• Uber's CEO wants to work with Tesla on robotaxis. But Tesla wants to go it alone.
• Uber partners with Waymo in Austin and will compete with Tesla's autonomous vehicle platform.
• Analysts suggest Tesla may need Uber or Lyft to scale its robotaxi operations.

Uber's CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, said he wants to work with Tesla on robotaxis — even though the electric vehicle maker isn't interested.

Speaking at the Future Investment Initiative conference in Miami on Friday, Khosrowshahi said he has discussed the topic with Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

"I've had conversations with him. At this point, they want to build it alone," Khosrowshahi said. "Life is long, but we would love to partner with them."

Khosrowshahi added that Uber and Alphabet-owned Waymo, who partner in Austin, will compete with Tesla in the autonomous vehicles market when they launch in the city.

Musk has long envisioned forming a standalone network of autonomous Teslas that would compete with ride-hailing companies like Uber.

Earlier this month, Uber said it was opening an "interest list" for Austin users who want to be the first to try Waymo robotaxis on the Uber app. Tesla unveiled its robotaxis, called Cybercabs, in October. They are expected to launch in June in Austin.

Khosrowshahi's Friday remarks came about a week after he said that he hoped Tesla would work with Uber.

In an interview published on February 14, Khosrowshahi said, "No one wants to compete against Tesla or Elon, if you can help it."

Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Door open for Tesla

Musk has previously said Tesla would create its own ride-hailing platform — a cross between Uber and Airbnb apps — for riders to call a driverless car. While a portion of the fleet would be owned by Tesla, individual Tesla customers would also have the option to add their vehicles.

Despite these plans, Khosrowshahi's Friday remarks suggested he was willing to keep the door open for a partnership with Tesla.

"It makes a lot of economic sense" for Tesla drivers to use Uber as a platform, he said. "What we bring is demand to the AV ecosystem when demand often is quite variable."

Analysts have stressed this, too.

In a note published on the day the Cybercab was unveiled, Jefferies analysts wrote that Tesla may struggle without a partner like Uber or Lyft.

Tesla "potentially underappreciates the obstacles to scaling a robotaxi fleet" such as the technology, asset ownership, regulation, fleet management, and demand required to run an operation at scale, the analysts wrote. "We also believe TSLA could struggle to scale fleet operations without offering access to demand via Uber/Lyft."

Independent analyst Dan O'Dowd, a previous Musk critic, said that the contrast between Tesla and robotaxi competitors like Waymo was "stark."

"Until Tesla robotaxis are transporting 100,000 paying customers a week around major American cities like Waymo does, Tesla robotaxi is nothing more than the latest work of fiction to come out of the Warner Bros. Studio," he said in a note at the time.

Investor pressure

Uber has faced pressure from investors to ramp up its autonomous vehicle strategy, and shareholders have been closely monitoring developments with self-driving competitors.

In December, Uber's stock plunged 10% after Waymo announced its expansion to Miami — without mentioning Uber.

In some cities, like Austin, Phoenix, and Atlanta, Waymo rides are only available on the Uber app. In Los Angeles and San Francisco, Waymo is available on its own booking platform.

Days after the Waymo expansion news, Uber's stock fell nearly 6% when its AV partner, Cruise, announced it was shutting down operations.

Following the Cruise news, the ride-hailing platform's chief financial officer, Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah, tried to quell investor concerns. He said the company was well positioned to be a demand aggregator for AVs and that it still believes AVs are critical for its growth.

Besides Waymo, Uber has self-driving partnerships with Tesla's biggest competitor, Chinese EV maker BYD, and with AV company Aurora Innovation.

Uber's stock is up over 30% so far this year.

Twenty-two hours into tropical paradise, the money nerds started getting emotional.

In November, four dozen Americans and Australians converged in the spiritual heart of Bali, Indonesia, at a luxury resort filled with banana trees and the sounds of passing sheep. The crew was united by their commitment to the Financial Independence, Retire Early movement.

FIRE's promise: Embark on a super-saving path to ditch corporate drudgery ahead of schedule and retire on your terms.

On the first day of the retreat, we sipped on coconut water and focused on introductions. Attendees at the five-day, $1,800 retreat came largely from Big Tech, finance, and small businesses, a mix of five- and six-figure paychecks. At 22, I was the youngest person in attendance — by far. The other participants ranged from 35 to nearly 60 and included both those on the path to early retirement and those who had left their jobs years ago.

On the second day, people started opening up about what brought them to the island. This retreat came, like any financial product, with caveats and nondisclosures. During small-group sessions, we were instructed not to interrupt or ask follow-up questions. I agreed not to write details that might identify specific people.

Inside a bamboo-paneled room with the AC blasting, wooden chairs were arranged in circles of four, so close that our knees almost touched. The organizer, a retired teacher from Texas who moved to Bali, talked about mending her relationship with an estranged parent. Next up, her friend — a prominent financial independence influencer — described a painful interaction with his tween daughter.

Then the first member of our four-member group was up.

She spent a minute looking down at her flip-flops. Though she had been all smiles up to this point, when she finally spoke, she teared up and told us about a childhood family trauma.

The next man kept the emotional momentum going by talking about his loneliness. The third member of our quartet confessed how his obligations to his parents sometimes felt like a burden. I had rarely seen men cry, but here two did so one after the other. Last up, I thought about what troubled me, a 22-year-old with a dream job, a happy family, and good friends. I told them I was anxious that my sister's going overseas to college next year could pull us apart. I had never said that out loud.

Throughout that half hour, people sobbed, patted each other's shoulders, and, like me, struggled to show their solidarity without words.

The confessional set the stage for nearly a week of conversations — about stocks and Excel models, yes, but far more about personal growth and life optimization, replete with phrases like "accountability buddies."

After six months of writing about FIRE, I knew isolation to be one of the common downsides of retiring early. When all of your friends have a 9-to-5, nobody's around for lunch on a Tuesday.

At this retreat, I saw how deeply those feelings cut through a global community that often doesn't feel like a community at all. FIRE adherents need more than a lunch buddy — they're yearning for friends who won't shoot down their seemingly far-fetched plans, like retiring at 35.

"Any time I bring up net worth, my friends think I'm bragging," a five-figure employee with a job she hates told me over dinner. "Here I have people who are so much further than me in their journeys that I can talk about money openly."

Amy Minkley, the organizer who lives in Bali, said she came to appreciate the value of live, long events — not just a monthly happy hour or Zoom hang — in 2021 after attending her first retreat. Minkley had grappled with money issues since her parents' divorce during her childhood. She took on two jobs as a teenager to help her struggling mother.

"I felt like I met my tribe," she said about attending her first event. "I was so moved by the people that stayed up late with me and really counseled me through some big money scarcity issues."

