• Bette Midler is the latest big name to offload her Tesla.
• The veteran actor says she's sold her car, which she called "a symbol of racism, greed and ignorance."
• She joins the likes of Jason Bateman and Sheryl Crow who also sold their Teslas over CEO Elon Musk's politics.

This is no hocus-pocus: Bette Midler is the latest celebrity to sell her Tesla.

The veteran star of stage and screen has become the latest public figure to offload her Tesla over CEO Elon Musk's politics and support for President Donald Trump's administration.

"What a joyful day! I sold my (gulp) Tesla! No longer do I have to drive a symbol of racism, greed and ignorance! Life is suddenly so much better!!" Midler wrote in a recent Instagram post.

Midler has appeared in Broadway shows like "Fiddler on the Roof" and "Hello, Dolly!" as well as films including "Hocus Pocus" and "The Rose." She is also an outspoken liberal activist and has previously been critical of Musk, the richest man in the world, and his role in the Trump administration.

Midler joins a growing list of other public figures who have sold their Teslas over Musk's politics, including actor Jason Bateman, singer Sheryl Crow, and Sen. Mark Kelly.

Midler's representatives and Tesla did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Musk endorsed Trump for the presidency over the summer and funneled more than a quarter of a billion dollars toward efforts to elect him and Republican candidates in other races. He's subsequently been the de facto face of DOGE, which has ordered the firings of tens of thousands of federal workers in an attempt to downsize the federal government and reduce federal spending.

Tesla Takedown protests have sprung up across the country by demonstrators critical of Musk's involvement in DOGE and the Trump administration. Tesla's stock has fallen roughly 50% from its all-time high reached in December, and some shareholders have grown frustrated with Musk's involvement in government affairs.

Politico reported last week that Trump had told his inner circle that Musk would be stepping back from his unofficial roles at the White House in the coming weeks. Vice President JD Vance later said that Musk would remain a "friend and an advisor" to Trump even after departing DOGE.

• Bill Gates is taking a look back at the code that started it all.
• The Microsoft cofounder this week published the code that became the first product of the company.
• Take a look at Microsoft's origins as the company turns 50 this month.

Microsoft is turning 50 this year, and Bill Gates is looking back at how the company got its start.

The Microsoft cofounder published a blog post on Wednesday about the code that would become the company's first product, which was the Altair Basic, an interpreter that translated code into instructions that the Altair 8800 microcomputer could read.

"That code remains the coolest code I've ever written to this day," Gates wrote. "It's amazing to think about how this one piece of code led to a half-century of innovation from Microsoft. Before there was Office or Windows 95 or Xbox or AI, there was the original source code — and I still get a kick out of seeing it, even all these years later."

At the end of his post, he included a PDF of the original source code for the Altair Basic — all 157 pages of it. You can check it out here.

In his blog post, Gates noted that late Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen finished part of the code on a flight to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where Microsoft was originally based. Gates shared other details on the source code, fittingly, in his memoir "Source Code," which came out in February.

Gates reflected on his childhood through his career into today in the book. He wrote that he was disinterested in school growing up, noting that his preschool teachers called him "rebellious" and said he showed a "complete lack of concern for any phase of school life."

Gates also wrote about his approach, decades later, to recruiting Steve Ballmer to Microsoft, saying he and Allen had agreed to a split of 64% and 36%, respectively, but Gates ended up giving a 4% stake to Ballmer to convince him to quit business school for Microsoft.

Gates' ex-wife, Melinda French Gates, has her own memoir, "The Next Day," out later this month.

• Bill Gates cofounded Microsoft 50 years ago and in hindsight, he'd do some things differently.
• He said in a recent podcast that he "turned out to be wrong" about some elements of building teams.
• He also said he was "pretty naive" when it came to politics.

Happy birthday to Microsoft.

The tech behemoth turns 50 this month. While it has revolutionized personal computing and become one of the world's biggest companies today, there are some things one of its leaders might've done differently if he could turn back time.

Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates recently talked about the advice he'd give his younger self on a podcast featuring the three CEOs who've led Microsoft in the company's 50-year history: himself, his successor Steve Ballmer, and now Satya Nadella.

"Well, there was a lot of learning about how to grow the company and bring in different skill sets, how to manage people," he said. "I certainly at first thought that engineering skill meant you would be good at other things. That turned out to be wrong. So we had to really build teams in a more mixed, diverse set of skills than I expected."

Gates also said he'd have advised his younger self to be more politically savvy.

"You know, I might tell my younger self, watch out for the government," he said. "I might have a little bit of a tussle with them. I didn't anticipate that. I was pretty naive about not engaging in Washington, DC, as soon as I should have."

Microsoft was the subject of a massive antitrust case in the 1990s brought by the US Department of Justice and several states, which alleged Microsoft was becoming a monopoly.

In 2000, a judge found that Microsoft had violated antitrust laws, and Microsoft was ordered to split into two companies. An appeals court later tossed the judge's order, and the Justice Department gave up its effort to split up Microsoft. The DOJ and Microsoft settled in 2001.

Gates has mulled advice to his younger self before. He periodically does "Ask Me Anything" sessions on Reddit, and in 2017, one user asked him, "If you could give 19-year-old Bill Gates some advice, what would it be?"

Gates answered: "I would explain that smartness is not single-dimensional and not quite as important as I thought it was back then. I would say you might explore the developing world before you get into your forties. I wasn't very good socially back then, but I am not sure there is advice that would fix that — maybe I had to be awkward and just grow up."

• President Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs have arrived.
• On Wednesday, he announced a 10% base tariff on all countries, with higher rates on some countries.
• Markets are plummeting, but people are trying to get through it via memes.

Donald Trump's so-called "Liberation Day" means that tariffs are suddenly everywhere. That means tariff memes are also everywhere.

The US president on Wednesday signed an executive order imposing a 10% baseline tariff on all countries, taking effect Saturday, and adding reciprocal tariffs.

Global markets plummeted on the news.

But if there's one thing you can count on amid any turmoil — financial or otherwise — it's that some people will always have a sense of humor about it, even if it's a little dark. So, social media users have been expressing their economic fears and anxieties the modern way: with memes.

Here are some of the best ones:

Enjoy, for example, the picture showing Trump yelling, "Pay the tariffs!" at a group of penguins.

Trump's tariffs include the Australian territory of the Heard Island and McDonald Islands — a pair of sub-Antarctic remote islands uninhabited by humans but home to penguins, sea birds, and seals.

The meme refers to one that originated in 2017, in which Trump appeared as if he was yelling at an 11-year-old boy who had asked to mow the White House lawn.

Another meme shows Marvel superhero Wolverine lying in bed, looking longingly at a Studio Ghibli-fied picture of former US Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin and his wife, Louise Linton, holding a sheet of new $1 bills. Mnuchin was Treasury Secretary during Trump's first term in office.

Users of OpenAI's ChatGPT have recently started a trend of using the AI chatbot to turn regular photos into pictures in the distinctive style of Studio Ghibli, the animation studio behind films like "Spirited Away" and "Howl's Moving Castle."

In the original photo in 2017, Mnuchin was at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington, D.C., to see the first run of $1 bills featuring his signature. At the time, the image of the chicly dressed couple posing with money quickly drew comparisons to James Bond-esque villains, but the new image makes it seem like the person who posted it might have preferred that to today's market chaos.

A different meme shows Patrick Schwarzenegger as Saxon Ratliff in season 3 of "The White Lotus," a zeitgeisty — and heavily memeified — HBO show. He plays a toxic finance bro on a family vacation.

"Look, the prices of goods going up and my portfolio going down isn't necessarily a bad thing, because I love working and that just means I need to grind even harder now," the person captioned the photo.

And who could forget the famous "Arrested Development" meme of rich matriarch Lucille Bluth estimating a banana costs $10? The joke is supposed to highlight how wealthy and out-of-touch Bluth is, but "unironically this is what's happening in America right now," one person wrote on X.

"Just got off the phone with my financial advisor, he just told me my 401k is now a 400k," a different person tweeted, alongside a photo of late comedian and actor Rodney Dangerfield.

And finally, one user tweeted an image of a stock heatmap almost entirely red with a superimposed image of Vice President JD Vance asking, "Have you said thank you once?"

Vance was photoshopped to appear to have a larger face, which has been a trending meme in recent weeks. The question is a reference to Trump and Vance's contentious meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in February. In that meeting, Vance chastised Zelenskyy for not wearing a suit and asked him, "Have you said thank you once?" regarding American aid to the country, which Russia invaded in 2022.

• Walmart heiress Alice Walton is the richest woman in the world, with an estimated $101 billion net worth.
• She spends some of her fortune collecting art, including opening a museum, as well as breeding horses.
• Here's a look at her life, career, and fortune.

Alice Walton, the only female heiress to the Walmart fortune, is the richest woman in the world.

The three Walmart heirs — Rob Walton, Jim Walton, and Alice Walton — have a combined wealth of $320 billion, according to Forbes' billionaires list.

The 75-year-old Alice Walton has an estimated fortune worth $101 billion as of April 1, 2025 and ranks 15th on Forbes' list. She's the richest woman in the world, ahead of L'Oréal heiress Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, whose net worth currently stands at $81.6 billion, according to Forbes.

Walton's fortune grew $28.7 billion this year as Walmart's stock rose 40%, Forbes estimated.

Despite the Waltons' high status, their personal lives remain largely private. Here's what we know about how Alice Walton spends her fortune, from collecting expensive art to breeding horses:

Alice Walton, the only daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton, is the world's richest woman.

Walton and L'Oréal heiress Françoise Bettencourt Meyers regularly alternate in the #1 spot; Walton passed Bettencourt Meyers in recent months.

Unlike her brothers, Rob and Jim, Alice Walton has never taken an active role in running Walmart and has instead become a patron of the arts.

Walton fell in love with the arts at a young age, according to a New Yorker profile. When she was 10, she bought her first work of art: a reproduction of a Picasso painting for $2, she told the publication.

After graduating from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, in 1971, Walton briefly entered the family business, working for Walmart as a buyer of children's clothes, she told The New Yorker.

But her career really began in finance, which led her to founding Llama Company, an investment bank, in 1988.

She has been married and divorced twice and has no children.

Walton has an immense private art collection, with original works from legendary American artists including Andy Warhol, Norman Rockwell, and Georgia O'Keefe.

