hurt them financially.

In a press release for the social media app Own, one creator, ChalkDunny, said he made more than 60% of his income in 2024. Another creator, izzybizzyspider, said in the release that TikTok is her "biggest source of income and biggest platform."

She warned that creators on the app have to be "prepared to be flexible and adapt quickly."

Nadya Okamoto, founder of menstrual-care brand August, which sells products on TikTok, told Business Insider she is "relieved" that TikTok came back online. However, she said the ongoing volatility over the ban prompted her to develop a contingency plan that reduces her reliance on the app.

"I've been encouraging my followers to connect with me on platforms like Instagram and YouTube for updates," she said. "I'm also exploring other affiliate shopping opportunities, such as YouTube Shop, where I've started adding shoppable products—particularly in my skincare-related videos."

Balance said she plans to switch up the platforms where she does business, given TikTok's still-uncertain future.

"We're going to continue probably to lean on the other channels like Instagram and possibly launch a YouTube," she said. "I think this is just an eye opener for all small businesses that we need to have a diverse way to reach our audiences."

TikTok did not immediately return a request for comment from Business Insider for this story.

• Consultants told BI that finding a "sponsor" is the key to career advancement at top firms.
• Sponsors offer seniority and influence to help employees succeed.
• Consultants say mentorship is insufficient and that sponsors are key for promotions.

Climbing the ranks at a top-tier consulting firm is often harder than landing the job itself.

Several current and former consultants told Business Insider that having the right sponsor — an executive who champions their success — is crucial early on.

McKinsey & Company defines sponsors as high-ranking employees who "offer seniority, power, and influence to help you meet your goals." They differ from formally assigned mentors, who assist with annual reviews, guidance, and emotional support. Instead, sponsor relationships are formed through more organic connections with employees.

"99% of it is unofficial, and it's about finding people that you want to help basically," said Matthew Fitzpatrick, a senior partner at McKinsey and global leader of the firm's AI division, QuantumBlack Labs. Fitzpatrick has sponsored hundreds of employees during his 12-year tenure at the firm and said it's "probably the most fun part of my job."

His advice to younger employees is to seek sponsors who share their interests.

"All good mentor and sponsorship relationships are built around really shared interests and passions for things," he said. "I think the relationships I formed over the last decade were people that were really interested in the same things I am."

Former McKinsey consultants say advancing at the firm is tough without a sponsor. "Sponsors are extremely important, especially if you are looking for your next promotion," an associate who left last April told Business Insider by text. "They can certainly make your career if you have strong sponsors and a lack of a strong sponsor makes it difficult to survive."

Many consultants work on a project-to-project basis, and sponsors can also help new hires secure projects that build their reputation within the firm.

"My first six to seven months when I was a brand new analyst at Accenture, it was just really tough to get onto high-quality projects, and I felt totally lost, even though I was assigned a career counselor," a former Accenture consultant, who requested anonymity to avoid jeopardizing career prospects, said.

She had a breakthrough when a senior consultant at the firm recognized her potential and put her on his next project, which offered the kind of visibility she needed to advance her career at the firm.

"Literally because of him, one good project led to another one," she said. "He became my biggest advocate in terms of being not only a sponsor for promotions but also a mentor for coaching me on the day-to-day." Eventually, he became her direct manager, too.

Many top consulting firms have various types of corporate mentorship programs, which are different from sponsors. These programs offer employees one-on-one guidance with senior-level executives. Some pair employees from different generations or demographic backgrounds.

However, consultants say that mentorship alone can't fill the gap between success and failure at a firm.

The former Accenture consultant stayed at the firm for four years due to the support of her boss.

"Beyond the formal boss and employee relationship, he also made an extra effort to both mentor me and be my advocate," she said, noting that the distinction is important. "I think that people need individuals who are in both camps. Sometimes, you can't get both in one person."

• Nate Anderson said he's disbanding Hindenburg Research after completing all its outstanding projects.
• Hindenburg, a short-seller founded in 2017, gained fame for its forensic financial research.
• The firm impacted major companies and plans to share its tactics publicly.

Nate Anderson, founder of the short-selling firm Hindenburg Research, is tapping out.

On Wednesday, Anderson wrote in a post titled "Gratitude" on the firm's website, "I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research. The plan has been to wind up after we finished the pipeline of ideas we were working on," including reporting multiple cases to regulators.

"Building this has been a life's dream." But, he said, "the intensity and focus has come at the cost of missing a lot of the rest of the world and the people I care about."

Anderson launched Hindenburg in 2017 and rose to prominence in 2020 with a report saying that electric truck manufacturer Nikola Corporation had exaggerated and misrepresented its products to investors. The stock tumbled 11% in a single day, and Anderson was off to the races.

Other targets of Hindenburg's negative research and short-seller activity included Clover Health, Adani Group, and Icahn Enterprises. In each instance the entity in question saw sharp stock losses immediately after publication. The Adani Group situation was especially notable, because the market reaction to the firm's research resulted in tens of billions of dollars of lost net worth for one of Asia's richest individuals.

Unlike typical investors that seek to capture returns from rising stock prices, short-sellers bet on declines. Hindenburg carved a niche for itself by publishing negative research, often focused on highlighting what it argued to be fraudulent or misleading corporate behavior, while also positioning itself short beforehand. It's unknown how much money the firm brought in overall from its short bets.

Anderson said in his message that the firm's work held some of the most powerful companies accountable for their actions.

"Nearly 100 individuals have been charged civilly or criminally by regulators at least in part through our work, including billionaires and oligarchs. We shook some empires that we felt needed shaking," he wrote.

In the next six months, Anderson wrote that he plans to make the firm's tactics public through open-source materials and videos on their investigation process.

Anderson and representatives from Hindenburg didn't immediately respond to BI's request for comment.

• Jamie Dimon urges incoming president Donald Trump to prioritize immigration policy in his second term.
• Trump has said he plans to conduct mass deportation in his second term.
• Dimon also advocates for education reform and doubling the earned income tax credit.

With Donald Trump set to take office in about a week, top Wall Street leaders are coming forward with advice.

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon honed in on immigration policy when asked what advice he'd give Trump for his second presidential term in a CBS News interview posted Sunday. "Get immigration, border security right," he said. "Then proper immigration after that."

Since his debut on the political stage, Trump has been outspoken about immigration policy. On the campaign trail last year Trump said he would carry out the "largest domestic deportation in American history." He also plans to end birthright citizenship, build new ICE detention centers, and reinstate his first-term policies. During his first term in office, he curtailed legal immigration rates, signed an executive order that suspended several types of work visas, including H-1B visas, which are crucial for the tech industry, and completed hundreds of miles of construction on a border wall between the US and Mexico.

Dimon says he agrees with Trump's big-picture view on immigration. "You could talk about specifics and disagree, but the concern around border security, obviously, every country in the world is concerned about that," he said.

Beyond immigration, Dimon says he wants to see changes to our education system. "I would love to see high schools, community colleges, and colleges measured on what is the outcome of the kid being educated. Like do they get a job that's well paying, not do they do math well," he said. "I believe that would put a lot more pressure on schools to teach skills that can give you really good paying jobs." That includes jobs in fields like data analytics, manufacturing, nursing, compliance, and financial skills, he said.

He's also in favor of eliminating tax breaks, even for the wealthy. He proposed doubling the earned income tax credit: a refundable tax credit for low to moderate-income workers, particularly those with children. "That alone would put a lot more money into the pockets of people who are working who are lower income, it would go into their communities, into their families," he said.

• Mark Zuckerberg explained why Meta is replacing fact-checkers on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast.
• He said the change aims to address ideological censorship concerns and enhance user voice.
• Critics argue the move is a setback for accuracy.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained his rationale for changing the company's content moderation policies during Friday's episode of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast.

Earlier, on Tuesday, Zuckerberg posted a video message to Meta's blog announcing that he would replace fact-checkers with community notes, a system similar to what Elon Musk uses on X.

The announcement was criticized by dozens of third-party fact-checking groups, which signed an open letter to Zuckerberg denouncing the changes as a "step backward" for accuracy.

Zuckerberg told Rogan his reason for the changes was "censorship."

"You only start one of these companies if you believe in giving people a voice," he said. "It goes back to our original mission, it's just give people the power to share and make people more open and connected."

Zuckerberg said that over the past 10 years, there's been a greater push for "idealogical-based censorship" on the platform, fueled especially by the 2016 election, Brexit, and the COVID-19 pandemic. "We just faced this massive, massive institutional pressure to start censoring content on ideological grounds," he said.