Over the next few years, advice from new friends she made at these Bali retreats helped her sort her aging parents' long-term care.

"People don't often get that vulnerable until they've been around each other for multiple days," said Minkley, who retired at 44. "There's just something so valuable to be able to have conversations about money in real life."

Escaping judgment

Many outsiders associate the FIRE movement with fun-eschewing cheapskates.

Early evangelists, like the blogger Mr. Money Mustache, preached about living a bare-bones life to save as much as possible, then quitting your job the second you hit a certain threshold.

"There's been a lot of judgment over the years," a woman who started her path to FIRE in 2017 told me. "There's a lot of people that think that it doesn't work."

One American said she stopped talking about personal finance with her friends. They told her that they thought the FIRE community was a cult and that she was depriving herself.

"They just don't have the discipline to save and invest, so they think retiring early is impossible," the woman said.

"I still go out, I still travel, hell I even still drink Starbucks occasionally," she said. "It's hard to convince people that it's not about deprivation — it's about deciding what you value and spending on those things."

Over dinner with a Balinese fire dance and spicy Thai food, two women — both serial Financial Independence retreat attendees — told me their loved ones associated retiring early with laziness or lack of ambition.

Others said they needed someone outside their regular circle to give them permission to take the big step, whether it be to retire, to quit, or to actually spend money. A small-business owner told me she made two of the biggest decisions in her life — to start a business and to get a divorce — at similar events. She credits the phone-light, nature-heavy long weekends centered on Financial Independence, or FI, that feel more like adult summer camp than a financial workshop.

One woman in her 50s, who suffered from what's known in FIRE-land as "I'll resign next year" syndrome, asked a trusted person at this year's retreat to run through her finances to see whether she could retire. Back home in New York, a financial advisor had quoted her nearly $3,000 to do the same.

"This community is worth every penny," she said after a loud, late-night game of spoons.

FI influencers and Gen Xers who had retired years ago led breakout sessions with catchy names like "Financial Independence Next Endeavor" to talk about how to retire meaningfully.

The early retirees recommended creating a bank account to spend solely on experiences with friends and family. The session leader told us one of the best trips he had ever taken was last year's $20,000, 11-day cruise from Greece to Italy, with his mom and his adult daughter. His "fun bucket" helped him ditch the frugality mindset.

In an exercise about how to introduce yourself without mentioning work, a "FI-curious" couple with adult children struggled to talk about themselves. They had prioritized building their business for the past several years. They didn't know who they were without work — or where they would go if they decided to retire early.

'Accountability buddies'

On the last day, our 50-person group sat in a circle sporting a mix of loose tank tops and uneven tans. We shared one thing we promised to do to improve our lives after getting home. To keep on track, we were directed to find "accountability buddies."

One woman promised to talk to her FIRE-wary partner about her desire to move abroad. A business owner broke down and confessed that her work felt like a prison so she would consider hiring help. A couple with young kids said they would prioritize their sidelined marriage — though the two finance whizzes had recently hit nearly $2 million in net worth, they had never considered shelling out for household help or a full-time nanny.

"It's a cautionary tale," the husband said. "When the kids grow up and they leave, you look at each other and you realize you're two different people."

One man, whom I had always seen laughing and surrounded by others, teared up, saying he was going to try to forge more meaningful friendships.

When I checked in with some attendees in the weeks after the retreat, they told me their accountability buddies had stayed in touch. Some, like the couple with young kids, were following through on their improvement pledge — the duo had hired someone for household tasks and were trying to find an au pair.

On the eve of my 23rd birthday, I'm not gunning to retire by 30. Whether I have two or four decades of work ahead of me, the long weekend of drinking the coconut water made me want to invest in meaningful connections, not just my brokerage account.

I'll have my 30s and 40s to grow my career and net worth. But I need to enjoy friends and family now, while everyone is still fit and healthy. In the past three months, I have said yes to more activities and taken the initiative to plan others — a new tactic, because I often waited for loved ones to show they cared by asking me first.

And while I love my job as a journalist, I'm thinking more about who I am beyond it. As a kid, I dreamed of the hobbies I could pursue when I had my own time and money, untethered from school obligations. Now, I have no more excuses — and my accountability buddy is waiting.

• United Airlines reported a drop in government employee travel post-Trump inauguration.
• Layoffs and buyouts led by DOGE are hitting federal travel.
• Government employee travel makes up 2% of the company's business, United's chief financial officer said.

The chief financial officer of United Airlines said that government employee travel "has fallen off" since President Donald Trump's inauguration.

Government travel makes up 2% of United's business, said Mike Leskinen at a Barclays conference on Wednesday.

United made almost $52 billion in total passenger revenue in 2024, so even a minor decline in government passengers could set it back by millions of dollars.

"I don't know how long that's going to be persistent, but it quickly gets filled up with other demand for our business," the CFO said. "But we have seen some slowing in government sales."

United's stock has risen 142% in the last year on post-pandemic travel rebounding and a strong international flight slate.

Under a law in place since 1974, federal government employees can only travel on airlines owned by an American company, regardless of cost and convenience. American-owned carriers include United, Delta Air Lines, Southwest, and Alaska Airlines.

Government employee travel has likely fallen because of the Department of Government Efficiency-led mass layoffs and employee buyouts across US government agencies. Trump and Elon Musk, who heads DOGE, have said the moves are meant to improve productivity and slash federal spending.

About 75,000 federal employees accepted the buyout offer, the Office of Management and Budget said last week. That made up 3.75% of the federal government's 2 million people workforce, under the White House's goal of 5% to 10%. Over 9,000 employees from the US Agency for International Development were put on administrative leave earlier this month.

The United CFO's comments come as other companies with federal government customers are trying to reassure investors that their bottom line isn't at risk.

Earlier this month, Craig Safian, the chief financial officer of Gartner, told investors that US federal government contracts accounted for about $270 million in contract value last year — 5% of the total business. Safian said government changes may affect business in the short term.

Gartner has four contracts, worth around $1 million in total, listed on a DOGE webpage that details cuts made to various federal agencies.

United Airlines and Gartner did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Correction: February 20, 2025 — An earlier version of this story misstated Mike Leskinen's role. He is the chief financial officer, not the CEO.

• Sarah Lesselbaum joined the Financial Independence, Retire Early movement in 2018.
• Last year, she made over $70,000 by working part-time and owning a business.
• She said saving and investing gave her peace of mind to spend on the things and people she loves.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sarah Lesselbaum, a 44-year-old in Delray Beach, Florida. It has been edited for length and clarity. Business Insider has verified her financial and career history.

I first heard about FIRE — the Financial Independence, Retire Early movement — when I went down a Reddit thread rabbit hole in 2018.