"Collecting has been such a joy, and such an important part of my life in terms of seeing art, and loving it," she told The New Yorker.

In 2011, she opened a $50 million museum called Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, to house her $500 million private art collection.

Walmart is headquartered in Bentonville. When the museum opened, it had four times the endowment of the famous Whitney Museum in New York.

In 2014, the Walmart heiress dropped $44.4 million on a piece of artwork by Georgia O'Keeffe.

It was the most expensive sale of a work of art by a female artist in history. Walton later put it on display at her museum in Arkansas.

Walton has donated millions to the arts and other causes.

In January 2016, Walton donated 3.7 million of her own Walmart shares — worth about $225 million at the time — to the family's nonprofit, the Walton Family Foundation, Fortune reported. The next year, the charity gifted $120 million to the University of Arkansas to establish a School of Art.

She used to sit on the foundation's board of directors alongside four other Waltons.

Walton also has her own charitable organization, the Alice L. Walton Foundation, which donates to causes including the arts, education, and health, according to its website.

Walton has also put some of her money into politics.

She has traditionally given to Republican candidates and PACs, though Walton donated $353,400 to the Hillary Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee supporting Clinton and other Democrats, in 2016, according to Forbes.

The two women met while Clinton was serving as First Lady of Arkansas and was the only woman sitting on Walmart's board.

Walton has been active in the horse breeding scene in Texas, but in 2015 she said she was going to devote more of her time to her Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

"I've been stretched in too many directions and I want to get focused," Walton said, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in 2017. "I've got a house in Fort Worth, so I'm moving to town."

In 2017, she sold her Millsap, Texas ranch for an undisclosed amount. The Rocking W Ranch had an initial asking price of $19.75 million but was later reduced to $16.5 million. The working ranch boasted more than 250 acres of pasture and outbuildings for cattle and horses.

She'd also put another Texas ranch, the 4,416-acre Fortune Bend Ranch, on the market around the same time.

She also cut its listing price, to $22.1 million. The property has a modest three-bedroom home overlooking nearly five miles of river frontage.

Walton also bought a two-floor condo on New York City's Park Avenue for $25 million in 2014.

The condo, which had been owned by late financier Christopher H. Browne, has more than 52 large windows overlooking Central Park and the city, as well as a media room and a library.

In 2015, protesters gathered outside Walton's building to demand a $15 minimum wage for Walmart employees. In 2023, the median wage for workers at Walmart, the world's largest private employer, was $27,642.

In 2021, the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine was founded.

It received preliminary accreditation status from the Liaison Committee on Medical Education in 2024, allowing it to start recruiting students.

"I'm so proud of the work the entire team at AWSOM has accomplished to reach preliminary accreditation status," Walton said in a press release at the time. "The School of Medicine will play a pivotal role in educating the next generation of physicians, equipping them to care for the whole person and making a lasting impact on health care in the Heartland and beyond."

Its inaugural class will have 48 students, with classes starting in 2025. The nonprofit school will waive tuition for its first five cohorts of students.

It aims to "enhance traditional medical education with the arts, humanities, and whole health principles," its website says. It shares the same campus as the Crystal Bridges museum.

Katie Warren and Tanza Loudenback contributed to an earlier version of this story.

• Ask almost any software engineer and they'll tell you: It's a lot harder to get a coding job now than a few years ago.
• BI spoke with two engineers who offered $10,000 to anyone who'd help them secure a six-figure coding job.
• "The market is not at all what it used to be, and you really have to differentiate yourself a little bit more," one said.

Software engineers Argenis De La Rosa and Ryan Prescott took a creative approach to their job search recently.

"I'll pay someone $10k if they find me a 6 figure software developer role," De La Rosa first posted on LinkedIn.

"I'll draft out a legitimate contract which you and I will sign, and I'll make bi-weekly payments or whatever the payment structure of the job role is, when I get paid, you get paid," he added. "It's that simple. No hidden BS."

He added in his post that it's "a nice bounty especially if you already know a company that is hiring or are a recruiter, or are a developer who wants to give a referral."

Prescott and other job seekers on LinkedIn later joined in and posted the offer themselves.

It's an unusual proposition. While recruiters often get commissions for bringing on new hires, and companies frequently give referral bonuses to employees who recommend an external candidate who gets hired, it's usually not the applicants themselves who shell out for a position filled.

De La Rosa told Business Insider he had the idea one morning as a "Hail Mary."

"I was kind of being a little bit sarcastic, but I guess everyone received it somewhat well, and I just kind of went with it," he said.

The first 24 hours after he posted were "nonstop" messages, he said. De La Rosa said he received everything ranging from "very sketchy" sales pitches to senior engineers from Big Tech companies offering referrals or mentorship.

The software engineer said he lined up three job interviews in quick succession after making his post.

"I've gotten so much career advice like polish your résumé, make a portfolio, try to send these messages to people you don't know — and that doesn't work," De La Rosa said. "This has gotten more attention, ironically enough, than trying to do what they recommend."

Prescott, who saw De La Rosa's post on LinkedIn before posting his own version of it, told BI he was initially skeptical about the idea but ultimately thought that "this could be a really good way to cut through the noise and have my voice heard."

Some people, of course, were trying to cash in on the deal. (Prescott says one guy half-jokingly told him, "I take cash or card.") But what struck him most from the messages he received was the number of people who offered to help but didn't want the money.

"It was really interesting and super heartwarming to see the altruism," he said.

'A new way to approach this market'

Many tech companies overhired during the pandemic and later conducted mass layoffs, flooding the tech job market with thousands of applicants jostling for the same jobs.

Before the pandemic hit, "you could get tech interviews left and right," De La Rosa said. Now, he has to do "so much more" and gets "such a low ROI" on his job search practices.

De La Rosa said his offer is "a new way to approach this market that's just changing in front of our eyes."

"The market is not at all what it used to be, and you really have to differentiate yourself a little bit more," Prescott said. "It basically seems like everything you thought you knew about job hunting a year ago or two years ago, do the opposite."

Employers, it seems, are "looking for unicorns," he said.

"It's not so much, can you do the job? It's can you tick every single bullet point on my job description and there's no room for error," he added.

Prescott says a proposition like his and De La Rosa's "puts more power in the hands of the candidate."

"They have the choice to decide, what is it worth to me to land this role?" he said. "The candidate can decide what it's worth and work those terms out themselves."

To De La Rosa, the math was simple: "If I give up maybe six weeks of work in exchange for an opportunity at a reputable company, I would trade that every day of the week," he said.

Setting yourself apart

Prescott ultimately landed a job after a startup CEO reached out to him and he subsequently went through several rounds of interviews. Suffice it to say, he's not paying his current boss $10,000 to work for him, so the offer in his LinkedIn post was moot anyway.

But it had the desired effect: helping him stand out.

"Anything that's driving traffic to your LinkedIn profile is going to be beneficial in a market where cold applications and more traditional methods of job hunting are just falling flat because of the volume of applicants," Prescott said.

The biggest takeaway they've had from this experience?

"I would really just encourage more people to differentiate themselves in strange and remarkable ways," said Prescott. "I think it takes a degree of confidence and a willingness and ability to take risk to succeed in the market that we're in."

While De La Rosa is still looking for a full-time staff position, he's gotten contract work in the meantime.

He says he stands by "just posting publicly, even if it seems at the moment vulnerable."

"I think people resonate with that," he said. "If you're posting where you're at in your journey, I think a lot of people would generally want to help.

"The interviews I've gotten in the last week alone were more than the last four months."

• Another April Fools' Day means another selection of ludicrous marketing stunts coming our way.
• Announcements can range annually from "too good to be true" to "sort of believable."
• Here's a look at some of the best, worst, and weirdest corporate gags this April 1.

It's April Fools' Day, and you know what that means: Corporate pranks, faux product launches, and outlandish marketing stunts.

You may notice a number of odd, interesting, or too-good-to-be-true announcements from companies. From strange food items to an AI dog translator, corporations aren't shying away from pranking consumers.

Company gags don't always go over well. For example, German automaker Volkswagen published its April Fools' joke too soon in 2021, leading to many believing it would rebrand as "Voltswagen" in the US. However, those who keep it lighthearted, timely, and slightly outlandish can get away with laughs instead of serious repercussions.

Here's a look at some of the most noteworthy ones Business Insider saw this year:

ElevenLabs

Many pet owners would love to know what their pet is thinking. Voice cloning AI startup ElevenLabs teased a new model that would make their wish come true.

The company announced Text to Bark on Tuesday, describing it as a new era of "cross-species communication." With the technology, ElevenLabs said humans and dogs can communicate by translating their words and barks into each other's language.

ElevenLabs allows users to recreate a person's voice from a recording using its AI tools.

Lipton

Drinks brand Lipton got a head start on April Fools' Day this year, which made its announcement actually seem plausible since no one expected a prank two weeks ahead of schedule. In mid-March, the brand posted on social media that it would be discontinuing its popular peach iced tea flavor — to fans' great disappointment. Fortunately, the flavor is sticking around.

Yahoo

This one's for every chronically online person who's been told to touch grass. The Yahoo Agricultural Interface is a computer keyboard with little tufts of grass on every key.

Yahoo says they go on sale at 1 p.m. ET Tuesday in its TikTok Shop; we'll see if that pans out.

Crunch

Crunch Bar, the chocolate bar with crisped rice inside, dared to ask, "What if we cooked the rice instead so the bar was quieter to eat?" And thus was born its fictitious 75%-quieter chocolate bar.

Bluesky

Bluesky, a social media rival to X, told users that it would slash its character limit from 300 to 299 for Tuesday only.

"We're listening to your feedback and updating the character count for posts on Bluesky," the company said in its jokey announcement.

Duolingo and Carnival Cruise Line

The language-learning app and the cruise line collaborated on their prank this year. They're fake-offering the Duolingo World Cruise, a 5-year cruise across 7 continents and 195 countries that promises to give cruise-goers opportunities to learn more than 40 languages.

Olipop and Hidden Valley Ranch

Another collab, this time between buzzy prebiotic soda brand Olipop and Hidden Valley Ranch, involves a new faux lineup of various ranch-flavored soft drinks. They come in regular ranch, jalapeño ranch, garlic ranch, and hot honey ranch. While the flavors aren't real, the brands apparently sent content creators actual cans of Olipop wrapped in the fake ranch packaging to get people talking about it.