Zuckerberg initially gave into the pressure, believing it stemmed from genuine concerns about misinformation. After the 2016 election, he implemented a system of third-party fact-checkers tasked with correcting statements like "the earth is flat." However, the system quickly veered into gray areas, leading to accusations that the company's moderators were biased.

Pressure on Meta's content moderation policies continued, reaching a fever pitch during the COVID-19 pandemic when the Biden administration rolled out its vaccine program. "While they're trying to push that program, they also tried to censor anyone who is basically arguing against it," Zuckerberg said. "They pushed us super hard to take down things that were, honestly, were true."

That means he has been considering changing Meta's content moderation policies for a while now.

"I think that this is going to be pretty durable because, at this point, we've just been pressure tested on this stuff for the last 8 to 10 years with like these huge institutions just pressuring us," he said. "I feel like this is kind of the right place to be going forward."

• Mark Zuckerberg said Meta will start automating the work of midlevel software engineers this year.
• Meta may eventually outsource all coding on its apps to AI.
• Meta also plans to replace fact-checkers with community notes and reduce DEI initiatives.

This year coding might go from one of the most sought-after skills on the job market to one that can be fully automated.

Mark Zuckerberg said that Meta and some of the biggest companies in the tech industry are already working toward this on an episode of the Joe Rogan Experience on Friday.

"Probably in 2025, we at Meta, as well as the other companies that are basically working on this, are going to have an AI that can effectively be a sort of midlevel engineer that you have at your company that can write code."

It may initially be an expensive endeavor, but Zuckerberg said Meta will reach the point where all of the code in its apps and the AI it generates will also be done by AI. According to a salary tracking site, midlevel software engineers at the company now earn close to mid-six figures in total compensation.

Zuckerberg's interview with Rogan came after a big week of changes for the company.

On Tuesday, Zuckerberg announced that Meta plans to replace third-party fact-checkers with community notes, similar to Elon Musk's X, and bring back more political content. The announcement has elicited alarm from dozens of fact-checking groups, who signed an open letter to Zuckerberg saying the changes would be "a step backward" for the company.

Meta is also planning to roll back several of its DEI initiatives. In a memo sent to staff on Meta's internal communications platform, Workplace, its vice president of human resources, Janelle Gale, wrote, "We will no longer have a team focused on DEI."

• Enterprise AI startup Cohere has launched a new platform called North.
• North allows users to quickly deploy AI agents to execute tasks across various business sectors.
• The company says the platform cuts the time it takes to complete a task by over five-fold.

2025 is shaping up to be the year that AI "agents" go mainstream.

Unlike AI-based chatbots that respond to user queries, agents are AI tools that work autonomously. They can execute tasks and make decisions, and companies are already using them for everything from creating marketing campaigns to recruiting new employees.

Cohere, an AI startup focused on enterprise technology, unveiled North on Thursday — an all-in-one platform combining large language models, multimodal search, and agents to help its customers work more efficiently with AI.

Through North, users can quickly customize and deploy AI agents to find relevant information, conduct research, and execute tasks across various business functions.

The platform could make it easier for a company's finance team, for example, to quickly search through internal data sources and create reports. Its multimodal search function could also help extract information from everything from images to slides to spreadsheets.

AI agents built with North integrate with a company's existing workplace tools and applications. The platform can run in private, allowing organizations to integrate all their sensitive data in one place securely.

"North allows employees to build AI agents tailored to their role to execute complex tasks without ever leaving the platform," a representative for Cohere told Business Insider by email.

The company is now deploying North to a small set of companies in finance, healthcare, and critical infrastructure as it continues to refine the platform. There is no set date for when it will make the platform available more widely.

Cohere, launched in 2019 by Aidan Gomez, Ivan Zhang, and Nick Frosst, has quickly grown to rival ChatGPT maker OpenAI and was valued at over $5.5 billion at its Series D funding round announced last July, Bloomberg reported. As of last March, the company had an annualized revenue of $35 million, up from $13 million at the end of 2023.

The company is one of a few AI startups that are building their own large language models from the ground up. Unlike its competitors, it has focused on creating customized solutions for businesses rather than consumer apps or the more nebulous goal of artificial general intelligence.

Its partners include major companies like software company Oracle, IT company Fujitsu, and consulting firm McKinsey & Company.

This year, however, its goal is to "move beyond generic LLMs towards tuned and highly optimized end-to-end solutions that address the specific objectives of a business," Gomez said in a post on LinkedIn outlining the company's objectives for 2025.

• Wildfires are burning across Los Angeles County.
• Hundreds of thousands of people are under evacuation orders or warnings.
• Insured losses could top $20 billion, JPMorgan analysts estimated — the most-ever in California.

The Los Angeles area is battling a series of massive wildfires that continue to rip through its picturesque mountains and hillsides — creating a hellscape of burned-out neighborhoods and upended livelihoods that could ultimately be the most costly fire disaster in California history.

Authorities on Friday night expanded the evacuation zone related to the largest blaze, the Palisades Fire, east toward Santa Monica, less than 1.5 miles from the iconic Santa Monica Pier. The zone now encompasses the famous Getty Center, home of the Getty Museum.

Officials have now ordered over 153,000 residents to evacuate and warned another 166,000 to be ready to leave if the fires continue to spread. About 38,000 acres have burned. Officials have reported 13 deaths related to the fire as of Saturday.

At a press conference on Friday evening, officials managing the Eaton fire, which now spans over 14,000 acres and is one of the largest and deadliest, said they did not expect the blaze to spread significantly over the weekend due to more moderate wind conditions. However, officials said they are anticipating another high-wind event early next week. It was strong Santa Ana gusts of up to 90 miles per hour that first whipped the fires into a frenzy earlier this week.

JPMorgan analysts said the blazes tearing through the region could lead to over $20 billion in insured losses — and about $50 billion in total economic losses. That would make these conflagrations "significantly more severe" than the Camp Fires that struck the state in 2018 and racked up $10 billion in insured losses, the current record.

Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman described the scene in LA as apocalyptic, as thick bands of smoke surrounded the city. Los Angeles County is home to about 10 million people.

"Not since the 1990s, when Los Angeles was hit with the fires, the flood, the earthquake, and the riots, have I seen such disaster occur here in our city," Hochman said at a briefing, referring to the Northridge Earthquake and the disturbances in the wake of the Rodney King verdict.

Erroneous emergency alerts telling residents to evacuate areas unaffected by the fires further heightened panic in the region. Kevin McGowan, the director of the Los Angeles County Office of Emergency Management, apologized for the messages at Friday's conference.

"There is an extreme amount of frustration, anger, fear, with regards to the erroneous messages that have been being sent out through the wireless emergency alert system. I can't express enough how sorry I am for this experience," he said.

He reassured residents that resolving the issue is his "top priority" and that he has technical specialists working to identify the root cause. "I implore everyone to not disable the messages on your phone," he said.

Late Thursday, the Federal Aviation Administration warned civilians against flying unauthorized drones in areas undergoing firefighting efforts, after a firefighting plane sustained wing damage from a civilian drone and had to be grounded.

Satellite images of the LA fires showed the destruction left in their wake.

Starlink, Elon Musk's SpaceX subsidiary that provides satellite internet service, said Thursday that people in the Los Angeles area can use the company's network to text loved ones, contact 911, and receive emergency alerts.

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Saturday announced that he's doubling the number of California National Guard personnel on the ground to 1,680 members.

"The men and women of the California National Guard are working day and night to help Los Angeles residents during their greatest time of need," he said in a statement.

Here's a look at the latest happenings in the main fires spreading throughout the area:

Palisades Fire

The Palisades Fire in the Pacific Palisades area north of Santa Monica was the first fire to strike the region on Tuesday morning. It has spread to over 21,500 acres, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Around 11% of the fire is contained, it says.

Five people have died in the Palisades fire, according to the medical examiner's office.

Los Angeles City's Fire Chief Kristin Crowley said at a press briefing earlier this week that the Palisades Fire had damaged or destroyed over 5,300 structures.

Crowley would not confirm reports that the fire started in a resident's garden, saying the origin is still under investigation.

Some celebrities have lost homes in the blaze, including Paris Hilton and Billy Crystal.

On Thursday, a drone hit the wing of one of two Super Scooper planes fighting the wildfires, Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said at a Friday press conference. He said the plane was under urgent repairs and set to be flying again by Monday. "If you fly a drone at one of these brush fires all aerial operations will be shut down," he said.