I've always been a saver, and I had an emergency fund, but discovering FIRE helped me identify my next financial goals. Most importantly, I hated my job and how few days I had to myself. I wanted to quit as quickly as possible. I never thought it was possible before this and was convinced I would have to work into my sixties.

I began tracking my net worth and spending. I also started investing more seriously. I had gotten poor investment advice from my bosses at work — I was invested in a lot of different things and the expense was high. One of my first steps was putting my savings into broad index funds.

I started my own business

My parents were not the most financially responsible people. My father worked in real estate and his income was sporadic — he never saved during the great months to handle things during slower times.

I never considered freelancing or starting my own business because of the anxiety of not having a guaranteed paycheck every two weeks.

But meeting people who had retired early and understanding the calculations behind early retirement gave me the confidence to start my own business as a mobile notary in Florida. When I told my workplace about wanting to quit in 2022, they asked me to stay on part time.

Understanding the math helped me realize that retiring early is not just for people making six figures. I make five figures working both jobs — I made $36,600 last year from my notary business and $37,000 in my part-time job.

I work my part time job two days a week, or about 16 hours, and spend three to four hours a week on my business.

Last year was the first time I came close to earning as much as I did when I worked full time. Having half my income come from my own business gives me the freedom to take more days off and travel for longer.

My retirement saving plan

Since exploring FIRE in 2018, I have accelerated my savings and investments.

As a small-business owner, my income is sporadic, but I have put between 20% to 40% of my annual income into my retirement account. I only had $33,300 in my retirement account in 2018. Since 2020, I have put a total of $145,000 toward my retirement.

I hit $300,000 in investments this year, and I celebrate each milestone in small ways. I have a paper tree I get to color in every time I get $10,000, and I text my friends when I get to color in the next section.

In my bathroom, I have a piece of paper taped up that says I will retire with at least $1 million in savings by my 55th birthday. I still want to retire by 50, which I will hit in the next six years. Tracking my spending has shown me I have been spending a bit more in the last two years and may have to delay retiring, which I am OK with.

I'll be able to live on somewhere between $40,000 and $60,000 a year, which I extended from a strict $40,000 because I want to be more flexible.

Any changes to the Affordable Care Act would also set my FIRE goals back, and I would have to return to a full time job. My medications cost $12,000, and I can't afford them without insurance.

FIRE changed my mindset on spending

I'm always worried about not having enough money. I lost my job in 2013. After that, I became obsessed with saving.

But having a savings and investment strategy helped me open up my purse strings for things I love. In November, I flew to Bali, Indonesia, for a five-day FIRE retreat and followed that with an expensive trip to London to watch one of my favorite actors perform live in a play.

It also changed my mindset toward prioritizing comfort over frugality. I recently remodeled my whole kitchen and bought four new tires for my car on a whim instead of temporary fixes because of an upcoming road trip. I unexpectedly spent $1,200 on my car in the last few days without freaking out or crying. Having separate accounts, like one for emergency expenses, gave me a piece of mind I did not have before I got on the FIRE path.

It's given me the ability to care for the people I love. I've been able to help my father plan his finances and have started investing for my special needs niece so she has a lump sum to get her started in the event that her single dad dies. Having savings means I'm able to take her kid brother to Disney World and other parks each year, an experience he would not get otherwise.

I'm still frugal and make sacrifices to keep my savings rate high, like spending 45 minutes on Amazon comparing prices and skipping frequent pub visits with my friends. Instead, I have shifted to spending on what I really value.

• The electric vehicle maker Nikola has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, it said Wednesday.
• Executives said in October the EV maker had enough cash to operate only until 2025's first quarter.
• Nikola faced fraud allegations in 2020, leading to investigations and its founder's conviction.

The troubled electric truck maker Nikola has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, the company said Wednesday.

Nikola's CEO, Steve Girsky, said in a statement that "various market and macroeconomic factors" had affected the company's financial situation and led to the bankruptcy filing.

"In recent months, we have taken numerous actions to raise capital, reduce our liabilities, clean up our balance sheet and preserve cash to sustain our operations," he said.

"Unfortunately, our very best efforts have not been enough to overcome these significant challenges, and the board has determined that Chapter 11 represents the best possible path forward under the circumstances," he added.

This type of bankruptcy protection allows a company to reorganize and keep the business open as it pays creditors over time.

Nikola said it also applied for authorization to sell its business, adding that it would keep operating during the bankruptcy process. The company said it had $47 million in cash to fund its activities.

Its stock has fallen from more than $30 in early 2024 to about $0.70 now — a fall of more than 95%. Shares were down almost 60% in premarket trading Wednesday.

The stock dropped 28% in a single day earlier this month following reports that it might file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

The company, which went public in June 2020, has a history of financial and operational challenges. On a third-quarter earnings call in October, Nikola, which lost nearly $200 million that quarter, said that it had enough cash to run its business only until the first quarter of 2025 and was exploring bringing in partners.

The company shipped 90 trucks in the third quarter, up from three in the same period in 2023.

In 2020, Nikola was valued at $34 billion before generating any revenue.

In September 2020, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice launched investigations after a short-seller firm, Hindenburg Research, released a report accusing Nikola of being "an intricate fraud" under its founder and then-CEO, Trevor Milton.

Milton denied the allegations, calling the report a "hit job for short sale profit." He resigned from his position as executive chair the same month. Girsky, a General Motors alum, took over as CEO in August 2023.

In September 2023, Milton was sentenced to four years in prison after being convicted of fraud. A year later, he was ordered to pay Nikola nearly $168 million for making misleading statements about the company to the public.

Correction: February 19, 2025 — An earlier version of this story misstated the number of trucks shipped by Nikola in the third quarters of 2023 and 2024. It was three and 90, respectively, not 3,000 and 90,000.

• Baidu made its AI model Ernie 4.5 open source, inspired by DeepSeek's success.
• CEO Robin Li previously said closed-source models were more powerful and economical.
• Baidu's shares surged last week after announcing its AI chatbot will be free from April 1.

The CEO of Chinese tech giant Baidu says DeepSeek's virality pushed the company to make its own artificial intelligence model open source.

Open-source models allow for the free and open sharing of software to anyone for any purpose. DeepSeek, an emerging Chinese startup, launched an open-sourced AI model in January, rattling US tech and AI companies. Third-party tests showed the model outperformed its peers from OpenAI, Meta, and other top developers, and the company said it was built for less money.

"One thing we learned from DeepSeek is that open-sourcing the best models can greatly help adoption," Robin Li, Baidu's CEO, said on an earnings call on Tuesday. "When the model is open source, people naturally want to try it out of curiosity, which helps drive broader adoption."

Baidu announced last week that it would make its latest AI model — Ernie 4.5 — open-source from June 30. The news marks a reversal of Li's belief that large language models should not be open-sourced.