Nothing Company

Smartphone maker Nothing debuted headphones with a 50-meter, or 54-yard, cable and 3.5-millimeter jack. The product is simply called "ear."

"Beautifully Inconvenient" appears to be the tagline for the fake product. Nothing hasn't specifically said it's not happening, but one has to wonder about the logistics of carrying more than half a football field's worth of cable.

Subway

Buttermilk ranch water, anyone? That's one of the new alcoholic products that sandwich chain Subway is advertising on April 1. In an Instagram post, Subway announced "new saucy spirits" in the flavors "Buttermilk ranch water" and "Bloody Marynara."

"can't wait to get home and crack open a can of Buttermilk Ranch Water," the caption said.

IKEA

IKEA is working on "a store that it is impossible to get lost in." The linear store would stretch roughly 2 km, or about 1.25 miles, and is a response to concerns about shoppers getting lost inside the Swedish furniture brand's massive and labyrinthine stores.

Tic Tac and Dr Pepper

The mint and soda brands teamed up on this gag creation of Dr Pepper-flavored mints, with the fake Tic Tacs even adopting the look of the soda cans.

Some announcements are the real deal

Popeyes is rolling out a limited-time lineup of pickle-themed items at participating locations across the US. It appears the idea started as a social media joke and turned into a real promotion after it was announced.

"What started as a playful social tease has now become a full-fledged culinary reality—a Pickled Popeyes," Bart LaCount, chief marketing officer for Popeyes US and Canada, said in a press release.

And for today only, Dunkin' is offering a free coffee or cold brew in any size with promo code ThisIsNotAJoke. One per customer, no purchase necessary, available Tuesday until the code redemption limit is reached.

• Meta on Thursday announced a new friends-only tab — no unwanted content recommendations there.
• It's one of many big changes the company's feed has undergone in Facebook's 20-year history.
• Here's a closer look at how your Facebook feed has changed over the years.

Mark Zuckerberg wants to get back to the Facebook of yesteryear. Do you remember what that was like?

The company on Thursday announced a new friends-only tab, which the Meta CEO called "phase one of bringing back OG Facebook."

The social media site's feed has undergone a number of big changes in the two decades since it launched in 2004.

In case you've forgotten, here's a trip down the Facebook feed's memory lane:

When Facebook launched in 2004, it looked like this

The site was originally called Thefacebook and was limited to students at Harvard, where Zuckerberg was still an undergraduate when he launched it. He later dropped out of the university to focus on it full-time.

Facebook launched the news feed and mini-feed in 2006 — and users were outraged

Though Facebook employees expected it to be popular, many users actually hated it at first, and there was even talk of boycotting the site as a result.

So many people were incensed that Zuckerberg wrote a response.

"We think they are great products, but we know that many of you are not immediate fans, and have found them overwhelming and cluttered," he wrote. "Other people are concerned that non-friends can see too much about them. We are listening to all your suggestions about how to improve the product; it's brand new and still evolving."

In 2009, the company introduced a real-time news feed

Facebook's real-time news feed was their response to Twitter, which launched in 2006. Facebook's news feed previously took a while to update, but this change meant you'd see things as they were posted.

The ticker came in 2011

The ticker feature helped address the issue of the time lag by showing you instantaneous updates on your friends' posts, likes, shares, comments, check-ins, and more.

It appeared as a bar on the right side of users' screens. It was axed years later.

'Sponsored stories' ads started appearing in users' news feeds in 2012.

These were different from regular display, or "Marketplace," ads that appeared on Facebook.

The news feed got a big makeover in 2013 when Zuckerberg said he wanted to 'give everyone the best personalized newspaper in the world'

The most notable change was that multiple feeds became available, organized by topics like news, music, photos, videos, and events. Photos and videos also became bigger and appeared more frequently.

Facebook also focused on mobile consistency so your feed would look the same on your phone as on your desktop.

In 2016, the company said it was updating the news feed to show posts from friends and family higher up

That year, the company also introduced a slew of reactions besides just the like button. Initially, the algorithm just interpreted any reaction, whether positive or negative, to assume the user wanted to see more of that content in their feed.

But users still said they were seeing too many public posts, rather than posts from friends and family. Zuckerberg said addressing this would be a key focus area in 2018

"Recently we've gotten feedback from our community that public content — posts from businesses, brands and media — is crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other," he wrote in a Facebook post. "Based on this, we're making a major change to how we build Facebook. I'm changing the goal I give our product teams from focusing on helping you find relevant content to helping you have more meaningful social interactions."

As a result, he said, users could "expect to see more from your friends, family and groups."

In 2021, Facebook added a 'feed filter bar' that gave users three options on how to customize how their news feeds would look

The menu lets users choose between a feed sorted by algorithmic ranking, chronology with the newest posts first, and Favorites, where users could choose up to 30 friends and Pages to prioritize in their feeds.

In 2022, the company dropped 'news' from the product's name to become just 'feed'

While there was no big aesthetic change, it represented a shift in how Facebook wanted users to view their feeds. The change was made to "better reflect the diverse content people see on their feeds," a Facebook spokesperson said at the time.

The move came at a time when Facebook was trying to show users less political content in their feeds amid broader concerns about how the content its algorithm does and does not prioritize could sow polarization and the spread of misinformation.

This came a year after a much bigger name change: the company's corporate name. Facebook rebranded as Meta in 2021.

The company's latest change to users' feeds brings us full circle

Speaking on "The Colin and Samir Show" podcast, Zuckerberg said the launch of the friends-only tab marked "phase one of bringing back OG Facebook."

It's a tab that shows your friends' stories, reels, posts, birthdays, and friend requests, no recommended content in sight. It's currently available in the US and Canada.

"Connecting with friends has been a part of Facebook since it launched," Meta said in its announcement. "Over the years, Facebook evolved to meet changing needs and created best-in-class experiences across Groups, Video, Marketplace and more, but the magic of friends has fallen away."

• Meta is leaning into the early days of Facebook with a new update.
• It's introducing a new tab that only shows content from your friends — no other recommendations.
• CEO Mark Zuckerberg has talked before about wanting to tap into "OG Facebook" again.

It's in with the old at Meta.

The company is introducing a new feature that's all about capturing the essence of the early experience of using Facebook.

Meta is launching a friends tab that shows your friends' stories, reels, posts, birthdays, and friend requests without any recommended content, the company announced on Thursday. The tab formerly showed friend requests and people you may know.

It's available starting Thursday in the US and Canada.

"Connecting with friends has been a part of Facebook since it launched," Meta said in its announcement. "Over the years, Facebook evolved to meet changing needs and created best-in-class experiences across Groups, Video, Marketplace and more, but the magic of friends has fallen away."

The company added that it'd introduce more "OG" Facebook experiences later this year.

Zuckerberg had hinted before at wanting to get back to Facebook's roots.

"I'm excited this year to get back to some OG Facebook," he'd said in Meta's Q4 earnings call in January. "I think we're going to build some awesome things that shape the future of human connection."

On an episode of "The Colin and Samir Show" podcast released Thursday, Zuckerberg said that rolling out the new tab represents "phase one of bringing back OG Facebook."

"I don't think it's going to be as used as like the main news feed, but I think people are going to like it, and I think when you add in a handful of other things like this it will change the way that people feel about and use Facebook," he said.

Zuckerberg said over time, sharing and newsfeed "outscaled and ended up being by far the most important part of the product," so Facebook focused on that, to the detriment of the other "fun and useful parts of the original experience" of using the social media platform.

"There's this whole opportunity that I think is going to be pretty fun, which is just to kind of go one by one and build up a bunch of these things that used to be these joyful experiences that people had as part of Facebook that just kind of don't exist on the internet today," he said.

• Mark Zuckerberg says he now owns a shirt Jesse Eisenberg wore in "The Social Network."
• "Yeah, this is his shirt," Zuckerberg said on The Colin and Samir Show. "Well, I guess this is my shirt now."
• Zuckerberg also shared his thoughts on the movie's accuracy on the podcast.

It's a classic Who Wore It Better moment. The contenders: Mark Zuckerberg, and Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg.

Appearing on an episode of the "The Colin and Samir Show" podcast, the Meta CEO (the real one) sported a shirt that actor Jesse Eisenberg wore while portraying Zuckerberg in "The Social Network," the 2010 biographical drama about Facebook.

"Yeah, this is his shirt," he said. "Well, I guess this is my shirt now."

Zuckerberg said he bought the shirt at an auction.

The blue T-shirt says Ardsley Athletics XXL on it. In the film, Eisenberg's Zuckerberg wears it when fellow cofounder Eduardo Saverin visits the house in Palo Alto where Facebook's early team lived in the summer of 2004 while building the site.

A listing on Propstore Auction appears to match the shirt Zuckerberg is wearing in the interview. The winning bid was $4,095.

Zuckerberg attended Ardsley High School in New York before transferring to Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire.

He said on the podcast that he's seen "The Social Network" once.

Watching the movie was "weird," Zuckerberg said.

"They got all of these very specific details, of like what I was wearing, or like these specific things correct, but then the whole narrative arc around my motivations and all the stuff were completely wrong," he said.

He talked, for example, about FaceMash, a hot-or-not website he created while still an undergraduate at Harvard, where classmates ranked each others' attractiveness.

"It is true that I made a bunch of other websites and stuff when I was at Harvard, but people cast it as if like FaceMash, that prank thing that I made, was like the precursor to Facebook, I guess maybe because they have face in the name," he said. "It was completely separate from Facebook."

The site was a hit with students. After a few days, Harvard ordered it be taken down, citing copyright and security concerns. Zuckerberg faced disciplinary action from the university but was allowed to stay at the school.

He went on to start Facebook from his Harvard dorm room, though he famously later dropped out to build social media site full-time.

Twenty-one years after Facebook was founded in 2004, Zuckerberg says people still think he created it as a "service to rate the attractiveness of people."

"And it's like no, I was just a kid doing a random different thing," he said.

Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

• Jensen Huang has come a long way from waiting tables at Denny's.
• The Nvidia CEO has an estimated net worth of $106 billion.
• Here's a look at how he built his fortune — and how he spends his money.

Nvidia's blockbuster year has been good news for its CEO, Jensen Huang.