Eaton Fire

The second-largest fire in Los Angeles County is the Eaton Fire, which started on Tuesday evening in the Pasadena-Altadena area at the foothills of the Angeles National Forest.

Eight people have died in the Eaton fire, Los Angeles County Sheriff Commander Tania E. Plunkett said at a press conference on Saturday afternoon.

The blaze has spread to over 14,100 acres, Marrone said at the Saturday conference, adding that over 7,000 structures have been damaged or destroyed and 15% of the fire is contained.

The cause of the fire remains "unknown," Marrone previously said.

Hurst Fire

The Hurst Fire, which began late on Tuesday night in the northern part of the San Fernando Valley, spread to 799 acres and is 76% contained, per Cal Fire.

In an X post on Thursday afternoon, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said the mandatory evacuation order for the Hurst Fire had been lifted.

Kenneth Fire

On Thursday, a small brush fire erupted at the Victory Trailhead near the border of Los Angeles and Ventura counties. Marrone said that the fire had been stopped. It burned just over 1,000 acres, but no structures were reported damaged. It is 80% contained, per Cal Fire.

A mandatory evacuation order was issued for several neighborhoods near the fire.

LAPD said it had detained a possible arson suspect but could not confirm any connection to the fire.

An evacuation notice intended for residents impacted by the Kenneth Fire was mistakenly sent out across LA County due to a "technical error," County Supervisor Janice Hahn said in an X post.

Sunset Fire and others

The Sunset Fire broke out in the Runyon Canyon area of the Hollywood Hills on Wednesday evening, quickly spreading to scorch over 40 acres and threaten major LA landmarks.

As of Thursday morning, firefighters were able to stop the fire's forward progress, Crowley said.

All evacuation orders related to the Sunset Fire were lifted as of 7:30 a.m. Thursday, she added.

A large structure fire consumed two large homes in the Studio City area but firefighters were able to stop its forward growth at just one acre and prevent another brushfire, Crowley said.

Yet another fire, the Lidia Fire, started Wednesday afternoon in Acton near the Antelope Valley, about 20 miles northeast of the San Fernando Valley. It consumed 395 acres but is now 100% contained, according to CalFire.

The Woodley Fire, which began Wednesday morning in the southern part of the San Fernando Valley, has been suppressed and there are no current threats, Crowley said.

Patrols were monitoring the area for any flare-ups, she added.

Events canceled and landmarks closed as smoke chokes LA

Major and minor events alike have been canceled or postponed across the Los Angeles area as the city battles the fires.

The 30th Annual Critics Choice Awards, set for Sunday night, were rescheduled for January 26. A National Hockey League game between the Los Angeles Kings and the Calgary Flames, scheduled for Wednesday night at Crypto.com arena, was postponed. The LA Lakers rescheduled Thursday night's game.

Music venues across the city were also canceling or postponing their shows, including The Troubadour, The Wiltern, The Echo, the Kia Forum, Walt Disney Concert Hall, and others.

Flights into and out of LAX, Hollywood Burbank Airport, Ontario International Airport, and Santa Ana's John Wayne Airport were also experiencing delays and cancellations. LAX, however, remains open.

The fires are also shuttering tourist destinations in and around Los Angeles, which attracts nearly 50 million visitors a year.

The fires forced some Los Angeles-area landmarks to close, including the Hollywood sign, the Los Angeles Zoo, the Broad Museum, the Norton Simon Museum, the Getty Villa and Getty Center, Universal Studios Hollywood and Universal CityWalk, and the Griffith Observatory.

Airbnb told CNN that it would be allowing refunds for bookings in areas affected by the wildfires, following a viral social media post from a customer who said the company refused to offer her a refund.

California already struggled with an insurance crisis

The devastating fires this week will likely only worsen California's ongoing insurance crisis, where many homebuyers already struggle to get approved for loans, home insurance, and fire insurance — even in areas outside the typical risk zones.

In recent years, some insurance companies, like State Farm, have stopped accepting new home insurance policies in the state entirely, as wildfire risks have only increased.

Experts told Business Insider that prices are likely to continue rising for those who can still get insurance.

"I've seen numbers go up 200%, 300%, even 500% in a year," Nick Ramirez, the owner of a California insurance agency, told BI.

And as the fires' estimated damages already climb into the billions of dollars, some homeowners will have to rebuild without the help of insurance payouts.

• Job cuts are continuing into 2025 following waves of reductions last year.
• Companies such as Meta, Microsoft, BlackRock, and BP are conducting layoffs.
• See the list of companies letting workers go in 2025.

Layoffs and other workforce reductions are continuing in 2025, following two years of significant job cuts across tech, media, finance, manufacturing, retail, and energy.

While the reasons for slimming staff vary, the cost-cutting measures are coming amid a backdrop of technological change. In a recent World Economic Forum survey, some 41% of companies worldwide said they expected to reduce their workforces over the next five years because of the rise of artificial intelligence.

Companies such as CNN, Dropbox, and IBM have previously announced job cuts related to AI. Tech jobs in big data, fintech, and AI are meanwhile expected to double by 2030, according to the WEF.

Here are the companies with job cuts planned or already underway in 2025 so far.

CNN plans to cut 200 jobs.

Cable news giant CNN is cutting about 200 television-focused roles as part of a digital pivot. The cuts will amount to about 6% of the company's workforce.

In a memo sent to staff on Thursday, CNN's CEO Mark Thompson said he aimed to "shift CNN's gravity towards the platforms and products where the audience themselves are shifting and, by doing that, to secure CNN's future as one of the world's greatest news organizations."

Starbucks is planning layoffs in March.

Global coffee chain Starbucks announced it is planning layoffs in March.

In a memo to staff on January 21, Brian Nicoll, the company's chairman and CEO, said: "We need to meaningfully change how our support teams are organized and how we work," and as part of that, "we will have job eliminations and smaller support teams moving forward."

Nicoll said the changes would be communicated to staff by early March.

Stripe is laying off 300 employees.

Payments platform Stripe is cutting 300 employees, primarily in product, engineering, and operations, according to a January 20 memo obtained by BI.

Chief People Officer Rob McIntosh said in the memo that the company still planned on growing its head count to about 10,000 employees by the end of the year.

BP slashing 7,700 staff and contractor positions worldwide.

BP told Business Insider it plans to cut 4,700 staff and 3,000 contractors, amounting to about 5% of its global workforce.

The cuts are part of a program to "simplify and focus" BP that began last year.

"We are strengthening our competitiveness and building in resilience as we lower our costs, drive performance improvement and play to our distinctive capabilities," the company said.

Meta is cutting 5% of its workforce.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently told staff he "decided to raise the bar on performance management" and will act quickly to "move out low-performers," according to an internal memo seen by BI.

In a post on the company's internal communications platform, he said Meta will make "more extensive performance-based cuts" in this year's performance review cycle. Impacted US employees will be notified on February 10, he wrote.

The company has laid off more than 21,000 workers since 2022.

BlackRock is cutting 1% of its workforce.

BlackRock told employees it was planning to cut about 200 people of its 21,000-strong workforce, according to Bloomberg.

The reductions are more than offset by some 3,750 workers who were added last year and another 2,000 expected to be added in 2025.

BlackRock's president, Rob Kapito, and its chief operating officer, Rob Goldstein, said the cuts would help realign the firm's resources with its strategy, Bloomberg reported.

Bridgewater has cut about 90 staff.

Bridgewater Associates cut 7% of its staff in January in an effort to stay lean, a person familiar with the matter told Business Insider.

The layoffs at the world's largest hedge fund bring its head count back to where it was in 2023, the person said.

The company's founder, Ray Dalio, said in a 2019 interview that about 30% of new employees were leaving the firm within 18 months.

The Washington Post is cutting 4% of its non-newsroom workforce.

The Washington Post is eliminating less than 100 employees in an effort to cut costs, Reuters reported in January.

A spokesperson told the wire service that the changes would occur across multiple areas of the business and indicated that the cuts wouldn't affect the newsroom.

"The Washington Post is continuing its transformation to meet the needs of the industry, build a more sustainable future and reach audiences where they are," the spokesperson said, according to Reuters.

Microsoft is planning an unspecified number of cuts.

Microsoft is planning job cuts soon, and the company is taking a harder look at underperforming employees as part of the reductions, according to two people familiar with the plans.