The CEO previously said that closed-source models are generally more powerful and economical than open-source ones. In an interview last year with Chinese media outlet Yicai, he said that open-source models are a good fit for academia, but not for businesses.

Other executives, including the CEO of Mistral and Meta's chief AI scientist, have touted DeepSeek's success as a win for open-source models.

Baidu on a tear

As competition in the chatbot space intensifies, Baidu also announced on Thursday that it would make its AI chatbot free from April 1. The company cited better technology and reduced costs.

Hong Kong-listed Baidu shares surged nearly 12% before closing 5.7% higher on the day of the chatbot announcement.

In late 2023, months after Ernie was released, Baidu started charging 59.90 renminbi, or $8.20, for premium search features.

"Ernie 4.5 will be our best model ever. And we would like to have our users and customers try them out more easily than before," Li said on the earnings call on Tuesday.

Baidu faces fierce competition from competitors, including Alibaba's Qwen and ByteDance's Doubao 1.5 Pro. Search rival Tencent announced last week that it would integrate DeepSeek into its WeChat messaging platform.

Baidu's move to open-source and make its chatbot free came days before Chinese leader Xi Jinping's Monday meeting with the country's tech moguls, signaling his support to revive the sector. The meeting included gaming giant Tencent CEO Pony Ma, electric vehicle maker BYD CEO Wang Chuanfu, and Huawei CEO Ren Zhengfei. Baidu's Li did not appear to attend the high-profile event.

Baidu is also part of a recent stock rally for Chinese tech firms, which are making a comeback after Beijing's pandemic-era crackdown on Big Tech.

On Tuesday, Baidu reported it doubled its third-quarter profit to $711 million, compared to the year earlier. Revenue dropped 2% to $4.67 billion in the quarter ending in December, beating analyst estimates of $4.3 billion.

Its New York-listed shares slid 7.5% after hours on Tuesday following the earnings results.

• Groq's CEO said the company came close to running out of money a few years ago.
• The semiconductor startup, founded by ex-Google engineers, cut most employees' salaries in favor of equity.
• Groq recently secured $1.5 billion from Saudi Arabia to expand AI chip delivery to the country.

Semiconductor startup Groq was once so close to going broke that the CEO took inspiration from the US's fundraising during World War II.

Jonathan Ross, who founded the company in 2016 with a group of former Google engineers, said that it took seven years to find a product that would sell.

When a cash crunch approached, the CEO told his employees, "'We're going to run out of money. We need you to trade salary for equity,'" Ross said in an episode of The Twenty Minute VC podcast uploaded on Monday.

He likened the ask to World War II bonds, through which governments asked citizens to help finance their military efforts amid a depressed economy.

"We literally took pictures of the war bonds and we put Groq Bonds on it instead," he said.

Ross said it was an "intense" decision because people who had left their careers elsewhere and had families were banking on him. He said that they were worried everyone would leave — but 80% of employees participated. The cash compensation reduction helped Groq stay afloat before the startup raised the first portion of a $300 million fundraising round.

In 2021, the AI hardware and software company closed a $300 million funding round, co-led by Tiger Global Management and D1 Capital.

Last week, Grok inked a deal for $1.5 billion from Saudi Arabia to expand delivery of its advanced AI chips to the Middle Eastern country. In August, the company was valued at $2.8 billion after it raised $640 million from a round led by BlackRock, Cisco Investments, and Samsung Catalyst Fund.

Paying employees partially in equity instead of all cash is common for both public and private tech companies. These shares encourage employee retention and serve as a performance incentive. Employees often trade higher cash compensation at established companies for lower cash and equity options at a startup, betting the equity could soar.

Early-stage startups sometimes temporarily reduce cash compensation in favor of equity in the company when they are in danger of running out of money. Grok's CEO is one of the few business leaders who has been public about the decision.

"If you lean towards that vulnerability, people are often going to go with you," Ross said on Monday about his employees sticking with Groq.

Some of the world's largest startups, including OpenAI, Stripe, and SpaceX, have allowed employees to sell their shares through tender offers, letting them cash out even though the company opts to stay private or does not want to be acquired. A tender offer gives employees of private companies a chance to sell a certain number of shares at a fixed price during a limited timeframe.

• Apple and Google brought TikTok back to their app stores for US users on Thursday night.
• TikTok had been unavailable to download in the US since January.
• TikTok's app was removed due to a divest-or-ban law signed by former President Joe Biden.

Apple and Google restored TikTok to their US app stores on Thursday night.

The app had been unavailable on the app stores since last month to comply with a law requiring it to be banned in the US unless its owner, ByteDance, divested from it.

Bloomberg reported it was restored after US Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote to Apple assuring the company it would not face fines for doing so.

Apple and TikTok did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A representative for Google confirmed TikTok was back in the Google Play app store.

TikTok went dark for a couple of hours in the US leading up to January 20. But it was brought back online after President Donald Trump signed an executive order on his inauguration day that delayed the ban by 75 days.

Bloomberg reported the app was restored to the stores after US Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote to Apple and Google saying they would not face penalties for hosting it.

Apple and TikTok did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A representative for Google confirmed TikTok was back in the Google Play app store.

Trump said he would be open to Tesla CEO Elon Musk or Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison buying TikTok to keep it operating in the country and said that the US should own half of the app. Earlier this month, Musk said that he does not plan to buy TikTok. "I usually build companies from scratch," Musk said.

Last year, the bill to ban TikTok received bipartisan support in the House and Senate due to national security concerns with parent company ByteDance's Chinese ownership. ByteDance spent months challenging the law that required it to be divested or banned from the US before January 19.

On January 17, the Supreme Court upheld the ban.

Apple has also cut a page that listed the ByteDance apps that were taken down.

The Google restoration comes days after TikTok announced an Android package kit that allows users to download TikTok and TikTok Lite to bypass the ban.

Rivals and upstarts pounce

In the week after TikTok was removed from app stores, sellers on eBay and Facebook Marketplace listed used iPhones for thousands of dollars above their retail prices, saying that the phones come with the TikTok app pre-installed.

Secondhand sellers were not the only one capitalizing on TikTok's ban. Meta-owned Instagram announced the March 13 release of a new video editing application called Edits, a direct competitor to TikTok and CapCut, a day after the TikTok ban went into effect.

Pinterest also circulated a pitch deck to woo advertisers from TikTok, Business Insider previously reported.

During TikTok's brief absence, users flocked to some alternatives, including Clapper and Chinese app RedNote.

• Nissan and Honda said they canceled their $50 billion merger
• The merger would have created the world's third-largest automaker.
• Both Japanese companies face declining sales and a slow transition to EVs.

Nissan and Honda called off a $50 billion merger that would have formed one of the world's largest car companies.