Nvidia earnings were strong in 2024, and the company's stock price has been up in the first quarter of the year.

Huang, who cofounded the company in 1993 and has served as its president and CEO ever since, has seen his net worth balloon as the chipmaker's market cap rises.

In 2024, he broke into Forbes' list of the top 10 richest people for the first time ever. His net worth today is approximately $106 billion, according to the ranking.

Now leading one of the Magnificent 7 companies, Huang has come a long way from his first job washing dishes and cleaning toilets at Denny's.

Here's a closer look at how Huang built and spends his fortune:

How Huang became a billionaire

As of March 2024, Huang owned roughly 3.79% of the company's outstanding shares, according to a proxy statement. He is the company's largest individual shareholder.

Before starting Nvidia, Huang worked at computer chip manufacturer LSI Logic and at semiconductor company AMD, which is today helmed by his distant cousin, Lisa Su.

How much of Nvidia Huang owns, what his CEO salary is

Huang received a total compensation package of $34.2 million for fiscal year 2024, which included a base salary of $996,514, as well as $26.7 million in stock awards, $4 million in cash bonuses, and $2.5 million for other expenses, including residential security and car and driver services.

His pay package was up 60% from the fiscal year prior, when it was $21.4 million.

Huang undertook a prearranged trading plan in 2024 to sell 6 million shares by the end of the first quarter of 2025; as a result, he offloaded roughly $700 million worth of Nvidia shares.

How Huang compares to other tech CEOs and billionaires

Huang's total compensation for 2024 was pretty middle of the pack compared to other tech CEOs of the Mag 7 companies.

He's one of roughly 15 centibillionaires identified on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

At 62 years old, Huang is older than some of his Big Tech peers, such as Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, Google's Sundar Pichai, and Amazon's Andy Jassy, but younger than others, such as Apple's Tim Cook.

How Huang spends his fortune

As far as real estate is concerned, he has owned property in California, as Nvidia has headquarters in Santa Clara, as well as Hawaii.

He isn't known for many ostentatious splurges, but Huang's leather jacket is a staple of his wardrobe. He has worn several over the years at high-profile events, including one lizard-embossed jacket that appeared to be from Tom Ford's spring 2023 collection and retailed for $8,990.

Huang has also given some of his fortune to philanthropic causes. In 2007, he and his wife established the Jen-Hsun and Lori Huang Foundation.

They've given $50 million to Oregon State University, which subsequently named a research center for the couple, both of whom are OSU alums.

The couple donated $30 million to Stanford University, from which Huang received his master's degree, for an engineering center. They've also given $22.5 million to the California College of the Arts.

An Nvidia spokesperson declined to comment.

• Zhang Yiming has built a $57.5 billion fortune since cofounding ByteDance, the Chinese tech giant behind TikTok.
• Zhang is highly private and little is publicly known about his personal life.
• He recently became the richest person in China. Here's a look at his career and life.

The widespread popularity of TikTok has created not only a new generation of social media stars — it's also helped mint China's wealthiest person.

Zhang Yiming, the 41-year-old software engineer who founded the app's parent company, ByteDance, now has a net worth of $57.5 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

This makes Zhang the richest person in China, edging ahead of Pony Ma, the founder and CEO of Tencent. Ma has a net worth of $56.5 billion, per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Zhang is a highly private person and little is publicly known about his personal life.

After running ByteDance for nearly a decade, Zhang stepped down as CEO in 2021, reportedly telling employees that he's "not very social, preferring solitary activities like being online, reading, listening to music, and contemplating what may be possible."

"The truth is, I lack some of the skills that make an ideal manager," Zhang said at the time, according to Reuters, saying he would be a better help to the company in a role that didn't involve managing people directly.

Here's what we know about his career rise and life:

Zhang was born in 1983 in China's Fujian province.

Zhang's parents worked as civil servants, according to Bloomberg.

His name is based on a Chinese proverb about "surprising everyone with a first attempt," the South China Morning Post reported.

He married his college sweetheart.

Zhang graduated from Nankai University in 2005, where he started off studying microelectronics before switching his major to software engineering, according to the South China Morning Post.

Zhang's first job out of college was at a digital travel booking startup called Kuxun.

Zhang said he was an engineer at first but came to be in charge of 40 to 50 people by his second year at the company, according to SCMP. He credits that job with teaching him sales skills that he later used to grow ByteDance, including learning "what sales are good sales."

Zhang learned the value of pursuing excellence while still in his first job at Kuxun, he told ByteDance employees, according to the report.

"At that time, I was responsible for the technology, but when the product had problems, and I would actively participate in the discussion of [the] product plan," Zhang said, according to the newspaper. "A lot of people say this is not what I should be doing. But I want to say: your sense of responsibility and your desire to do things well, will drive you to do more things and to gain experience."

Zhang also worked at Microsoft before founding ByteDance, the South China Morning Post reported.

Zhang founded TikTok's parent company in 2012.

The company owns several social networking apps that operate within China. It released a WeChat rival called FlipChat, and a video-messaging app called Duoshan in 2019.

Zhang and ByteDance's first product was a news aggregator app called Toutiao.

Zhang wanted to create a news platform whose results were powered by artificial intelligence, separate from China's search engine Baidu.

"We push information, not by queries, by news recommendations," Zhang told Bloomberg in 2017.

Despite its focus on news, Zhang told Bloomberg's Lulu Yilun Chen and Mark Bergen in 2017 that ByteDance does not have any journalists on its staff like many other social networks.

"The most important thing is that we are not a news business," Zhang told Bloomberg. "We are more like a search business or a social media platform. We are doing very innovative work. We are not a copycat of a U.S. company, both in product and technology."

Zhang launched ByteDance's most successful app — TikTok — under the name Douyin in September 2016.

TikTok is one of the most popular social networks among American teens and has more than 170 million US users as of September 2024, the company says.

Zhang was known for making his own TikToks — and requiring his senior employees to do so as well.

"For a very long time, I was merely watching TikTok videos without making any of them myself, because it's a product mainly for young people," Zhang said, according to the South China Morning Post. "But later on we made it compulsory for all management team members to make their own TikTok videos, and they must win a certain number of 'likes'. Otherwise, they have to do push-ups. It was a big step for me."

Zhang's leadership style is "soft-spoken yet charismatic, logical yet passionate, young yet wise," according to Time Magazine's Kai-Fu Lee.

Zhang stepped down as ByteDance's CEO in 2021.

Zhang stepped down as CEO in 2021, saying that he "lack[s] some of the skills that make an ideal manager" and would be a greater asset to the company in a non-management role.

Zhang wants the app to continue to grow abroad, saying that he hopes his ByteDance will be "as borderless as Google," according to the South China Morning Post.

"We must work harder, we must also be more perfectionist," Zhang said, according to SCMP. "Just like there was an international division of labor in the industrial age, in today's information age there's also an international division of labor. Chinese entrepreneurs must also improve their own capabilities as they go global," he said.

However, TikTok's ownership by a Chinese parent company and its growing influence in the US has raised concerns among US regulators.

In April, the Senate passed a divest-or-ban law on TikTok, requiring the company to stop operations in the US on January 19 if it did not divest from ByteDance.

However, the ban on TikTok was paused for 75 days after President Donald Trump signed an executive order on January 20. TikTok has until April 5 to find a new owner in the US.

Several big-name buyers like Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian, and "Shark Tank" star Kevin O'Leary have expressed interest in acquiring TikTok.

Zhang has become a billionaire owing to the success of TikTok and ByteDance more broadly.

Forbes first declared Zhang a billionaire in March 2018, estimating that Zhang was worth $4 billion.

On the annual Hurun China Rich List for 2024, he was listed as the country's richest person, with an estimated net worth of $49.3 billion.

In March, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index recognized Zhang as China's richest person, with a net worth of $57.5 billion.

• Signal is a messaging app that uses end-to-end encryption to keep your messages private.
• When you send a message on Signal, the only people who can see it are the recipients.
• You can use the Signal app to send texts, photos, videos, and voice messages.

Over the last few years, Signal has become one of the most popular messaging apps. Favored by tech giants, cybersecurity experts, journalists, government officials, and many more, Signal has gone from a darling secret of the security community to a group chatting phenomenon.

It's recently been thrust into the spotlight after the editor in chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, was inadvertently added to a Signal group chat where top Trump administration officials discussed bombing Yemen.

According to Goldberg, Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio all appeared to be members of the group chat, which was called "Houthi PC small group," referring to the principals committee.

Signal founder and former CEO Matthew Rosenfeld, who goes by the pseudonym Moxie Marlinspike, poked fun at the botched chat in a post on X, formerly Twitter, on Monday.

"There are so many great reasons to be on Signal," he wrote. "Now including the opportunity for the vice president of the United States of America to randomly add you to a group chat for coordination of sensitive military operations."

Elon Musk has also endorsed Signal before, writing simply in a post on X in 2021, "Use Signal."

He changed his mind about the app a few years later, though, writing in May 2024 that it had "known vulnerabilities." Signal's president, Meredith Whittaker, later told Wired she went two nights without sleeping "just dealing with Twitter stuff."

"He's been a fan. So I don't know what changed," she said. "What I do know is that, as far as we know, the claim was completely baseless." Whittaker added there was no "serious report" backing up Musk's claims.

Signal is owned by the nonprofit Signal Foundation, which was set up in 2018 by the app's cofounders, Rosenfeld and Brian Acton, who also cofounded WhatsApp. The foundation has five board members and serves to "support Signal's growth and ongoing operations as well as investigate the future of private communication," according to its website.

Here's a guide to the Signal app, including why it's become so popular.

The Signal app, explained

Signal is safer and more secure than most messengers because of a process called "end-to-end encryption." This works by encoding a sender's message in such a way that only the intended receiver can view it.

Neither Signal, nor your phone company, nor the government can read your messages. That's why it has remained popular.

However, Signal's messages are only secure if both the sender and receiver are using the app.

If you prefer to communicate through Signal, the app has a simple feature to invite someone to download it. It's also just as easy to block someone on Signal from contacting you.

Encryption itself isn't a unique feature, as apps like iMessage, Telegram, and WeChat also offer it. But one of Signal's selling points is that its source code is also publicly available, so experts have been able to poke and prod at its defenses for years, strengthening it in the process.