A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed cuts but declined to share details on the number of employees being let go.

"At Microsoft we focus on high performance talent," the spokesperson said. "We are always working on helping people learn and grow. When people are not performing, we take the appropriate action."

Ally is cutting less than 5% of workers.

The digital-financial-services company Ally is laying off roughly 500 of its 11,000 employees, a spokesperson confirmed to BI.

"As we continue to right-size our company, we made the difficult decision to selectively reduce our workforce in some areas, while continuing to hire in our other areas of our business," the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson also said the company was offering severance, out-placement support, and the opportunity to apply for openings at Ally.

Ally made a similar level of cuts in October 2023, the Charlotte Observer reported.

Adidas plans to cut up to 500 jobs in Germany.

Adidas intends to reduce the size of its workforce at its headquarters in Herzogenaurach, Germany, impacting up to 500 jobs, CNBC reported.

If fully executed, it amounts to a reduction of nearly 9% at the company headquarters, which employs about 5,800 employees, according to the Adidas website.

The news comes shortly after the company announced it had outperformed its profit expectations at the end of 2024, touting "better-than-expected" results in the fourth quarter.

"Strong growth across all regions and divisions proves the good job our teams are doing across regions and functions," CEO Bjørn Gulden said in a press release. "So although we are not yet where we want to be long term, I am very happy with this development which was much better than we had expected."

In a statement to BI, an Adidas spokesperson said the company had grown "too complex because of our current operating model."

"To set adidas up for long-term success," the spokesperson said, "we are now starting to look at how we align our operating model with the reality of how we work. This may have an impact on the organizational structure and number of roles based at our HQ in Herzogenaurach."

The company said it is not a cost-cutting measure and that it could not confirm concrete numbers.

Is your company conducting layoffs? Got a tip?

If you're an employee with a tip about coming job cuts, please contact Dominick via email or text/call/Signal at 646.768.4750. Responses will be kept confidential, and Business Insider strongly recommends using a personal email and a non-work device when reaching out.

• Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI will likely play out in 2025.
• Musk says OpenAI has lost sight of its mission to develop AI safety, prioritizing profits instead.
• Here's what you need to know about a battle that could impact the future of artificial intelligence.

Two of the most powerful forces in the AI industry are set to collide this year: xAI's Elon Musk and OpenAI's Sam Altman.

Musk was one of 11 cofounders, including Altman and President Greg Brockman, who established OpenAI as a nonprofit in 2015 with the mission to "advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return."

Musk left in 2018 — a year before OpenAI added a for-profit arm — citing a conflict of interest with his work at Tesla, though his lawyers say that he contributed to the company until mid-2020.

Since then, he's become a vocal skeptic of OpenAI's commitment to prioritizing transparency and safety over profit.

The feud between the founders escalated in August when Musk filed a lawsuit against Altman, OpenAI, and Microsoft, the company's biggest investor. Musk accused them of deception, prioritizing profits despite its stated mission.

That lawsuit will likely play out this year — a major battle that could impact the future of artificial intelligence. Here's what to expect.

Musk's legal challenges against OpenAI

Musk first filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in a California state court in February 2024, accusing OpenAI of violating its nonprofit mission by partnering with Microsoft. Musk withdrew that suit in June.

He filed a new lawsuit in August 2024, this time in a federal court, accusing OpenAI of a bait-and-switch deception that violates RICO laws — anti-racketeering laws first designed to target organized crime families.

Musk's lawyers say in the lawsuit that Musk "lent his name to the venture, invested significant time and millions of dollars in seed capital, and recruited top AI scientists for the company," all with the understanding that OpenAI would remain a nonprofit and prioritize developing the technology safely.

Musk's lawyers say OpenAI "betrayed" its mission when it added a for-profit arm in 2019 and deepened its partnership with Microsoft in 2023.

"Musk and the nonprofit's namesake objective were betrayed by Altman and his accomplices," the lawsuit reads. "The perfidy and deceit are of Shakespearean proportions."

In mid-November, Musk's lawyers expanded their complaint to include accusations that OpenAI and Microsoft violated antitrust laws by asking the company's investors not to back competitors in the generative AI space, like Musk's own xAI, which he launched in 2023.

In his latest move, Musk — also in November — asked a federal judge to stop OpenAI from converting into a fully for-profit corporate entity.

OpenAI has denied the claims. A representative for the company directed Business Insider to a post it published on December 13 responding to Musk's allegations.

"Now that OpenAI is the leading AI research lab and Elon runs a competing AI company, he's asking the court to stop us from effectively pursuing our mission," OpenAI wrote. "You can't sue your way to AGI. We have great respect for Elon's accomplishments and gratitude for his early contributions to OpenAI, but he should be competing in the marketplace rather than the courtroom."

Resolving the lawsuit could take months or even years. US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who is overseeing the case in the San Francisco federal court, hasn't yet set a trial date.

Rogers will begin hearing arguments on January 14 on whether she should issue the preliminary injunction to prevent OpenAI from converting into a nonprofit until the rest of the case is resolved.

In weighing whether to issue the injunction, Rogers is supposed to consider the "likelihood of success" that Musk will win the case. Her decision would strongly indicate how the rest of the case might play out.

Why OpenAI's corporate structure matters

In a blog entry posted to its website on December 27, OpenAI explained why it needed to evolve its corporate structure.

The company said it wants to transition its for-profit arm into a Delaware Public Benefit Corporation⁠ — which, unlike a traditional company, prioritizes social good alongside profit — to prepare for a more capital-intensive future.

OpenAI said the structural change would enable it to "raise the necessary capital" to pursue its mission of developing artificial general intelligence and to give it more leeway to consider the interests of its backers.

The company said it would still run a nonprofit on the side focused more narrowly on charitable initiatives in healthcare, education, and science.

Rose Chan Loui, a nonprofit legal expert at UCLA, said OpenAI's current nonprofit status grants it significant control over technological development.

"What we lose in this conversion is a nonprofit with the unique ability to control AI development activities — to be a watchdog from the inside, making sure that AI is being developed safely and for the benefit of humanity. From that perspective, it seems to me that the nonprofit's current control position is priceless," she wrote to Business Insider in an email.

If the conversion to a for-profit public benefit corporation goes through, OpenAI would need to ensure that the nonprofit retains assets worth as much as what it's giving up, including a significant premium for its control. That could be in the form of cash or stock that it can sell for cash.

Still, "what seems to be envisioned is a grant-making foundation that can do good but will have a very reduced, if any, impact on the development of AI," Chan Loui said.

Former employees have also raised concerns that the nonprofit would have a reduced role in public safety.

Miles Brundage, OpenAI's former head of AGI Readiness, who left in October, responded to OpenAI's December post, saying on X that "a well-capitalized nonprofit on the side is no substitute for PBC product decisions (e.g. on pricing + safety mitigations) being aligned to the original nonprofit's mission."

He added that much of OpenAI's rationale for conversion makes sense. However, there are still "red flags," including a lack of details about its new governance structure and guardrails around the technology.

Other individuals and organizations have filed amicus briefs to the federal court where Musk filed his suit. These briefs are meant to inform the court and help it make a decision.

Kathleen Jennings, the attorney general for Delaware, where OpenAI is incorporated, filed one last week. She detailed her role in protecting the public interest if OpenAI becomes a for-profit public benefit corporation.

Chan Loui said Jennings's brief is a hopeful sign that, no matter what happens, public interest will ultimately win.

"It is encouraging that the Delaware AG has stated her commitment to protecting the public interest, including seeking an injunction if she determines that the conversion is inconsistent with OpenAI's mission and its obligations to the public, that OpenAI's board members are not fulfilling their fiduciary duties, or if the value of the conversion or the process for arriving at it is not 'entirely fair.'"

Lawyers for Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• Tweens, teens, and college-aged kids showed off their Christmas hauls in TikTok videos.
• Casey Lewis, who writes about young consumers, watched about 1,000 haul videos, she told BI.
• Here are the top items that Gen Z kids bragged about getting for Christmas.

It was a very merry Christmas for some Gen Zers who took to social media to show off everything they unwrapped.

Casey Lewis, who writes the youth insights newsletter After School, analyzed Christmas haul TikTok videos from tweens, teens, and college-age consumers and compiled a list that she shared on her own TikTok.

"This is the third year I've done this sort of thing with the Christmas hauls, and I tried to refine my system just so that I'm able to actually crunch the data a little bit more scientifically," Lewis told Business Insider.