The Japanese automakers said on Thursday they scrapped the deal, announced in December, "to prioritize speed of decision-making and execution of management measures" in an "increasingly volatile" market.

The companies said they would continue to work within a "strategic partnership."

Nissan CEO Makoto Uchida said Honda's desire to make his company a subsidiary rather than a partner played a key role in the deal's collapse.

"While both companies have a long history, we were not sure whether this would reflect our autonomy or allow us to demonstrate our potential or strength," he told a press conference.

Both companies released earnings on Thursday shortly after the deal's collapse.

Honda reported a 25% rise in pre-tax profit in the latest quarter, buoyed by strong US sales and its high-performing motorcycle business.

It still faces a major headache in China, where sales collapsed almost 40% in the nine months to December, but its financial position looks decidedly more rosy than its rival.

Nissan's profits crashed to 5.1 billion yen ($33 million) for the nine months to December, down from 325 billion yen ($2.1 billion) in the same period for 2023. It projected an annual loss of 80 billion yen ($519 million).

A scarcity of electric models has seen Nissan lose market share in China to local rivals, while its US sales have also suffered due to a lack of hybrid options and its EV's failure to qualify for $7,500 government tax credits.

Nissan stock has fallen about 25% over the past year. After being about the same size as Honda a decade ago, its market capitalization is now about a fifth of its rival. Honda stock is down about 15% in the same period.

Uchida is now racing to execute a turnaround plan that will involve cutting 9,000 jobs globally. He warned that all options were on the table to ensure the storied automaker's survival.

"Given the latest performance of the company and the changing environment, it is essential to explore all the options without taboo and carry out a deeper structural reform," Uchida said.

Nissan gave more details about its restructuring plans on Thursday, unveiling plans to cut 6,500 jobs at the company's factories in Tennessee, Mississippi, and Thailand.

It also plans to cut global vehicle production by 1 million to 4 million in the 2026 financial year.

Tariffs headache

Both Nissan and Honda also face a looming headache in the form of potential US tariffs on vehicles imported from Mexico and Canada, where the two companies have factories.

Uchida said Nissan would consider moving production from Mexico to other regions if the tariffs go ahead after the temporary suspension expires in March.

Honda vice president Shinji Aoyama said the automaker was racing to export vehicles made in Canada and Mexico into the US before the waiver expired.

The breakdown of the Honda deal leaves Nissan looking for investment elsewhere. The chairman of Apple supplier Foxconn said the Taiwanese firm was considering buying the 36% stake in Nissan owned held by France's Renault.

Private equity firm KKR is also considering an investment in Nissan, Bloomberg reported.

• Europe should keep AI models open source or risk falling behind, said Meta's chief AI scientist.
• Open-source AI models allow for the free and open sharing of software to anyone for any purpose.
• Yann LeCun said that an open-source model allows everyone to benefit because progress is faster.

Europe should keep artificial intelligence models open source or risk falling behind, said Meta's chief AI scientist.

Yann LeCun said that Europe and some countries are trying to make open-source models illegal because they want to stay ahead of political rivals, which is a "huge mistake."

He made the comments during his presentation at the AI Action Summit in Paris on Monday.

"When you do research in secret, you fall behind," the French-American computer scientist said. "The rest of the world will go open source and will overtake you. That's currently what's happening."

Open-source AI models allow for the free and open sharing of software to anyone for any purpose.

LeCun has been a strong advocate for open-source large language models and has reiterated that these systems should not be controlled by a small number of people or companies. He said that an open-source model allows everyone to benefit because progress is faster.

"We cannot afford to have those systems come from a handful of companies from the West Coast of the US or China," LeCun said on Monday.

His comments follow the late-January release of an AI model from DeepSeek, an emerging Chinese AI startup, which rattled US tech and AI companies. Third-party tests showed the model outperformed its peers from OpenAI, Meta, and other top developers, and the company said it was built for less money.

DeepSeek's R1 model is open source, which lets others download and build on top of it.

"DeepSeek has profited from open research and open source (e.g. PyTorch and Llama from Meta)," the chief scientist wrote in a Threads post in January. "They came up with new ideas and built them on top of other people's work."

Meta's AI models, called Llama, are mostly open-source, which LeCun has advocated for at the company. OpenAI, originally founded as an open-source AI company, has more recently shifted to closed-source models.

European AI companies that use open-source models include French startup Mistral and Germany's Aleph Alpha.

Both companies have criticized European proposals to regulate foundational model makers. Legislators in their home countries and in Italy have pushed for a framework in which model makers are allowed to self-regulate so they can compete with US tech giants.

European Union's Artificial Intelligence Act, approved in 2024, aims to combat the risk associated with powerful AI technology. Most recently, there has been debate about how to regulate foundation models like large language models under the act.

• ASML's CEO advises people focus on breathing before a big presentation.
• Other executives, including Marc Benioff and Ray Dalio, have long evangelized about meditation.
• ASML, a key player in semiconductor manufacturing, is facing geopolitical challenges in China.

Dutch semiconductor giant ASML's CEO has a simple piece of advice for anyone going into a big presentation: inhale and exhale.

"Watch the way you are going to breathe for the first 30 seconds," Christophe Fouquet said on a Norges Bank podcast posted on Wednesday. "If you breathe too fast, then your presentation will go wrong very quickly."

The CEO most recently spoke at a series of interviews at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January.

Fouquet highlighted some activities that help him avoid stress: listening to music, playing sports, and spending time with his kids.

Salesforce's CEO Marc Benioff and Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio are among other executive-level advocates for mindfulness and meditation. Benioff has said that he starts each day by meditating for 30 to 60 minutes.

"I'm grateful to have learned how to meditate 30 years ago because I learned how to stop the inner critic," Benioff wrote on X in 2019.

Dalio has called his meditation practice — which he started in 1969, even before founding his hedge fund — "the single most important reason for whatever success I've had."

ASML, Europe's second-largest tech company, is known for making large lithography machines needed to produce some high-end chips. Its biggest customers are chip manufacturers TSMC, Samsung, and Intel.

Fouquet, who has been the CEO since April 2024, is leading ASML through the artificial intelligence boom and a period plagued by uncertainty over geopolitical tensions between the US and China. He has worked at ASML since 2008.

The $282 billion company has been under pressure from the Dutch and US governments to further restrict sales of its technology to China — one of its biggest markets — over security concerns about AI and other technologies.

ASML's shares are down nearly 20% in the past year, due to weakening demand from chipmakers.

• On a recent podcast, Affirm's CEO highlighted the importance of empathy during layoffs.
• Max Levchin said he learned from the past that direct interaction during layoffs helped everyone.
• Good company culture can soften the impact of layoffs, the serial entrepreneur said.

Affirm's CEO said one piece of advice has helped him conduct layoffs empathetically: Get on the ground floor with employees.