Signal's key features

Signal is similar to other messaging apps but with more robust security features. It's available for free on iPhone, Android, Mac, and PC.

Android users can even set their default messaging app to Signal if they want to.

On a basic level, you can have one-on-one conversations with someone or start a group chat on Signal. In these chats, you can send pictures, videos, internet links, voice messages, and more.

Signal's beta version has tested new kinds of chats with forum-like features, including group admins, updates, and timers for disappearing messages. For now, groups are capped at 1,000 people, but adding and removing people from a Signal group is simple.

If you're concerned about someone accessing the app from your phone, you can lock the Signal app with the same passcode or fingerprint scan normally used to lock your phone.

Signal requires a phone number to join the app. To keep yours private, you can sign up with a Google Voice number. Apple users will want to visit their privacy settings within the app and turn off "Show Calls in Recents" to prevent their history from syncing with the cloud.

You can also set your messages to disappear over time, or set photos to disappear after a single viewing.

Barbara Smith and Vivian McCall contributed to an earlier version of this story.

• Anne Wojcicki stepped down as 23andMe's CEO as the company filed for bankruptcy protection.
• She cofounded the genetic testing company after a career on Wall Street.
• Here's a closer look at her life and career. 

Anne Wojcicki has stepped down as CEO of 23andMe.

The genetics testing company announced Wojcicki's resignation, effective immediately, alongside its filing for bankruptcy protection.

Wojcicki is the younger sister of late YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki and the ex-wife of Google cofounder Sergey Brin.

Wojcicki cofounded the company in 2006 and took 23andMe public in June 2021 through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company. But it's been beset with privacy concerns, a data breach, layoffs, falling demand, and apparent disagreements about the future direction of the company.

Here's a look back at Anne Wojcicki's life and career:

Wojcicki was born and raised in Palo Alto, California.

Both of Wojcicki's parents are academics: her father, Stanley, chaired Stanford University's physics department. Her mother, Esther, known as the "Godmother of Silicon Valley," is an author and educator who taught journalism at Palo Alto High School.

Aside from Susan, Wojcicki's other sister, Janet, also works in academia as a professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco.

"My parents really looked at us always as like mini adults," Anne Wojcicki told CNBC Make It in 2018. "I think the one thing that my parents really did is they gave us a taste of freedom. And they encouraged it. They encouraged us to find our passions, they weren't controlling." 

Wojcicki played ice hockey growing up — she told Fast Company in 2013 that she switched to the sport after figure skating "started to be a little bit like Honey Boo Boo on ice" — and later attended Yale University. She graduated in 1996 with a biology degree, according to The New York Times.

 

After graduating from Yale, she pursued a career on Wall Street.

Post-graduation, Wojcicki began working for a biotech-related hedge fund. She told Fast Company that her academic parents were offended by the choice. 

"It was always embarrassing to come home. People were like, 'Oh, Anne, you Wall Street girl,'" she told Fast Company. 

Wojcicki worked on Wall Street for about a decade as a healthcare analyst at firms including Investor AB and Passport Capital.  

Wojcicki launched 23andMe in 2006.

Wojcicki founded 23andMe in 2006, along with Linda Avey and Paul Cusenza. Avey and Cusenza have since left the company.

The company's initial goal was to help people understand their own genome. The name itself comes from the fact that there are 23 pairs of chromosomes in the human genome. 

23andMe's saliva tests — which can test for genetic predispositions, ancestry, and inherited traits — initially cost $999. The company later significantly slashed its prices to $99 for an ancestry kit and $199 for a health and ancestry kit. 

Wojcicki married Google cofounder Sergey Brin in 2007.

Wojcicki met Brin through her sister, Susan: In 1998, Susan Wojcicki rented Google cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page her garage in Menlo Park, California, in order to work on their young company, Google. 

While they were dating, Brin would leave Anne Wojcicki notes in Braille about where to meet or leave her voicemails in Morse code, Wojcicki told The New York Times in 2017.

Wojcicki and Brin married in May 2007 in a super-secret ceremony in the Bahamas. According to the San Jose Mercury News, guests weren't told the location of the wedding and were instead flown to the Bahamas on a jet owned by Page and Brin. Once there, they were taken by boat to a sandbar where the ceremony was held — Wojcicki and Brin wore white and black swimsuits, respectively, and swam out to the ceremony site. 

The couple had two children together whose last name is Wojin, a portmanteau of their parents' last names.

Things took a turn for 23andMe in 2013 when the Food and Drug Administration sent the company a warning letter.

The FDA called its spit collection vial "an unapproved medical device" and placed limits on genetic testing for consumers. The company stopped providing health analyses based on consumers' DNA and was limited to offering only ancestry results.

By 2015, the company overcame regulatory hurdles and was able to begin offering health information to customers once again. 

23andMe has partnered with GSK and created tests that can detect if consumers have an elevated risk of developing diseases like Parkinson's or Alzheimer's.

Wojcicki and Brin divorced in 2015.

Wojcicki and Brin separated in 2013 and divorced in 2015. In 2024, Vanity Fair reported that Brin had an affair with a Google employee in her mid-20s, who was also in a relationship with another high-level Google executive at the time. (Brin did not respond to VF's request for comment at the time and Google declined to comment to the magazine).

Brin later married Nicole Shanahan, a California-based attorney and president of Bia-Echo Foundation, after they met at a yoga retreat in 2015, The Wall Street Journal reported. The couple finalized their divorce in 2023 after the Journal reported that Shanahan had had an affair with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, a longtime friend of Brin's. Both Musk and Shanahan have repeatedly denied having an affair.

In a profile in The New York Times from 2017, Wojcicki said, "I was mad at Sergey for what he did. But I don't carry grudges. He's the father of my grandchildren. He was not such a good dad when the kids were babies. But he's a very good dad now. He made his own life difficult, unfortunately. I can still be civil to him. Why not? What's in it for me being nasty?"

Wojcicki later dated former Major League Baseball player Alex Rodriguez.

The couple met through friends around 2015 and dated for about two years.

Wojcicki told The New York Times Times in 2017 that Rodriguez was "a really sweet guy," smart, and a good person, but that their respective parenting obligations and lives on opposite coasts made the relationship unsustainable.

Wojcicki's mom, Esther, told the Times that while she liked Rodriguez, the pairing was "a mismatch."

23andMe went public in 2021.

In 2021 the company went public via a reverse merger with a blank-check holding company owned by Richard Branson.

By the time it went public, 23andMe had received backing from Google, GlaxoSmithKline, Sequoia Capital, Johnson & Johnson, and others, raising over $1 billion in funding, according to Crunchbase. 

Wojcicki has said she lives frugally and doesn't like "froufrou things."

Wojcicki told the Times in 2017 that she's not a fan of "fancy cars and houses and the right dress." She sometimes has her kids sleep in their clothes to save time in the mornings and wear their clothes into the shower on trips to save on hotel laundry costs. 

She said at the time that she cuts her kids' hair herself, mostly shops at Payless for shoes, and rides her bike to work. 

"It's so easy to be like, 'I don't have to do laundry again. I don't have to cook again.' But then you're not normal," she told the Times.

Wojcicki is also fitness-obsessed, riding her Peloton bike, taking two daily walks, and doing online yoga classes during the pandemic. Forbes wrote in 2019 that 23andMe's headquarters "looks like a cross between a Silicon Valley startup and a fitness club."

She's also an investor in the longevity space, investing in the Series A round of Gameto, a biotechnology company with a mission to reprogram ovarian cells to slow down the aging in the ovary in 2022. 

Wojcicki gave birth to her third child, a daughter, in July 2019.

Wojcicki told Forbes while she was pregnant that she decided to have the baby by herself because she wanted a third child. "So like, guess what? I executed," she said.

"Whether you're in a relationship or not should not dictate whether or not you have the ability to have children," Wojcicki told Forbes. "I'm very stubborn. When there's something I want to do, I get it done."

After the birth of her daughter, Wojcicki became outspoken about the need to normalize breastfeeding and offer support to new mothers. She told The Washington Post in 2019 that 23andMe has created a support system for parents or hopeful parents, including on-site breastfeeding rooms, a 1,500-square-foot playroom for employees' kids, and benefits for parents that include paid parental leave, fertility benefits, adoption assistance, and surrogacy reimbursement. 

"I'm in a luxurious position where I can do this, and normalizing it is part of how I can help people," she said. 

Anne has talked about her sister Susan's impact on her life.

After Susan announced in 2023 that she was stepping down as CEO of YouTube, Anne tweeted "Susan has been my inspiration and mentor since I was born." She also joked that she "can't wait" for her sister to résumé bossing her around now that she has more time. 

Susan died in 2024 at age 56 after living with lung cancer.

Shortly after, 23andMe launched a study to "understand more about how our genetics influence lung cancer," Anne wrote on X.

"It was devastating news when she was diagnosed in 2022 and it's still a shock to believe my vibrant, passionate, loving sister is gone," she wrote around Thanksgiving.

 

In March 2025, Anne resigned as 23andMe's CEO.

The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and will continue operating while it seeks a buyer. Wojcicki resigned as CEO, effective immediately, but stayed on the company's board. CFO Joe Selsavage has taken over as interim CEO.

Wojcicki wrote a post on X, formerly Twitter, with her reaction to the news.

"While I am disappointed that we have come to this conclusion and my bid was rejected, I am supportive of the company and I intend to be a bidder," she wrote. "I have resigned as CEO of the company so I can be in the best position to pursue the company as an independent bidder."

"We have had many successes but I equally take accountability for the challenges we have today," she continued. "There is no doubt that the challenges faced by 23andMe through an evolving business model have been real, but my belief in the company and its future is unwavering."

Last year, Wojcicki proposed taking the company private for 40 cents per share, but the company's special committee of independent directors rejected it. Earlier in March 2025, she made another offer that was similarly rejected.

• A class action lawsuit, resignations, layoffs, and other problems have plagued 23andMe.
• The DNA testing company's latest headache has seen it filing for bankruptcy as its CEO resigns.
• Here's how 23andMe rose and then fell.

23andMe may have a shorter lifespan than your ancestors.

The biotech company that helped usher in the era of consumer DNA test kits nearly two decades ago has faced several recent setbacks, including a class action lawsuit and user privacy concerns.

Now, 23andMe is filing for bankruptcy protection as it tries to sell itself, and founder and CEO Anne Wojcicki has resigned.