She said she watched hundreds of videos at double the speed to tally the standout gift items.

"I think conservatively, at least a thousand [videos]," Lewis said. "I was trying to discreetly binge Christmas haul TikToks while also spending time with my family."

From luxury clothing to throwback tech, these were the top gifts that the younger generation showed off in their Christmas hauls.

Digital cameras

"I think the thing that surprised me the most was how popular digital cameras were," Lewis said, noting that Gen Z has an affinity for Y2K nostalgia. "Everyone got digital cameras. It was also really interesting to see some of them got really expensive Sony ones, but then now Amazon makes those digital cameras that come in cute colors."

A basic Sony digital camera might run at around $750, but Lewis said she saw people showing off cheaper options from Amazon and Urban Outfitters for less than $100.

"They've sort of caught onto this trend, but then you kind of wonder how long is that going to last?" Lewis said.

UGG boots

UGG remained a hot item this year with the Ultra Mini boots and Classic Mini boots, which cost $150 to $160, reigning supreme.

"This year, it was the Minis, and last year, it was the Minis but also the Platforms," Lewis said. "Every year, they're just able to continue to be such a thing."

While she was going through the videos during the holidays at her childhood home, Lewis, who is 37, said she was surrounded by relics from her own childhood, like her own pair of UGG boots.

"Uggs and digital cameras — has anything changed? Am I still just a 16-year-old?" she said.

Rhode skin and beauty products

Lewis also said it was "staggering" how popular Rhode, Hailey Bieber's beauty brand, had become.

"Everyone got the lip peptide treatment," Lewis said. "It's such a popular skincare brand."

Rhode's peptide lip tint retails for $18.

"We know that celebrity brands are so fickle," Lewis said, "but it almost feels like this may have successfully reached the point where it's bigger than her and will thrive independently."

Sol de Janeiro products

Another popular beauty brand was Sol de Janeiro, which makes body and hair care as well as fragrances.

Gen Z kids showed off their "Cheirosa '62" perfume mist, which Lewis said was a big hit this year.

A full-size, 240 ml bottle retails for $38.

Jellycats

Tweens and teens went crazy over Jellycats, small plush toys that retail for $30 to $50.

"Jellycats were mentioned on every wish list, and they were very popular in hauls," Lewis said.

Lewis saw many Jellycats in haul videos but not as many as she expected, prompting her to question whether the kidult purchasing trend is declining.

"Are parents tired of buying their kids, their almost grown kids, stuffed animals? I don't know," Lewis said. "It feels very similar to Beanie Babies where it was a craze, but it wasn't able to sustain because no craze is."

White Fox apparel

Luxury loungewear remained popular this holiday season.

The $50 sweatpants from White Fox, which is headquartered in Australia, were "very popular" in haul videos, Lewis said.

"Athleisure had such a moment coming out of COVID, but young people are still very much prioritizing comfort clothes," Lewis said, noting that brands like Lululemon were also popular. "Teen and college-age girls, so many of them just wear sweat sets."

Roller Rabbit pajamas

Roller Rabbit pajamas were a popular gift pick as well, according to Lewis' analysis.

Available in dozens of different brightly colored patterns as well as in short- and long-sleeve options, the pajamas retail from $138 to $158.

Lewis noted the pajamas convey a sense of status.

Shark hair tools

Whereas last year saw a craze for Dyson hair tools, this year was all about Shark tools.

"I don't think I could have been trusted when I was a teen with an expensive hair tool," Lewis said. "I just don't think I could have taken care of it and not accidentally broken it."

While the classic set of Dyson hair tools retails for $600, the Shark set is comparatively more affordable at $300.

Vanity desk and mirror

While not a name-brand item, many tweens, teens, and college-age girls said in their Christmas haul TikToks that they got a vanity desk or a vanity mirror to put on their desk.

Vanity mirrors often come with lighting that is optimal to use while applying makeup. Depending on the brand, a desk with a vanity mirror might cost about $1,000.

Dae hair styling cream

A styling product from the brand Dae was a popular stocking stuffer, Lewis said.

The styling cream comes with a small wand that's helpful for doing a slick back hairstyle.

A 0.6 oz tube retails for $18.

Adidas Campus shoes

Adidas also continued its reign of popularity.

The Campus 00s, which retail for $110, were the go-to pick, Lewis said.

In previous years, Adidas Gazelles and Sambas were the choice picks.

Alani Nu energy drink

Alani Nu energy drinks were a popular, small-dollar item. Lewis referred to it as the "cool girl energy drink" in her TikTok analysis.

A 12-pack retails for $30.

"What's fascinating about that is it is a very accessible energy drink, but it's also very aesthetic," Lewis told BI. "The energy drink that appeared in so many Christmas hauls this year was nowhere to be found in Christmas hauls last year. So that's a little bit about how quickly some of this stuff changes."

Touchland hand sanitizer

Touchland hand sanitizers were another popular stocking stuffer, Lewis said in her analysis.

"$10 for a tiny hand sanitizer is kind of crazy," she told BI.

But for a 30ml hand sanitizer, it still carries some clout, she said.

"These more affordable, or at least accessible, items that have a little bit of status associated, a little bit of clout," Lewis said. "You don't need to have the Louis Vuitton, or you don't need to even have the Sony camera."

LoveShackFancy Perfume

LoveShackFancy's perfume in the scent "Forever In Love" was a hot gift, Lewis said.

A 2.5 oz bottle retails $125.

Other popular perfume runner-ups were Billie Eilish's "Eilish Eau de Parfum," which retails for $72 for a 3.4 oz bottle, and Glossier's "You," which costs $112 for a 100 ml bottle.

ONE/SIZE setting spray

Wrapping up the list was waterproof setting spray from ONE/SIZE by Patrick Starrr.

A 3.4 oz can of the mattifying spray retails for $32, adding to the subset of more affordable items that Lewis noted.

"There were not a lot of, I don't know, designer sunglasses. I did see a couple of designer purses," Lewis said. "It's not like there's one emerging or one dominant luxury item that everyone is feeling like they need to have."

• Ron Shaich uses 'premortems' to motivate a meaningful life and guide his work.
• Shaich, Panera's founder, sold the chain for $7.5 billion in 2017.
• His investment fund, Act III, backs brands like Cava and Tatte Bakery.

Panera's former CEO, Ron Shaich, isn't afraid of death — he's inspired by it.

Over the years he's realized that the time to review whether or not your life was meaningful was "not in the ninth inning with two outs," he told the Wall Street Journal, referring to the final phase of a baseball game. "It was in the seventh inning, the fifth inning, and third inning."

During the final week of every year, he conducts what he calls a "premortem:" a ritual that helps him reframe death as motivation to live a more meaningful life. "I ask myself: What am I going to do now to ensure that when I reach that ultimate destination, I've done what I need to do?" he wrote in his 2023 book, "Know What Matters."

He starts by envisioning all the key areas in his life.

"I'd pull out a yellow legal pad and I'd start to divide that yellow legal pad into the areas of my life that I cared about," Shaich once told Business Insider. "And to me, that's my relationship with my body and my health, my core relationships — my wife, my family, my kids — my relationship with my work, what I wanted out of my work, and what gave me joy, and then my relationship with my own spirituality. And then based on that, I literally would say, 'What is it I want to have accomplished in each of these spheres of my life?'"

Shaich, who reached billionaire status this past July, has built a career off some of the most successful food chains in the country. He launched Panera in 1999 and sold it in 2017 to the European investment fund, JAB, for $7.5 billion.

Through his over billion-dollar fund, Act III, he's invested in chains like Mediterranean fast-casual brand Cava, Tatte bakery, and organic cafe Life Alive.

He told the Journal that his philosophy of life and death also guides his work. He asks his companies to conduct premortems, envisioning goals for the coming three to five years and planning the path to achieve them.

"It's been the key to all of our successes," he said.

• Larry Ellison, the 80-year-old cofounder of Oracle, is one of the most interesting men in tech.
• Whether yacht racing, buying Hawaiian islands, or trash-talking competitors, he keeps it lively.
• Now, he's one of the world's richest people with a net worth of about $190 billion.

Larry Ellison is the founder and chief technology officer at software company Oracle. Now, he's also the world's fourth-richest man and has a net worth of $190 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

The billionaire's fortunes have surged by over $67 billion this year, thanks to spiking demand for generative AI. The windfall puts him ahead of tech execs like Google cofounder Sergey Brin and former Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer. 