Max Levchin, the PayPal cofounder who now leads buy-now, pay-later company Affirm, said he wanted to "run and hide" the first time he orchestrated layoffs.

"I didn't know what I was doing and I was terrified of owning the responsibility that I screwed up," he said on an episode of The Twenty Minute VC podcast uploaded on Wednesday.

Levchin said he learned that helping people pack their boxes and being with departing employees was cathartic and beneficial for both parties.

A friend at the company told him: "You can play this from the comfort of your office — or in the middle of the floor that's crying. Go be with the people. You'll feel better in the end and they'll feel better in the end."

Affirm cut 16% of its workforce, or 485 people, in 2023, and about 140 jobs in February last year. The company was founded in 2012 and went public in 2021.

Levchin, a serial entrepreneur, said that company culture also plays a big role in how layoffs affect morale. He said that employees who were let go told him they understood why the dismissals needed to happen and they hoped to come back.

"If the culture of the company is great, the blow is much softer," he said. "People understand that you tried with every possible strategic or tactical idea to not have to go through this."

Some business leaders have been praised for how they handled layoffs.

Brian Chesky, the CEO of Airbnb, said that he called the heads of other companies to help some of the 1,900 employees who were laid off in 2020 get rehired.

"We created an alumni directory where if you were laid off, you could opt into a public directory, we publish your information, and we point recruiters to your information," he said in 2023 about the 2020 cut. "We ended up getting hundreds of thousands of recruiters and people visiting those profiles, and a lot of those people got rehired."

Poorly-handled retrenchments have also made headlines, especially since the post-pandemic tech exodus.

In 2021, Vishal Garg, the CEO of online mortgage startup Better, was villainized for his handling of a mass layoff. Garg fired 900 people in a three-minute Zoom call, sparking outrage internally and externally. Company insiders said that the CEO's leadership style was profane and unorthodox, Business Insider previously reported.

In an apology letter sent to employees a week after, Garg said that he had failed to show "respect and appreciation" in the call, and said he "blundered the execution."

• John Schulman has left Anthropic roughly six months after joining the company.
• Schulman joined Anthropic to focus on AI alignment after nine years at OpenAI.
• Anthropic was founded by ex-OpenAI staff with the aim of prioritizing AI safety.

OpenAI cofounder John Schulman has left rival artificial intelligence firm Anthropic, a job he held for about six months.

"We are sad to see John go but fully support his decision to pursue new opportunities and wish him all the very best," Anthropic's chief science officer Jared Kaplan said in a statement to Business Insider.

The Information first reported the departure. Schulman did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Schulman left OpenAI, where he worked for nine years, in August. In a note sent to the ChatGPT-maker's employees at the time, he said he was joining Anthropic to deepen his focus on AI alignment — the process of steering human values and goals into large language models.

"I've made the difficult decision to leave OpenAI. This choice stems from my desire to deepen my focus on AI alignment, and to start a new chapter of my career where I can return to hands-on technical work," Schulman said in a statement on X at the time. "I've decided to pursue this goal at Anthropic."

Schulman was part of a string of high-level departures from OpenAI last year, including chief technology officer Mira Murati and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever. Jan Leike, who co-led OpenAI's superalignment group — a team that focuses on making its AI systems align with human interests — left the company for Anthropic in May.

Anthropic was founded by sibling duo Dario and Daniela Amodei, former OpenAI employees who left in 2020 to launch their own AI startup that prioritized AI safety and responsible development. Claude is the company's flagship language model and a direct competitor to ChatGPT. The pair are part of at least 23 former OpenAI employees that have left the startup to launch their own companies.

Correction: February 6, 2025 — An earlier version of this story misspelled Mira Murati's last name.

• Paul Graham advised Elon Musk to work with the government carefully because it is not "just a company."
• Musk's actions mirror how he worked in 2022 when he bought Twitter, now X.
• DOGE aims to cut $1 billion to $2 billion from government spending, Musk has said.

Paul Graham, the founder of the startup accelerator Y Combinator, cautioned Elon Musk about his work with the Department of Government Efficiency.

"I'm generally sympathetic to what you're doing. But I hope you will take your time and do it carefully. This isn't just a company," Graham wrote on X during a back-and-forth with Musk on Tuesday.

Silicon Valley leaders have long subscribed to the "move fast and break things" leadership philosophy. Musk, who is leading DOGE under the Trump administration, appears to be running the agency much like some of his companies.

Trump's administration launched an immediate overhaul of the federal workforce, starting with a strict return-to-office mandate and offering buyouts to federal employees who don't want to work under the new leadership. Trump and Musk have said the moves are meant to improve productivity and cut costs.

Musk's actions mirror what he did in 2022 when he bought Twitter, now X. He sent a similar email to Twitter employees asking them to commit to an "extremely hardcore" schedule or get laid off. The subject line was "A fork in the road" — the same phrase used by the Trump administration when asking for federal worker resignations.

The Tuesday thread between Musk and Graham began when Graham wrote a post on X about the US Agency for International Development. After his post, the agency announced it was putting nearly all employees on administrative leave from Friday. On early Monday morning, Musk said that he "spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper."

DOGE's changes would transform USAID, which managed about 0.47% of 2024's federal budget and oversees humanitarian aid programs in 65 countries, including emergency food assistance and lifesaving medical services.

On Monday night, Graham wrote on X that the Department of Defense "surely" has more waste than USAID, but tougher access.

In response, Musk wrote, "Every aspect of government needs to be much more efficient, no exceptions. Classified world especially."

Last year, Graham offered constructive criticism to Musk, including about X's user experience, and the Y Combinator cofounder has praised Musk's leadership at X.

Graham, who stepped down as Y Combinator's president in 2014, is also a longtime writer. His September essay on "founder mode" took the tech and business communities by storm.

Neither Musk nor Graham responded to requests for comment.

• Sai Chiligireddy has worked with nearly a dozen managers at Amazon.
• The engineering manager once struggled with his performance rating after working under three managers.
• He advises documenting achievements and preparing for meetings to build trust quickly.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sai Chiligireddy, an engineering manager at Amazon's Seattle office. It has been edited for length and clarity. Business Insider has verified his employment history.

Amazon was one of my first jobs out of college, and I landed it in 2017 after a year of working at Juniper Networks.

In the last seven years, I have worked with 11 managers — partly due to my bosses switching teams and companies, but also because I have asked to move teams when I stopped seeing growth opportunities or when I realized feedback on my performance was vague.

The first couple of times, I was worried about how frequent manager changes would impact my career growth, and the kind of projects I would get. But it got better during the later switches when I learned to communicate my goals better.

Here are four actions I took to ensure that my transitions between managers were smooth and helped me earn their trust. These pointers helped me stand out and grow fast.