A spokesperson for 23andMe previously told Business Insider in a statement that "the company's mission of helping people live longer, healthier lives through a preventive approach to health, and providing access to potentially life-changing genetic information, hasn't changed." BI reached out for further comment on March 24, but got no response.

Here is a timeline of the company's rise and fall:

2006: 23andMe is founded in Silicon Valley

23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki co-founded the company in 2006 with biologist Linda Avey and Paul Cusenza, who previously worked at the now-defunct Perlegen Sciences, a biotech startup that studied human genomes.

The company planted roots in Silicon Valley, where other startups like Twitter and YouTube were taking shape at the time.

"The team of three worked out of a small office in Palo Alto, complete with an overcrowded, hardworking computer server room," a company blog post says. "Scientific rigor was top of mind; the co-founders spent their early days meeting with regulators, building a robust advisory committee, and figuring out how to give people direct access to their genetic information."

Avey stepped down as co-president in 2009 and officially left the company in 2011. Cusenza departed in 2007.

2007: 23andMe secures millions in funding from Google

23andMe quickly secured funding from several companies, including Google.

A May 2007 SEC filing said Google invested $3.9 million into 23andMe, taking a minority interest. The filing also said Google cofounder Sergey Brin provided millions in interim debt financing to 23andMe.

"Prior to Google's investment in 23andMe, Sergey provided approximately $2.6 million in interim debt financing to 23andMe, which was repaid as part of this financing transaction," the filing said.

The funding coincided with Brin's marriage to Wojcicki that May. The pair, who share two children, divorced in 2015.

2007: 23andMe launched its first product for $999

23andMe launched its first product — a DNA saliva test — for sale in the United States in November 2007.

The company priced the product at $999.

Users could access information about their risk for certain diseases, their ancestry, and their inherited traits. 23andMe provides data to users through a private online account.

"We believe this information provides intriguing insights into an individual's genetics, with the goal of expanding the collective knowledge base by enabling active participation in research," Wojcicki told Reuters at the time.

However, 23andMe's growing popularity didn't come without criticism. Some consumers were concerned about privacy related to their data and whether insurers could access it to deny coverage or discriminate against certain individuals.

A 23andMe spokesperson previously told BI that user data is not shared with other entities unless given consent.

"Beyond our contracted laboratory, with which we work to process a customer's sample and deliver their results, customer information will not be shared with any other entity unless they provide us with consent to do so," a statement said.

The spokesperson added that 23andMe did not share user data with "employers, insurance companies, law enforcement agencies or any public databases."

2008: Time Magazine named 23andMe's Personal Genome Service its Invention of the Year

Despite the privacy concerns, 23andMe began to gain recognition for the work of its researchers. Time Magazine named 23andMe's Personal Genome Service its Invention of the Year in 2008.

"Although 23andMe isn't the only company selling DNA tests to the public, it does the best job of making them accessible and affordable," Time Magazine wrote.

"We are at the beginning of a personal-genomics revolution that will transform not only how we take care of ourselves but also what we mean by personal information," Time wrote. "In the past, only élite researchers had access to their genetic fingerprints, but now personal genotyping is available to anyone who orders the service online and mails in a spit sample."

The company slashed the price of its service from $999 to $399 that same year.

2009: Google makes another multimillion-dollar investment in 23andMe

Google invested $2.6 million in 23andMe again in June 2009, according to an SEC filing.

The filing mentions Brin, who was still married to Wojcicki at the time.

"Prior to Google's investment in 23andMe's Series B preferred stock financing, Sergey also invested approximately $10 million in 23andMe's convertible debt financing, which was converted into Series B preferred stock as part of this financing transaction," the filing said.

2010: 23andMe gets its first National Health Institute-funded grant

23andMe launched its first National Health Institute-funded study in 2010 after securing a grant, the company announced at the time. Specifically, the company secured an NIH Small Business Innovative Research Grant to "validate our web-based approach to pharmacogenomics research."

"The purpose of this first phase is similar to that of our first research publication: to demonstrate that we can replicate known genetic associations using the web-based survey data volunteered by our customers," 23andMe said in its announcement.

The company would later receive more grants from the NIH, including about $1.4 million in 2014.

That year, 23andMe published its first peer-reviewed study.

2011: 23andMe secures almost $31 million in its third round of funding

The company announced in January 2011 that it raised $31 million during its third round of funding after securing an additional $9 million.

MPM Capital and Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation became the newest investors in 23andMe.

2012: 23andMe lowers its price to $99, making the product more accessible

The company reduced the cost of its service to $299 in May 2012 and again to $99 later that year.

23andMe said in December 2012 that it raised more than $50 million in another round of financing, which would help the company reach its goal of 1 million customers. Investors included Israeli entrepreneur Yuri Milner, Google Ventures, MPM Capital, Brin, and Wojcicki.

At the time, the company only had about 180,000 customers.

"The Series D investment, combined with rapidly decreasing costs associated with genetic testing technologies, enables 23andMe to reduce the price of its Personal Genome Service to $99, effective immediately," the company said.

2013: FDA orders 23andMe to stop marketing its genetic health screening service

23andMe found itself in trouble with the US Food and Drug Administration in 2013.

The FDA instructed 23andMe to stop marketing its genetic health screening service in the United States until it completed the agency's regulatory review process. The company could continue selling its ancestry service.

23andMe complied with the FDA's request, meaning it only provided users with Ancestry reports and raw data.

Wojcicki discussed the FDA's regulation during an appearance at the SXSW festival in 2014.

"It has slowed up the number of people signing up," Wojcicki said, according to The Guardian.

She added: "We are pioneers. We've had a lot of ups and downs but we have lots of tenacity to push on through. It will take time, money, and effort to figure out the path forward."

The company met the FDA's standard in 2015.

"The new 23andMe experience reflected almost two years of work with regulators, our scientists, medical experts, and product designers," the company said. "The result is the first direct-to-consumer test available directly to individuals in the United States that includes reports that meet FDA requirements for being scientifically and clinically valid."

2015: The FDA authorizes 23andMe to market the Bloom syndrome carrier status report

23andMe continued to evolve its services, and in 2015, the FDA granted authorization to market its screening for Bloom syndrome, a rare genetic disorder, the company said at the time.

"This is also the first time the FDA has granted authorization to market a direct-to-consumer genetic test, and it gives 23andMe a regulatory framework for future submissions," 23andMe said in a blog post.

The FDA authorized additional reports following 2015, including BRCA1 and BRCA2 Select Variants.

2019: 23andMe slashes its workforce as consumers lose interest in DNA test kits

The company had millions of users by 2019, showing significant growth since its launch.

But demand began to wane that year as the 23andMe business model — which relied on one-time tests — faltered.

Wojcicki echoed that sentiment in a comment to Business Insider, saying, "It's a new technology, and I think it's hit a lull."

Wojcicki remained optimistic that the industry would bounce back, but 23andMe announced it was laying off 100 employees in January 2020 as sales were still down.

The CEO told CNBC at the time that factors like privacy could remain a sore point. Another reason could be consumers' fear of an economic downturn, meaning the somewhat pricey test is less of a priority.

Despite the downturn, 23andMe continued to collect investments.

In December 2020, 23andMe raised almost $82.5 million in equity funding.

2021: 23andMe goes public and reaches a valuation of over $6 billion

23andMe went public in June 2021 at $11.13 a share, marking a victory for the company after struggling with sales. Before going public, the company completed a reverse merger with Richard Branson's VG Acquisition.

Wojcicki told Business Insider at the time that her "priority is really the long term."

"The short term is obviously important for a lot of people, but everything that I do is focused on the long term. I've only looked at my stock price because I've been doing the news articles and people keep showing it to me," she said.

The company's valuation peaked at $6 billion.

2023: Some 23andMe user accounts are compromised

Concerns about privacy always plagued 23andMe, but those concerns grew after news broke in 2023 that some user data had been compromised.

The data — including birth details and names — was sold on the dark web by hackers.

23andMe confirmed that ancestry data for nearly 7 million users were accessed that December. A data breach notification filing in January 2024 said it took 23andMe five months to realize the data had been accessed.

The incident led to a class action lawsuit, which 23andMe settled for $30 million in September, according to Reuters.

The company also said in SEC filings it laid off more employees in 2023, including that June when it reduced its workforce by 9%. 23andMe laid off another 71 employees in August 2023, according to filings.

2024: 23andMe's board of independent directors resigns

Independent directors on 23andMe's board announced their resignations in a September letter addressed to Wojcicki.

Although the independent directors said they "wholeheartedly support" the company's mission, they took issue with the current business strategy.

"It is also clear that we differ on the strategic direction for the Company going forward," the letter said. "Because of that difference and because of your concentrated voting power, we believe that it is in the best interests of the Company's shareholders that we resign from the Board rather than have a protracted and distracting difference of view with you as to the direction of the Company."

2024: Wojcicki responds to consumer concerns

The company's reputation took another hit in September when an SEC filing said Wojcicki "would be open to considering third-party takeover proposals."

Wojcicki walked back that consideration in a filing later that month.

"Based on subsequent developments, it has become even clearer to me that the best path forward for the Issuer is for me to take the company private," she said.

"Accordingly, in order to update my prior statement and avoid any confusion in the market, I am no longer open to considering third-party takeover proposals for the Issuer."

However, Wojcicki's remarks about selling the company to a third-party issuer raised consumer concerns about what could happen to their data if a sale did take place.

The Atlantic reported that the sale of 23andMe could also mean the potential sale of user data. The director of cybersecurity at Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit focused on digital privacy, urged users to delete their data in a post that garnered 547,000 views.

A 23andMe spokesperson previously told BI that Wojcicki "has publicly shared she intends to take the company private, and is not open to considering third-party takeover proposals."

The statement added: "Anne has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to the company's mission and values, and to its customers, pledging to maintain 23andMe's strong security and privacy policies, including following the intended completion of the acquisition she is pursuing."

2024: The company announces a reverse stock split

In October, the company announced a 1-for-20 reverse stock split of its Class A and Class B common stock. Reverse stock splits are commonly considered signs of trouble for a company.

2024: A restructuring and layoffs are announced

23andMe in November announced it was restructuring and laying off more than 200 employees, or roughly 40% of its workforce. It also said it was ending further development of all of its therapeutics programs and "evaluating strategic alternatives" for its clinical and preclinical assets.