The 80-year-old started Oracle in 1977, and decades later he's still one of the top dogs in Silicon Valley despite living in Hawaii full time — and owning an entire island. Ellison has also been a major investor in Tesla, Salesforce, and even reportedly had a seat on Apple's board of directors for a while.

Outside the office, the billionaire boasts an impressive watch collection and indulges in hobbies like yacht racing. His children have made their own names in the film industry, and his son David Ellison is set to become the CEO of Paramount after its merger with his Skydance Media production company. Through some of Larry's entities, he will control Paramount, per a September filing.

Here's a look at the life and career of Ellison so far.

Lawrence Joseph Ellison was born in the Bronx on August 17, 1944, the son of a single mother named Florence Spellman.

When he was 9 months old, Larry came down with pneumonia, Vanity Fair reported. His mom sent him to Chicago to live with his aunt and uncle, Lillian and Louis Ellison.

Vanity Fair reported that Louis, his adoptive father, was a Russian immigrant who took the name "Ellison" in tribute to the place in which he entered the US: Ellis Island.

Ellison is a college dropout.

Ellison went to high school in Chicago's South Side before attending the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. When his adoptive mother died during his second year at college, Ellison dropped out. He tried college again later at the University of Chicago but dropped out again after only one semester, Vanity Fair reported.

In 1966, a 22-year-old Ellison moved to Berkeley, California — near what would become Silicon Valley and already the place where the tech industry was taking off.

He made the trip from Chicago to California in a flashy turquoise Thunderbird that he thought would make an impression in his new life, Vanity Fair reported.

Ellison bounced around from job to job, including stints at companies like Wells Fargo and the mainframe manufacturer Amdahl. Along the way, he learned computer and programming skills.

In 1977, Ellison and partners Bob Miner and Ed Oates founded a new company, Software Development Laboratories.

The company started with $2,000 of funding.

Ellison and company were inspired by IBM computer scientist Edgar F. Codd's theories for a so-called relational database — a way for computer systems to store and access information, Britannican said. Nowadays, they're taken for granted, but in the '70s, they were a revolutionary idea.

The first version of the Oracle database was version 2 — there was no version 1.

In 1979, the company renamed itself Relational Software Inc., and in 1982, it formally became Oracle Systems Corp., after its flagship product.

In 1986, Oracle had its initial public offering, reporting revenue of $55 million.

As one of the key drivers of the growing computer industry, Oracle grew fast. The company is responsible for providing the databases in which businesses track information that is crucial to their operations.

Ellison became a billionaire at age 49. Now, he has a net worth of roughly $152 billion, according to Forbes, after racking up $50 billion in gains thanks to Oracle and Tesla stock. That makes him the seventh-richest person in the world.

Still, in 1990, Oracle had to lay off 10% of its workforce, about 400 people, because of what Ellison later described as "an incredible business mistake."

Oracle reported a loss of $36 million in September 1990 after admitting that it had miscalculated its revenue earlier that year, The New York Times reported.

It didn't get the decade off to a great start. After adjusting for that error, Oracle was said to be close to bankruptcy. At the same time, rivals like Sybase were eating away at Oracle's market share.

It took a few years, but by 1992, Ellison and Oracle managed to right the course with new employees and the popular Oracle7 database.

Ellison is known for his willingness to trash-talk competitors.

For much of the '90s, he and Oracle were locked in a public-relations battle with the competitor Informix, which went so far as to place a "Dinosaur Crossing" billboard outside Oracle's Silicon Valley offices at one point, Fortune reported in 1997.

His financial success has led to some expensive hobbies.

With Ellison as Oracle's major shareholder, his millions kept rolling in. He started to indulge in some expensive hobbies — including yacht racing. That's Ellison at the helm during a 1995 race.

He also partly financed the BMW Oracle USA sailing team, which won the America's Cup in 2010, according to Bloomberg.

Ellison was an early investor in Salesforce.

In 1999, Ellison's protégé, Marc Benioff, left Oracle to work on a new startup called Salesforce.com. Ellison was an early investor, putting $2 million into his friend's new venture.

When Benioff found out that Ellison had Oracle working on a direct competitor to Salesforce's product, he tried to force his mentor to quit Salesforce's board. Instead, Ellison forced Benioff to fire him — meaning Ellison kept his shares in Salesforce.

Given that Salesforce is now a $267 billion company, Ellison personally profits even when his competitors do well. It has led to a love-hate relationship between the two executives that continues to this day, with the two taking shots at each other in the press.

The dot-com boom of the late '90s benefited Oracle.

All of those new dot-com companies needed databases, and Oracle was there to sell them. Although investors lost out in the dot-com crash, Oracle came out of it stronger due to its acquisitions and the demand for software solutions.

With the coffers overflowing, Ellison was able to lead Oracle through a spending spree once the dot-com boom was over and prices were low.

In 2005, for example, Oracle snapped up the HR software provider PeopleSoft for $10.3 billion.

And in 2010, Oracle completed its acquisition of Sun Microsystems, a server company that started at about the same time as Oracle, in 1982. That acquisition gave Oracle lots of key technology, including control over the popular MySQL database.

Ellison has also spent lavishly over the years, so much so that his accountant, Philip Simon, once asked him to "budget and plan," according to Bloomberg.

Ellison has expensive taste. Over the years he's built up an impressive collection of Richard Mille watches, an expert previously told BI. The timepieces start in the six-figure range and can go for over $1 million in some cases.

In 2009, the billionaire purchased the Indian Wells tennis tournament for a reported $100 million, The Los Angeles Times reported.

In 2010, Ellison signed the Giving Pledge.

By signing the pledge, Ellison promised to donate 95% of his fortune before he dies. And in May 2016, Ellison donated $200 million to a cancer treatment center at the University of Southern California, Forbes reported.

Starting in the 2010s, Ellison started to take more of a back seat at Oracle, handing more responsibilities to trusted lieutenants, like Mark Hurd and Safra Catz, then Oracle's copresidents.

Ellison hired Hurd, a former CEO of HP, in 2010, Inc reported. Catz has made a reputation for herself among analysts for what they describe as brilliant business strategy.

But Ellison's spending didn't slow down. In 2012, he bought 98% of the Hawaiian island of Lanai.

Ellison founded a startup called Sensei in 2016 that does hydroponic farming and owns a wellness retreat on Lanai.

He also purchased Hawaiian budget airline Island Air in 2014, before selling a controlling interest in the airline two years later after it struggled financially.

In 2014, Ellison officially stepped down as Oracle CEO.

Ellison handed control over to Hurd and Catz, who became co-CEOs. Ellison now serves as the company's chairman and chief technology officer. Following Hurd's death in 2019, Catz became the sole CEO.

In 2016, Ellison scored a personal coup: the purchase of NetSuite.

Back in 1998, Ellison had made a $125 million investment in ex-Oracle exec Evan Goldberg's startup business-management software firm, NetSuite. It ended up working out well for Ellison when NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson negotiated the sale of the company to Oracle for $9.3 billion, netting Ellison a cool $3.5 billion in cash for his stake.

NetSuite investor T. Rowe Price tried to block the deal, citing Ellison's conflict of interest, but the sale closed in November 2016.

He's used his billions in a variety of ways: he invested in educational platform maker Leapfrog Enterprises and was an early investor in the ill-fated blood-testing company Theranos.

Ellison has held shares in some of the most recognizable companies, one of which was the infamous blood-testing company Theranos, founded by Elizabeth Holmes. It had a promising future until its flaws were exposed and Holmes received a prison sentence.

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple as CEO back in 1997, he asked Ellison to sit on the board. Ellison served for a while, but felt that he couldn't devote the time and left in 2002, according to Forbes. Compensation for his role was an option to buy about 70,000 shares, which would've amounted to about $1 million at the time of his departure.

Ellison owns homes on the East and West coasts as part of a multibillion-dollar real-estate portfolio.

Ellison reportedly owns the Astor Beechwood Mansion in Newport, Rhode Island, and a home in Malibu. Ellison also has houses in Palm Beach, Florida and more in a multibillion-dollar real-estate portfolio.

Both of his two children work in the film industry.

His daughter, Megan, is an Oscar-nominated film producer and the founder of Annapurna Pictures. The company has produced films like "Zero Dark Thirty" and "American Hustle."

Ellison's son, David, is also in the film business. His company, Skydance Media, has produced movies like "Terminator: Dark Fate" and films in the "Mission: Impossible" franchise.