1. Own your career

I have always approached my career with the mindset that I am responsible for it and my manager is a facilitator. That mental mode ensures I am communicating before I am asked to and seeking guidance from people beyond my immediate manager.

I have a habit of spending about two hours each month to reach out to multiple managers at Amazon to ask about how they grow in their careers and get feedback on how I could do things differently.

2. Document everything

I maintain a brag sheet with a log of all my achievements and summaries of all the projects I worked on, including the feedback from my previous managers and team leads and any stakeholders. I set 30 to 45 minutes aside every week or two weeks to make sure I am not missing anything.

There's a lot of mobility in tech. If people you worked with in the past year leave, there is nobody to vouch for your work. My performance rating suffered once when I worked under three managers who all had different perceptions of what I worked on, and I didn't take any active steps to rectify it.

I share this document with my all of my new managers so they have my track record on hand and have context on all of my current projects.

3. Prepare for one-on-ones

When I first started my career, I used to wing one-on-one meetings with my managers. I got very little out of these meetings.

I began taking the initiative to set up introductory conversations with all my new managers, where I share my short-term and long-term goals. I also share the brag document I keep in this call to give them an overview of where I am with my career and what my current projects are.

After that first meeting, I switched to a different format for the rest of our sessions. I borrowed from a book called "The Art of Meeting with Your Manager" and broke my meetings into six sections. I tweak this according to different managers and their preferences.

1. Icebreaker: To ease into conversation.
2. Employee section: I share recent contributions my manager might not have on their radar, challenges I faced, and updates on discussions I have had with others in my team.
3. Manager section: I proactively ask for feedback.
4. Development and growth: We discuss where I stand currently and brainstorm ideas and projects to make sure I am filling those gaps to meet the criteria for the next employee level.
5. Align priorities: We discuss what I should work on immediately.
6. Action items: My manager and I both note down our action items for the next meeting and follow-up on any action items from the previous meeting.

4. Divide and conquer

As I grew in my career, I started taking on more leadership responsibilities. I began supporting new engineers on my team through one-on-ones and set up Slack channels where they could ask for help.

Collaboration with other teams definitely changed. My manager and I divided and conquered. I would take the ownership of five to six teams and my manager would handle three to four.

I started trying to see myself as a support system for my manager instead of someone just working under them.

• UnitedHealthcare named Tim Noel as its CEO, seven weeks after Brian Thompson's fatal shooting.
• Noel joined the company in 2007 and was most recently the head of its Medicare and retirement unit.
• Official employee pages and social media for Noel appear to have been taken down.

UnitedHealthcare named company veteran Tim Noel as its CEO, seven weeks after former CEO Brian Thompson was killed in New York.

Noel joined the company in 2007 and was most recently the head of its Medicare and retirement unit, per a Thursday announcement.

UnitedHealthcare is the largest health insurer in the US and provides services to over 50 million Americans, the company said. The Medicare and retirement arm contributed nearly half of the company's $74.1 billion in revenue for the three months ending in December.

Noel "brings unparalleled experience to this role with a proven track record and strong commitment to improving how health care works for consumers, physicians, employers, governments and our other partners," the company said in a statement on Thursday.

A spokesperson declined further comment.

The company's shares rose nearly 2% on Thursday.

Noel replaces Thompson, who was shot and killed outside a hotel in central Manhattan on December 4. A five-day manhunt led to the arrest of 26-year-old Luigi Mangione in a McDonald's restaurant in Pennsylvania after a worker called police.

Mangione pleaded not guilty to New York state murder and terrorism charges and to federal stalking and murder charges.

Prosecutors said two shell casings for the bullets that killed Thompson had the words "DENY" and "DEPOSE" written on them. The word "DELAY" was written on a bullet found at the crime scene.

The killing ignited a national debate about the state of the US healthcare and health insurance system and led to a flood of pro-Mangione content on social media platforms.

Since the shooting, healthcare companies including UnitedHealthcare have taken down web pages that share details about their leadership. Two days after the shooting, UnitedHealthcare's "Our leadership" page was no longer accessible.

Noel's LinkedIn and Facebook pages also appear to have been taken down.

• Jamie Dimon reaffirmed JPMorgan's DEI commitments after pressure from an activist shareholder.
• One group wants JPMorgan to revisit how compensation is tied to the company's racial equity goal.
• Trump's executive order on Monday ended DEI programs in the federal government.

Jamie Dimon is doubling down on JPMorgan's diversity, equity, and inclusion commitments amid pressure from an activist shareholder.

In an interview with CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the JPMorgan CEO said the bank continues to push ahead with its work in DEI work and environmental, social, and governance policies.

"Bring them on," Dimon said about activist efforts."We are going to continue to reach out to the Black community, the Hispanic community, the LGBT community, the veterans community."

Dimon is known for working on both sides of the political aisle. In 2020, JPMorgan announced a $30 billion program aimed at working on racial equity in personal finance, a move that came as other financial institutions made significant commitments to similar causes. JPMorgan's program included mortgage refinancing and working with Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

Dimon's comments at Davos come as the National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative nonprofit, proposed this month that JPMorgan revisit how executive compensation is tied to the company's racial equity goal.

JPMorgan started an "accountability framework" in 2020 to assess executives' progress toward DEI goals, which affects compensation. The firm doesn't publicly break out what proportion of executive pay, including for Dimon, is tied to DEI work.

JPMorgan and the NLPC did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

The NLPC has sent shareholder proposals focused on climate, China, and other issues to major companies in recent years.

In a different interview with CNBC on Wednesday, David Solomon, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, said he had seen news of shareholder proposals, but that he has not yet looked at any of them.

"We're advising our clients to think about these things," Solomon said. "They think about decarbonization, they think about climate transition. They think about their businesses, how they find talent, the diversity of the talent they find all over the world."

Goldman Sachs did not immediately respond to BI's request for comment.

Shareholder proposals — about any subject — do not always end up on companies' ballots. Proposals against ESG, including those against DEI, that came to a vote garnered little support in the last four years, per a review by shareholder advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services.

"These politicized campaigns have failed to make the case for the economic impact related to the requests," wrote Subodh Mishra, ISS's head of communications, in November.

On Monday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order ending DEI programs in the federal government and an order ending DEI-based hiring in the Federal Aviation Administration.

In recent months, several high-profile companies have rolled back their DEI programs, including Meta, McDonald's, Ford, and Walmart — the nation's largest private employer.

• Employees shouldn't be afraid of AI, says the global chairman of PwC, Mohamed Kande.
• Instead, employees should think of AI as a digital colleague, he said.
• Kande's comments echo other business leaders' comments about embracing AI in the workplace.

Don't be afraid of AI in the workplace — think of it as your digital colleague.