"We are taking these difficult but necessary actions as we restructure 23andMe and focus on the long-term success of our core consumer business and research partnerships," Wojcicki said in the announcement.

2025: 23andMe files for bankruptcy protection, and Wojcicki resigns

In March 2025, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. 23andMe will continue operating while it seeks a buyer.

"After a thorough evaluation of strategic alternatives, we have determined that a court-supervised sale process is the best path forward to maximize the value of the business," chair Mark Jensen said in a press release. It will "advance our efforts to address the operational and financial challenges we face, including further cost reductions and the resolution of legal and leasehold liabilities."

Wojcicki resigned from her role as CEO, effective immediately, but will remain on the company's board. CFO Joe Selsavage has taken over as interim CEO.

The company's stock fell about 50% on the news.

Wojcicki responded to the announcement in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

"While I am disappointed that we have come to this conclusion and my bid was rejected, I am supportive of the company and I intend to be a bidder," she wrote. "I have resigned as CEO of the company so I can be in the best position to pursue the company as an independent bidder."

"We have had many successes but I equally take accountability for the challenges we have today," her post continued. "There is no doubt that the challenges faced by 23andMe through an evolving business model have been real, but my belief in the company and its future is unwavering."

• Nvidia chips take their names from notable mathematicians and scientists.
• The company has a history of naming products after STEM pioneers.
• Here's a look at some of the historical figures whose work inspired Nvidia's chip names.

Hopper. Blackwell. Rubin.

Nvidia takes some inspiration from history when it comes to naming its AI chips.

While their nomenclature may be overshadowed by other features like their computing power or speed, their names are a nod to scientific pioneers.

Here are some of the historical figures whose groundbreaking work inspired Nvidia:

Grace Hopper

Hopper was a computer scientist and mathematician who worked on the Universal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC I), one of the first all-electronic digital computers.

She received a degree in mathematics from Vassar College, where she also taught, and her master's and doctorate degrees in mathematics from Yale University. In 1943, she enlisted in the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service and eventually rose to become a rear admiral in the Navy.

Hopper invented the first computer compiler, which turned programming instructions into code computers could read, and worked on the development of COBOL, a widely used computer language.

She also predicted computers would one day become compact, widely-used devices, as they are today, and used the word "bug" to describe computer malfunctions, according to the Navy.

In 1973, Hopper was named a distinguished fellow of the British Computer Society, making her the first woman to hold the title. She was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016.

Hopper died in 1992 at the age of 85.

Nvidia's Hopper chips powered much of the generative AI revolution of the ChatGPT era, costing roughly $40,000 and quickly becoming a a hot commodity among Big Tech giants and AI startups alike.

David Blackwell

Blackwell was a mathematician and statistician who made major contributions to topics like game theory, information theory, and probability theory.

He began college at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign at age 16.

He taught at Howard University and UC Berkeley and was the first African American inducted into the National Academy of Sciences.

One of his most notable contributions to the field is the Rao-Blackwell theorem for improving estimators.

He died in 2010 at the age of 91.

Nvidia's Blackwell chips are its most advanced to date. The company is readying the next-generation Blackwell Ultra chips.

Ada Lovelace

The daughter of the famous poet Lord Byron and Annabella Milbanke Byron, Ada Lovelace is widely regarded as the mother of computer programming.

She's best known for her translations and notes on her associate Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine.

An early programming language was also named after her, and the second Tuesday in October is designated Ada Lovelace Day, honoring women in STEM.

She died in 1852 at the age of 36.

Nvidia's Lovelace GPU architecture powered its 40-series graphics cards, which aren't as powerful as its data center chips but are used by gamers and programmers conducting on-device AI development.

Vera Rubin

Rubin was an astronomer best known for her work showing compelling evidence for the existence of dark matter.

She received her bachelor's degree in astronomy from Vassar College, her master's from Cornell University, and her doctorate from Georgetown University. She studied many galaxies and their rotation rates.

Her work was recognized with awards including the National Medal of Science and the Royal Astronomical Society's Gold Medal.

She died in 2016 at the age of 88.

Nvidia's coming Rubin AI "superchip" platform is expected to debut in the second half of 2026.

Richard Feynman

Feynman got his undergraduate degree at MIT and his Ph.D. at Princeton University. He created Feynman diagrams, graphic representations that helped calculate the probability of particle interactions.

He was recruited to work on the Manhattan Project, the US atomic bomb project in 1941, and later at the secret lab in Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Feynman was later part of the committee that investigated the Challenger space shuttle explosion.

He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965 for his work on quantum electrodynamics.

He died in 1988 at the age of 69.

Nvidia's Feynman architecture is an upcoming GPU series that hasn't been fully detailed.

• Françoise Bettencourt Meyers was the first woman to hit a $100 billion net worth.
• She inherited a one-third stake in L'Oréal from her mother.
• The 71-year-old is stepping down from the company's board of directors this year after nearly three decades.

Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, the 71-year-old granddaughter of L'Oréal founder Eugène Schueller, is leaving the company's board of directors later this year.

Bettencourt Meyers was the first woman to be worth $100 billion but has since seen her wealth fall slightly as the cosmetics company's stock fluctuates. Though she was overtaken by Walmart heiress Alice Walton, Bettencourt Meyers remains the second-richest woman in the world, with an estimated net worth of $82 billion.

Here's a look at Bettencourt Meyers' life and wealth.

Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, 71, is the granddaughter of L'Oréal founder Eugène Schueller.

Schueller, a pharmacist, founded the company that was to become L'Oréal in 1909.

His daughter and Bettencourt Meyers' mother, Liliane, inherited Schueller's fortune and control of the company upon his death in 1957.

Along with her husband, the French politician André Bettencourt, the Bettencourts were well-known in France for their glamorous parties.

But Bettencourt Meyers was less interested in the socialite lifestyle of her parents, preferring to stay in and play the piano or read, Vanity Fair reported.

Bettencourt Meyers has sat on L'Oréal's board and also chairs the family's holding company.

Bettencourt Meyers and her family have a roughly 35% stake in L'Oréal, which owns mass-market brands like Maybelline, Essie, Garnier, and, of course, L'Oréal, as well as high-end beauty companies like Urban Decay, Lancôme, and Kiehl's. L'Oréal also licenses the beauty divisions of luxury fashion houses including Yves Saint Laurent and Valentino.

She has been a director since 1997 and vice chair of the board since 2020.

The company said in February 2025 that Bettencourt Meyers doesn't intend to seek renewal of her tenure as a director once it expires in April.

Jean-Victor Meyers, the oldest of her two sons, will replace her as vice chair of the board.

Bettencourt Meyers also proposed a representative of her family's holding company, Téthys, should join the board of directors. If approved, Alexandre Benais, deputy CEO at Téthys SAS, would take the role.

Bettencourt Meyers is a published author.

The heiress wrote a book on the genealogy of the Greek gods and another with commentary on the Bible.

Bettencourt Meyers said she had a strained relationship with her mother.

Their mother-daughter relationship was strained ever since Bettencourt Meyers was a teenager.

"Françoise was heavy and slow," Bettencourt once said, per Vanity Fair. "Always one lap behind me."

Bettencourt also called Françoise "a cold child" in an interview with a French newspaper, per The New York Times.

Her relationship with her mother came to a tipping point when Bettencourt Meyers initiated a decadelong family feud over her inheritance.

In the lawsuit, Bettencourt Meyers alleged that photographer François-Marie Banier used his friendship with Liliane Bettencourt to manipulate the elderly heiress into giving him some 1.3 billion euros ($1.4 billion) of cash, art, and life insurance policies, The New York Times reported in 2009.

Bettencourt, who was diagnosed with dementia, disputed her daughter's assertion and said she freely shared her assets with Banier. 

In a 2008 letter to Banier, Bettencourt described their relationship to him, writing: "With you, I am like a mother, a lover, all the feelings pass through me. It makes me tremble," according to Vanity Fair.

Bettencourt Meyers told a French news magazine in 2009 that Mr. Banier's "objective is clear: break away my mother from our family to profit from her. I will not let it happen."

The case went to trial in 2015. Bainer was convicted of "abus de faiblesse," or "abuse of weakness."

He was sentenced to two and half years in prison and told to pay Bettencourt 158 million euros in damages.

The jail sentence and payment were later reversed in an appeal.

In 2023, Netflix released a three-part documentary, "The Billionaire, The Butler, and The Boyfriend," about the family drama.

The pair weren't on speaking terms after Bettencourt Meyers filed the criminal complaint in 2009.

"I don't see my daughter anymore and I don't wish to," Bettencourt said in a 2008 interview, according to Vanity Fair. "For me, my daughter has become something inert."

In 2011, Bettencourt was placed under the guardianship of her family due to concerns over her declining mental health. 

The lawsuit also drudged up the controversial past of Bettencourt Meyer's father, André, and her grandfather.

Bettencourt Meyers' grandfather, Eugène Schueller, had publicly commended Adolf Hitler's "dynamism" in the early years of Nazi Germany and was investigated as a Nazi collaborator after World War II ended.

Schueller was also a member of a secret society that plotted to overthrow France's republican government in the 1930s. The group, which was linked to multiple murders and bombings, was bankrolled by Schueller, who hosted its meetings at L'Oréal's headquarters.

André Bettencourt, Bettencourt Meyers' father, wrote antisemitic diatribes for the pro-German press during the war, according to Time, though he switched his allegiances and joined the Resistance. He was later decorated for his military service during World War II and went on to serve in the French government. 

While she was on the winning side of the lawsuit, Bettencourt Meyers was later investigated for allegations of bribing a witness.

The investigation stemmed from a criminal complaint filed by Banier in 2015, according to Vanity Fair. At the time, Bettencourt Meyers said the payment she made to the witness was part severance payment and part personal loan, not a bribe for the testimony.

That suit and Bettencourt Meyers' countersuit against Banier were resolved in a secret plea deal in 2016, Vanity Fair reported.

Bettencourt Meyers inherited tens of billions of dollars when her mother died in 2017, and valuable assets like this mansion in the suburbs of Paris ...

The house is located in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a wealthy suburb west of Paris. Neuilly-sur-Seine is known in France as "power suburb, a place not only of wealth but influence," according to The Independent. Over the years, it's been home to actors like Christian Clavier, Thierry Lhermitte, and Gerard Jugnot, and politician Marine Le Pen.