After months of discussions in 2024, Skydance Media and Paramount agreed to a deal, creating "New Paramount," which David will be CEO of. He has plans to "improve profitability, foster stability and independence for creators, and enable more investment in faster growing digital platforms," the companies said.

Ellison was one of the few tech leaders who had a friendly relationship with former President Donald Trump.

Ellison said publicly that he supported Trump and wants him to do well, and hosted a Trump fundraiser at his Rancho Mirage home in February, though he did not attend, Forbes reported. The fundraiser caused an outcry among Oracle employees, who started a petition asking senior Oracle leadership to stand up to Ellison.

Catz, the CEO of Oracle, also had close ties to the Trump administration, having served on Trump's transition team. 

Ellison and Trump remained close during Trump's time in office and reportedly spoke on the phone about possible coronavirus treatments. Trump also supported Oracle's bid to buy TikTok, calling Oracle a "great company."

In December 2018, Ellison joined the board of directors at Tesla, where he's been a major investor.

Earlier in 2018, Ellison described Tesla CEO Elon Musk as a "close friend," and defended him from critics. When Musk acquired Twitter — now X — in 2022, Ellison offered to invest $1 billion.

Musk went on to help Ellison reset his forgotten password, biographer Walter Isaacson wrote.

In December 2020, Ellison revealed that he moved to Lanai full-time.

The announcement came after Oracle decided to move its headquarters to Austin, leading Oracle employees to ask Ellison if he planned to move to Texas too.

"The answer is no," Ellison wrote in a company-wide email. "I've moved to the state of Hawaii and I'll be using the power of Zoom to work from the island of Lanai."

He signed the email: "Mahalo, Larry."

He left Tesla's board in August 2022.

In a proxy filing in June 2022, the electric vehicle maker revealed that Ellison would be leaving the board. Since then, he and Musk have appeared to maintain their close relationship.

Oracle had a record-breaking 2023, and cemented itself in the new age of artificial intelligence.

Oracle's shares continued to hit records, CNBC reported. The company proved that it's not going any where any time soon.

In 2023, Oracle backed OpenAI rival Cohere.

Oracle joined other tech giants, like Salesforce, in backing the tech startup in June 2023. It began offering generative AI to its clients based on tech made by Cohere.

"Cohere and Oracle are working together to make it very, very easy for enterprise customers to train their own specialized large language models while protecting the privacy of their training data," Ellison previously said.

Oracle announced in April that it would be moving its headquarters to Nashville, Tennessee.

Despite its big move to Austin only four years ago, Ellison said that Oracle is planning to move its world headquarters to Nashville, Tennessee.

In April 2024, the exec announced that Oracle has plans for a "huge campus" in Nashville that will one day serve as the software giant's world headquarters. The company relocated from the San Francisco area to Austin, Texas in 2020.

"It's the center of the industry we're most concerned about, which is the healthcare industry," Ellison said at the Oracle Health Summit in Nashville, CNBC reported.

Ellison's wealth jumped $14 billion after record earnings from Oracle.

Oracle's cloud applications business saw its shares spike by 13% in June 2024 after the company posted strong annual earnings due to demand for generative AI, Fortune reported. Ellison, who now serves as Oracle's CTO and owns about 40% of the company's cloud sector, got a $14 billion boost to his fortune.

The company also announced a partnership with AI startup Cohere, enabling its enterprise customers to build their own generative AI apps. "Cohere and Oracle are working together to make it very, very easy for enterprise customers to train their own specialized large language models while protecting the privacy of their training data," Ellison said during the company's earnings call.

Ellison to control Paramount as its majority shareholder

Ellison is set to become the controlling shareholder of Paramount following its merger with Skydance Media, a company founded by his son, David Ellison.

Pinnacle Media, Larry Ellison's investment firm, will acquire 77.5% of the voting interest currently held by Shari Redstone, according to a filing with the Federal Communications Commission. This move effectively transfers control of Paramount from Redstone to Ellison.

While David Ellison has been named Paramount's new CEO and may retain some autonomy in the role, the FCC filing reveals that his father will hold ultimate authority as the primary shareholder and will likely retain significant decision-making power, Brian Quinn, a Boston College Law School professor, told the New York Times.

The deal, valued at $8 billion, includes major assets like CBS and MTV. RedBird Capital Partners, a private-equity firm backing Skydance, will acquire some voting rights, but Larry Ellison will retain the largest stake. He plays a sizable role in the entertainment industry, including cameos in movies such as "Iron Man 2" and through the financial backing of his children's ventures, including his daughter Megan Ellison's Annapurna Pictures. 

Matt Weinberger and Taylor Nicole Rogers contributed to an earlier version of this story.

Correction: May 7, 2024 — An earlier version of this story misstated Larry Ellison's role at Oracle. He's the chief technology officer, not the CEO.

Ellison has a reputation as an international, jet-setting playboy.

Ellison has been divorced four times. The 80-year-old billionaire is now reportedly remarried to a 33-year-old named Keren Zhu, The Wall Street Journal reported in December.

 

Ellison gave a donation to the University of Michigan's football team and helped secure the top high school quarterback in the country

The University of Michigan football team flipped Bryce Underwood, the top high school quarterback in the country, from Louisiana State, thanks to a donation and support from Ellison, according to WSJ. While Ellison had no previously known connection to the school, his wife Zhu is an alum. Both Ellison and Zhu showed up in a Zoom call with Underwood and Michigan football's general manager to help recruit him, the report said. 

Oracle shares are up 60% year-to-date, increasing Ellison's net worth by $67.3 billion

Despite an 8% decline in Oracle's stock this month following a weaker-than-expected earnings report, the company's shares are still at some of their highest levels since the 1990s, boosted by cloud partnerships with Google, OpenAI, and Meta.

Ellison's net worth has increased by $67.3 billion this year, bringing his net worth to about $190 billion as of Monday, according to Bloomberg's Billionaires Index.

• 2024 was a big year for artificial intelligence. 2025 could be even bigger.
• Business Insider spoke to over a dozen key figures in the industry about AI's future.
• Here's what they had to say.

If 2024 is the year companies started adopting AI, then 2025 could be the year they start tailoring it to fit their needs.

Some say AI will become so integrated into our lives we won't even notice it's there.

"Like the internet or electricity, AI will become an invisible driver of outcomes, not a selling point," Tom Biegala, cofounder of Bison Ventures, a venture firm focused on frontier technology, told Business Insider by email.

And as companies incorporate the technology into their businesses, they'll likely need to focus more on managing it responsibly.

"In 2025 we expect more enterprise companies will recognize that investing in AI governance is just as important as adopting AI itself," Navrina Singh, founder of Credo AI, an AI governance platform, said.

Business Insider spoke with 13 key figures in tech — from startup founders to investors — for their best guesses on what to expect from AI in 2025.

Investment will continue to soar.

"The AI hype cycle may stabilize, but AI investments will soar," Immad Akhund, the CEO of Mercury, which offers banking services to startups, told BI by email.

He believes the sustained interest in AI comes as companies move from experimenting to using it in real-world areas like customer service, sales, and finance.

"Companies will use AI to boost productivity — especially in back-office tasks and document management — helping small teams scale quickly and operate more efficiently," he said.

Under the Trump Administration, the new leadership at the Federal Trade Commission might foster a more favorable climate for mergers, acquisitions, and IPOs in the AI industry.

"I expect M&A to increase by at least 35% next year," Tomasz Tunguz, founder of Theory Ventures, a venture capital firm, told BI. "The top 10 most active acquirers in the software world are falling off a cliff in terms of activity, which requires meaningfully the IPO market to roar open with a combination of AI and other software companies."

The competition will get fierce.

Don't be surprised if a leading company takes a hit because of AI.

"At least one major, globally recognized company will fail or significantly downsize due to an inability to compete with one or more AI-native startups. Rapid innovation cycles and the horizontal application of AI will render slow movers obsolete," Stefan Weitz, CEO and cofounder of HumanX, a leading AI conference, told BI.

He believes the tech's threat will extend to the global stage, requiring major powers to regulate AI to maintain their competitive edge.

"As we are already seeing with the US and China regulating or blocking core AI technologies, nations or corporations will experience major geopolitical conflicts over AI algorithms and data, with some countries banning or nationalizing key AI technologies to maintain control over economic and political power," he wrote.

That said, the United States and China are already working together to mitigate the existential threat AI poses to humanity. In November, at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit, President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping agreed that humans, not AI, should make decisions regarding the use of nuclear technology.