That's what the global chairman of PwC, Mohamed Kande, said about AI augmentation during a panel at the World Economic Forum conference in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday.

"People fear what they don't understand, so exposing them to the technology, putting in their hands makes a big difference," Kande said about AI. Doing so allows employees to view AI as a "digital colleague" they can work with, said Kande.

"You don't fear your colleagues, you partner with them," Kande said. "So we are actually asking people to partner with the technology."

The PwC head also said AI in the workplace should not come from the top down.

"There is this fallacy of believing that the benefits of augmentation have to come from management," Kande said. "It has to come from the people."

The Big Four leader's comments echo those made by several top executives about viewing AI as an extension of the workforce.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff have both touted the mass deployment of AI agents. AI agents break down a task into multiple smaller steps, each tackling a specific task to achieve a broader objective.

"I'm hoping that Nvidia someday will be a 50,000-employee company with 100 million AI assistants in every single group," Huang said on a podcast in October.

On Salesforce's third-quarter earnings call, Benioff said the company is the "largest supplier of digital labor" because of its product Agentforce, which lets clients build their own AI agents. He said the rise of digital labor means that "productivity is no longer tied to workforce growth, but to this intelligent technology that can be scaled without limits."

In October, PwC said it has started using Agentforce and is guiding clients "through the process of activating AI agents to build on your success."

Employees' confidence in AI is growing — but so is their anxiety that the tech could replace them. A 2024 survey of over 13,000 employees published by Boston Consulting Group found that employees who regularly use generative AI tools are more likely to worry about job loss than those who don't use the tool.

Of the regular generative AI users surveyed, 49% said they believe their job may disappear in the next ten years, while 24% of employees who do not use GenAI said the same.

• President Trump took aim at federal DEI policies in his inaugural address on Monday.
• He pledged to reverse executive orders from Biden, in favor of a "merit-based" society.
• On Tuesday, the White House issued a presidential action ending DEI-based hiring in the FAA.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday ending diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in the federal government.

Federal agencies and departments have 60 days from the signing of the order to end DEI-related practices.

The executive order will be carried out by the US Office of Personnel Management and the Attorney General, who will review all existing federal employment practices, union contracts, and training policies to ensure compliance with the DEI termination order.

"Federal employment practices, including Federal employee performance reviews, shall reward individual initiative, skills, performance, and hard work and shall not under any circumstances consider DEI or DEIA factors, goals, policies, mandates, or requirements," the order read.

A separate order for the FAA

On Tuesday, Trump issued a separate presidential action ending DEI-based hiring in the Federal Aviation Agency.

All DEI initiatives in the FAA, the order said, will be replaced with practices of "hiring, promoting, and otherwise treating employees on the basis of individual capability, competence, achievement, and dedication."

As of Tuesday night, the contents of at least two web pages detailing DEI initiatives and DEI hiring at the FAA have been taken down.

The FAA and its overseeing body, the Department of Transportation, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Targeting DEI

Trump also used his inaugural address Monday to target DEI initiatives in the federal government.

"This week, I will also end the government policy of trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life," he said Monday. "We will forge a society that is colorblind and merit-based."

He said it will be official US policy that "there are only two genders: male and female."

The remarks echoed his statements during a rally a day earlier when he pledged to end DEI mandates in government and the private sector.

Like many orders Trump signed on his first day, the move aims to undo several orders issued by Joe Biden during his presidency.

In one executive action from June 2021, Biden said the federal government is the largest employer in the nation and, thus, "must be a model for diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, where all employees are treated with dignity and respect."

In response, the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) Talent Sourcing for America initiative was launched in September of 2022.

A 2022 report from the Office of Personnel Management said the government-wide DEIA initiative included a plan to prioritize equity for LGBTQI+ employees by "expanding the usage of gender markers and pronouns that respect transgender, gender non-conforming, and non-binary employees; and working to create a more inclusive workplace."

The report showed minimal changes in the federal workforce's demographics between fiscal years 2017 and 2021, which encompassed most of Trump's first term. This included "minor" changes in the shares of the federal workforce by race and gender.

A 2024 report from OPM found minor increases in federal staffing diversity under the Biden administration after the DEIA objectives were announced, but indicated the office's targets for diversity and equity initiatives were not met.

Though there had been only slight workforce demographic changes under the Biden administration, the Trump administration's first official statement released Monday reiterated his plans to "freeze bureaucrat hiring except in essential areas to end the onslaught of useless and overpaid DEI activists buried into the federal workforce," and "establish male and female as biological reality and protect women from radical gender ideology."

Meanwhile, several companies — including the nation's largest private employer, Walmart — have been reversing course on DEI initiatives in the weeks following Trump's election in November.

• President Donald Trump was inaugurated for a second term on Monday.
• Former presidents, Trump family members, and tech billionaires attended the inauguration.
• Lee Greenwood and Carrie Underwood sang during the ceremony.

President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance were sworn in on Monday, marking the end of former President Joe Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris' time in the White House.

The inauguration was held inside the Capitol Rotunda due to winter weather. Former presidents, Trump family members, tech billionaires, and members of Congress attended the packed ceremony.

Photos show the biggest moments from the event.

Ahead of the swearing-in ceremony, the Bidens greeted the Trumps on the North Portico of the White House.

Former Vice President Kamala Harris and former Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff also greeted Vice President JD Vance and Second Lady Usha Vance.

Attendees took their seats in the Capitol Rotunda, where the inauguration was held due to freezing temperatures.

Tech billionaires, including Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai, and Elon Musk, were seated on the inaugural platform.

Former presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama took their seats in the Rotunda.

Vice President JD Vance was the first to be sworn in.

President Donald Trump took the oath of office at noon, per tradition.

Melania Trump's hat intercepted a kiss from her husband.

"The golden age of America begins right now," Trump said in his inaugural address, which included numerous policy proposals.

After Trump's address, Carrie Underwood sang "America the Beautiful."

The Bidens departed the Capitol on Marine One, completing the peaceful transfer of power.

Elon Musk addressed a crowd of Trump supporters during an inauguration event at Capital One Arena.

Trump signed a series of executive orders on Monday evening using his signature Sharpie marker.

While answering questions and signing executive orders in the Oval Office, Trump held up a letter left for him by Biden.

At the Commander in Chief Ball on Monday evening, Trump and Vance cut a large cake with sabers.

Trump and the first lady arrive at the Liberty Ball.

Before Trump arrived at the Liberty Ball, Billy Ray Cyrus entertained the crowd.

Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump also made an appearance at the Liberty Ball.

Trump and members of his family danced on stage at the ball.

The family also danced at the Starlight Ball, the final event of Monday's inauguration.

Vice President JD Vance and Second Lady Usha Vance also took to the dancefloor.