The Art Deco mansion is where Bettencourt spent her final days, Time reported.

... and this mansion overlooking France's Brittany coast.

The mansion was one of Bettencourt's childhood homes, The New York Times reported.

Bettencourt Meyers lived in this nearby home.

French police searched this home in 2010 as a part of the investigations surrounding the Bettencourt affair, Bloomberg reported at the time.

Bettencourt Meyers lived there with her husband Jean-Pierre Meyers.

The couple married in 1984, and Jean-Pierre Meyers is CEO of the Bettencourt Meyers family's holding company.

The couple has two adult sons, Jean-Victor and Nicolas, both of whom are on L'Oréal's board of directors.

In 2023, Bettencourt Meyers became the first woman to reach a $100 billion fortune.

Her fortune has since dropped from the triple-digit billions, though Bettencourt Meyers is still worth around $80 billion, according to Bloomberg, making her the world's second-wealthiest woman and the 18th richest person.

Bettencourt Meyers has dedicated some of her billions to philanthropy.

In April 2019, she was among several French billionaires who pledged millions after the famous Notre Dame Cathedral caught fire.

Bettencourt Meyers is also the president of the Bettencourt Schueller Foundation, the charity she and her parents founded in 1987. It issues grants to support research in the life sciences and arts projects, according to its website. 

• What do VCs look for in startup founders?
• For Arielle Zuckerberg at least, it boils down to a balance of what she calls "rizz and tiz."
• Zuckerberg, a general partner at Long Journey Ventures and sister of Mark Zuckerberg, explained her theory on a podcast.

"Rizz" will open doors for you, especially if you're a founder, says Arielle Zuckerberg.

Zuckerberg, a general partner at Long Journey Ventures and sister of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, recently talked about what her early-stage VC firm looks for in founders.

It boils down, she said, to what she calls "rizz and tiz."

"This is kind of how we think about evaluating founders at Long Journey," she said on an episode of the podcast "Sourcery" released last week. "In our investment committee meetings, we talk about whether or not this founder has the right balance of rizz and tiz."

Rizz entered the online lexicon in recent years and is short for charisma.

To Zuckerberg and Long Journey, this means knowing "Can this person recruit an amazing team, can they attract downstream funding, are they going to be a magnetic leader?" she said.

As for "tiz," it appears to be Zuckerberg's riff on "tism," an abbreviation for those on the autism spectrum that has itself become internet slang. She spoke about supporting neurodiverse founders at Long Journey.

"We believe that neurodivergence is a superpower, and we look for people that live their lives differently," she said. "I think it also represents an intensity and directness. So we want the balance of both, and we think it kind of takes both to be an amazing founder."

Zuckerberg gave some examples of founders her firm has backed who demonstrate rizz and tiz. One founder, she said, "doesn't believe in smartphones," so he uses a flip phone and a disposable camera. Another, she said, uses "special focus glasses" with slits such that he can only see his computer through them.

At the end of the day, rizz and tiz is really about "people who are living their lives differently but those people are also incredibly magnetic," she said. These people also "have the boldness to go after a really magically weird idea," she added.

On its website, Long Journey calls itself "believers in the magically weird."

"'Chase the magically weird' pushes us to do things that take guts, focus on finding outliers, question the status quo, and let our freak flags fly," it says on its values page. "We love unconventional ideas, quirky personalities, bold choices, and things other people describe as ridiculous or stupid."

"If you're a weirdo and/or you're building something crazy, we'd love to chat!" the page says.

Cyan Banister, one of the firm's co-founders, told Bloomberg that Long Journey aims to "look for those magically weird people and to find them before it becomes consensus."

"There's always a pocket of dreamers and weirdos. You just have to know where to look," Banister said.

Long Journey and Zuckerberg did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Other VCs see merit in Zuckerberg's theory too.

"Tiz is autism. Like you need to be a little bit autistic about the topic or area you're in," former Facebook VP Sam Lessin recently said on the podcast "This Week in Startups."

"Rizz gets you in the door; Tiz keeps you there," Morgan Polotan, partner at Monashee Investment Management, wrote in a post on Threads.

While hosting "SNL" in 2021, Elon Musk said he has Asperger's, an autism spectrum disorder.

Musk joked in his opening monologue that he's going to "make a lot of eye contact with the cast" and was well-versed in "running 'human' in emulation mode."

• Evan Spiegel is best known as the CEO of Snap.
• However, he was briefly listed as a VP of product at Meta on LinkedIn — as a gag by an employee.
• Meta's platforms have copied features from Snap over the years, such as Stories.

Evan Spiegel doesn't work at Meta, but if you're looking at his LinkedIn, you might have thought he did.

The Snap cofounder and CEO said in an interview with Bloomberg published Monday that one of his employees temporarily put on his profile that he was "VP Product @ Meta" as a gag. (His LinkedIn profile no longer shows that.)

The joke appears to be a dig at Meta, which has taken a few pages from Snapchat's book over the years when it comes to features.

For example, Snapchat was the first to introduce user Stories that disappear after a while, rolling out a feature in 2013 that let users post photos and videos that'd vanish after 24 hours.

Meta in 2016 unveiled its own Stories feature on Instagram, and Facebook got them the following year. WhatsApp debuted a similar feature called Status also in 2017.

Facebook offered to buy Snapchat for $3 billion in 2013, but Spiegel's company declined. The Wall Street Journal previously reported that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reached out to Spiegel in 2016 to try again.

Zuckerberg has been asked about the striking similarities between some of the companies' offerings before.

In a 2017 earnings call, he talked about what was at the time called Facebook's Camera Effects Platform.

"I think we were a little bit late to the trend initially around making cameras the center of how sharing works," he said. "But I do think at this point we're pretty much ahead in terms of the technology that we're building, and making an open platform, I think, is a big step forward. A lot of people are using these products across our family of apps. And I would expect us to continue leading the way forward on this from this point on."

Snapchat had previously unveiled animated AR selfie masks and filters.

More recently, Snapchat showed off its newest AR glasses, called Spectacles, last year, days before Zuckerberg announced Meta's competing Orion glasses.

Meta and Snap did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

• If you've heard about AI, you're probably familiar with Nvidia too.
• Booming business for the chipmaker has boosted the net worth of CEO Jensen Huang.
• Here's a look at the career rise of the Nvidia founder.

The AI arms race has been good business for Nvidia, which supplies the highly in-demand chips used by many Big Tech giants and startups alike to train AI models.

That's also been good news for Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang. In 2024, he shot into Forbes' list of the world's 10 wealthiest people as business boomed for Nvidia.

Huang and fellow Nvidia founders Curtis Priem and Chris Malachowsky planted the seed for Nvidia at a Denny's in northern California in 1993. Today, it's a household name in the AI industry, and Huang is the billionaire businessman leading it.

Here's a look at Jensen Huang's career rise and background.

Early life, education

Huang was born in Taiwan in 1963. He spent some of his childhood there and in Thailand before his parents sent Huang and his brother to the US to live with an uncle in Tacoma, Washington.

His uncle sent him to Oneida Baptist Institute in Kentucky but after Huang's parents immigrated to the US, the family lived in Oregon. He graduated from high school at age 16 before going to college. Huang got his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Oregon State University and his master's degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University.

Huang got his first job at 15. He washed dishes and bussed and waited tables at a Denny's in Portland.

Before founding Nvidia, Huang worked at computer chip manufacturer LSI Logic from 1985 to 1993 and at semiconductor company AMD, or Advanced Micro Devices, from 1984 to 1985.

Founding Nvidia, leading company as CEO

At a Denny's in 1993, Huang and his Nvidia co-founders, Curtis Priem and Chris Malachowsky, came up with the idea that would eventually lead to Nvidia's creation.

In 1999, the company released the GeForce 256, which it called the first graphics processing unit, or GPU.

Today, Nvidia is instrumental in the generative AI industry, supplying the coveted chips that tech companies use to train AI models.

Interest in Nvidia's chips amid the AI boom has pushed the company to new heights.

In one notable milestone, Nvidia's market cap passed $3 trillion in 2024 to briefly overtake Apple as the world's most valuable company.

Huang's net worth is $105.4 billion, according to Forbes.

Huang's management and leadership style sees him skipping 1-on-1 meetings, managing around 60 direct reports as CEO, giving feedback publicly, and sending his staff hundreds of emails a day.

Current and former Nvidia employees previously told BI that Huang is a hands-on boss with high expectations and meticulous attention to detail who values owning up to your mistakes.

Huang has said he has workaholic tendencies, logging 14-hour days and working on holidays.

He has a tattoo of Nvidia's logo on his shoulder, which he agreed to get when the company's stock price hit $100 per share.

Huang's black leather jacket has also become a famous part of his wardrobe — a staple piece he often wears when giving keynotes or showing off a new product.

Nvidia's other founders, meanwhile, have stayed further out of the spotlight than Huang.

Priem was Nvidia's chief technical officer from 1993 to 2003, and Malachowsky is a senior technology executive at Nvidia.

After Nvidia went public in 1999, Priem put more than three-quarters of his Nvidia shares into his Priem Family Foundation and by 2006, he'd sold the rest of his shares. He was left with a fortune of roughly $30 million, Forbes estimated in 2023.

Jensen Huang's family

Huang met his now-wife, Lori, while still attending Oregon State University. The couple share two children: Madison Huang is a director of product and technical marketing at Nvidia, and Spencer Huang is a product line manager at the company.

Huang and Lisa Su, CEO of Nvidia's rival chip giant AMD, are distant cousins.

He has a home in Silicon Valley, as Nvidia is headquartered in Santa Clara, California.

Nvidia and Jensen Huang's future

Huang has been president, CEO, and a member of Nvidia's board of directors since the company's creation. He and Nvidia haven't said much about succession planning.

He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2024 and has received the Semiconductor Industry Association's highest honor, the Robert N. Noyce Award.

In past years, The Economist has named Huang the world's best CEO, Fortune has dubbed him its Businessperson of the Year, and TIME has included him in its yearly list of the world's 100 most influential people.

As of March 2024, Huang owned roughly 3.79% of the company's outstanding shares, according to a proxy statement. He is Nvidia's largest individual shareholder.