The lines between humans and AI will not be obvious.

The idea of humans and autonomous agents working together might soon move beyond the realm of science fiction. That means we'll also need to start drafting rules to govern these interactions.

"Synthetic virtual people indistinguishable from real humans will enter the workforce, even if in limited ways, leading to debates about employment rights and creating a push for 'AI citizenship' to define their societal roles and limitations," Weitz said.

Some predict that the distinction between human-created and AI-generated content will also become increasingly unclear.

"Generative media will hit the mainstream in a big way and will be as much talked about as LLMs in 2024," Steve Jang, founder and managing partner of Kindred Ventures, an early-stage venture firm, told BI. "Generative audio and images are getting better due to more advanced models, and we'll start to see adoption spike across both consumer and enterprise."

Specialization. Specialization. Specialization.

Business leaders told BI that next year will be about custom-fitting AI technology to suit specific needs.

"In 2025, the AI hype cycle will give way to the rise of domain-specific, specialized AI and robotics," Biegala said. "Products will be faster and more efficient while delivering immediate, tangible value compared to general-purpose solutions. This shift will mark the beginning of real, transformative economic impact of AI."

The focus on customization also extends to how we search for information online, with chatbots replacing search engines like Google.

"In 2025, search will no longer be synonymous with a single brand; instead, users will turn to multiple platforms for specific types of queries. Some may rely on AI-powered chatbots for conversational answers, others on domain-specific engines for technical or industry-specific expertise, and still others on visual or voice-based tools for multimedia queries," Dominik Mazur, CEO and cofounder of IAsk, an AI search engine, told BI. "This diversification will create a competitive environment where specialized players and niche solutions coexist with larger generalist platforms, leading to greater innovation and choice for users."

Over the past year, AI leaders have been promoting the value of smaller AI models that can address a company's specific needs better than large-scale foundation models. "There's a lot of pressure on making smaller, more efficient models, smarter via data and algorithms, methods, rather than just scaling up due to market forces," Aidan Gomez, the founder and CEO of Cohere, an enterprise AI startup, previously told BI.

The pressure is rising as the value of building models simply based on computing power decreases.

"The days of using a GPU to brute force compute to build models and applications will be in the rearview mirror," Biegala said.

Companies may also use customizable AI tools more, possibly replacing software-as-a-service applications.

"AI tools are tearing down the moat of SaaS applications as tools that can only be bought vs built, prompting enterprises — from Amazon to ambitious startups — to replace expensive SaaS apps that don't quite totally fit the need with lightweight custom-fit solutions integrated into your stack," David Hsu, founder of Retool, a low code platform for developers, told BI.

Regulation takes priority.

With more responsibility comes more risk. Companies are going to start getting serious about regulation.

"I expect to see more voluntary commitments and actions to responsible AI. I think there will be a push to establish guardrails similar to what happened for frontier models, now discussed for AI agents and autonomous AI," Singh said. "Also, I do see a world where we will see the first penalties for noncompliance with AI-specific laws, which will set a global precedent, forcing businesses to prioritize governance or face steep consequences."

Singh, along with others like AI godfather Geoffrey Hinton and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, have expressed interest in an international body to govern the use of AI. We may "even see Global AI standards emerge, led by coalitions of nations and enterprises to set the baseline for safety, transparency, and accountability in AI systems," she said.

The value of regulation will be paramount next year amid the growing threat of large-scale AI-driven cybersecurity threats.

"AI deepfake technologies will make generating fake identities and documents trivially easy, creating a trust crisis for businesses," Pat Kinsel, the CEO of Proof, a software platform for notarization, told BI. "The ability to distinguish between real and fraudulent identities and secure digital interactions in the AI age will be the key differentiator between resilient businesses and those at risk of costly fraud."

Search advertising will get conversational.

It's typically easy to distinguish sponsored content from relevant search findings in an online search. This year, though, sponsored content may blend seamlessly into chatbot answers.

"Generative AI will disrupt the traditional search advertising model by integrating relevant sponsored content directly into synthesized responses," IAsk's Mazur told BI. "This shift toward context-aware, conversational advertising will create a smoother user experience, as ads become less intrusive and more aligned with users' needs."

The challenge, he added, is that companies will need to maintain transparency and trust as users gain awareness of how their queries inform monetization strategies.

AI will not take your job — yet.

The good news is that business and tech leaders only expect to see AI enhance people's occupations next year, not replace them.

"We'll see efficiency gains in industries that automate repetitive tasks, but humans will still be needed for complex decision-making and creative work. 2025 is the year we really see many using AI as a core part of their job and enabling more productivity," Akhund said.

• AI advances have sparked a new global race for military dominance.
• Geoffrey Hinton said that, right now, countries are working in secret to gain an advantage.
• That will change once AI becomes so intelligent it presents an existential threat, he said.

The rapid advances in AI have triggered an international race for military dominance.

Major powers are quietly integrating AI into their militaries to gain a strategic edge. However, this could change once AI becomes advanced enough to pose an existential threat to humanity, AI "godfather" and Nobel Prize winner Geoffrey Hinton says.

"On risks like lethal autonomous weapons, countries will not collaborate," Hinton said in a seminar at the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences last week. "All of the major countries that supply arms, Russia, the United States, China, Britain, Israel, and possibly Sweden, are busy making autonomous lethal weapons, and they're not gonna be slowed down, they're not gonna regulate themselves, and they're not gonna collaborate."

However, Hinton believes that will change when it becomes necessary for the human race to fight the potential threat posed by a super-intelligent form of AI.

"When these things are smarter than us — which almost all the researchers I know believe they will be, we just differ on how soon, whether it's like in five years or in 30 years — will they take over and is there anything we can do to prevent that from happening since we make them? We'll get collaboration on that because all of the countries don't want that to happen."

"The Chinese Communist Party does not want to lose power to AI," he added. They want to hold on to it."

Hinton said this collaboration could resemble the Cold War, when Russia and the United States — despite being enemies — shared a common goal to avoid nuclear war.

Citing similar concerns, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has called on world leaders to establish an "international agency" that examines the most powerful AI models and ensures "reasonable safety testing."

"I think there will come a time in the not-so-distant future, like we're not talking decades and decades from now, where frontier AI systems are capable of causing significant global harm," Altman said on the All-In podcast in May.

According to a report by Goldman Sachs, global investment in AI is expected to hit $200 billion by 2025, with the United States and China leading the military arms race.

The United States and China are already beginning to collaborate on existential threats related to AI. In November, at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit, President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping agreed that humans, not AI, should make decisions regarding the use of nuclear technology.

• Companies will soon focus on customizing AI solutions for specific needs, Cohere's CEO says.
• AI 2.0 will "help fundamentally transform how businesses operate," he wrote.
• Major AI companies like OpenAI are also releasing tools for customization.

If this was the year companies adopted AI to stay competitive, next year will likely be about customizing AI solutions for their specific needs.

"The next phase of development will move beyond generic LLMs towards tuned and highly optimized end-to-end solutions that address the specific objectives of a business," Aidan Gomez, the CEO and cofounder of Cohere, an AI company building technology for enterprises, wrote in a post on LinkedIn last week.

"AI 2.0," as he calls it, will "accelerate adoption, value creation, and will help fundamentally transform how businesses operate." He added: "Every company will be an AI company."

Cohere has partnered with major companies, including software company Oracle and IT company Fujitsu, to develop customized business solutions.

"With Oracle, we've built customized technology and tailored our AI models to power dozens (soon, hundreds) of production AI features across Netsuite and Fusion Apps," he wrote. For Fujitsu, Cohere built a model called Takane that's "specifically designed to excel in Japanese."

Last June, Cohere partnered with global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company to develop customized generative AI solutions for the firm's clients. The work is helping the startup "build trust" among more organizations, Gomez previously told Business Insider.

To meet the specific needs of so many clients, Gomez has advocated for smaller, more efficient AI models. He says they are more cost-effective than building large language models, and they give smaller startups a chance to compete with more established AI companies.

But it might be only a matter of time before the biggest companies capitalize on the customization trend, too.

OpenAI previewed an advancement during its "Shipmas" campaign that allows users to fine-tune o1 — their latest and most advanced AI model, on their own datasets. So, users can now leverage OpenAI's reinforcement-learning algorithms to customize their own models.

The technology will be available to the public next year, but OpenAI has already partnered with companies like Thomson Reuters to develop specialized legal tools and researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to build computational models for identifying genetic diseases.

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