• A former Meta employee was hired in 2022 and had positive reviews for two years.
• They were shocked when they received a "low performer" rating and were laid off on February 10.
• The former employee said they're worried the label could hurt their job search and felt betrayed.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with a former Meta employee who worked at the company for two and a half years. They spoke on condition of anonymity due to concerns about future employment. Business Insider has verified their identity, employment, and performance reviews at Meta. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I was hired by Meta in late 2022. During my time there, I received performance evaluations every six months, in which my ratings were always 'at or above expectation' or 'consistently met expectation.' Of course, I received small tweaks and feedback that are normal in any review, but I never received any signal that I was a low performer or that I was trending downwards.

When Zuckerberg announced Meta would be laying off the lowest 5% of performers, I felt a general sense of anxiety, but I looked at the criteria they were going to apply and thought, "This doesn't apply to me. I've gotten really good ratings up to this point." I didn't consider I'd be in that bucket.

I woke up to a layoff email at 5 a.m., and by 8 a.m. I'd lost all access to chats

They sent an email at 5 a.m. PST, and by 8 a.m., we'd been locked out of our chats. I didn't get to say goodbye to my colleagues. The morning of my layoff, I felt despondent. I'd worked really, really hard to get this job, had worked long hours, and had put a lot of effort into supporting my team. I just felt this deep sense of defeat.

And then I got angry. I was livid, like transcendentally livid. I can't even really put into words how it felt. I'd lost so much — my confidence, my reputation, a substantial amount of unvested stock. I just remember being in bed, screaming into a pillow.

I felt betrayed by the company I'd worked for, and they destroyed my confidence in the process.

I have no idea how they decided I was a low performer

I haven't received any documentation explaining how they got my "low performer" rating, so I don't have any official idea of why this occurred. I didn't get a signal from my manager. I just received the rating and the termination letter stating I was being let go.

I'm so scared about how this "low-performer" label will affect my ability to find a new job.

Right now, the zeitgeist is sympathetic to those of us who've been laid off, but I know it's going to impact future employment. It's already a tough job market, so I'm scared. I'm really, really scared.

Because Meta clearly labeled people affected as "low performers," any hiring manager who looks at my end date will know. We are uniquely disadvantaged because this announcement was leaked and widely publicized.

For the first week after my layoff, I couldn't even fathom the idea of updating my résumé or looking for jobs. I felt so hopeless that I could hardly even motivate myself to get out of bed. I already struggled with imposter syndrome, and this felt like Meta threw salt in the wound. I'm going to have to rebuild my self-confidence, and that's going to take time.

I think this is going to be a moment to take a step back, recenter myself, and think about what I truly want for myself and my career. Right now, I know I value some sense of stability. I know no job is stable, but I really want my next role to be somewhere where I feel like leadership at least doesn't seem to have an openly hostile position toward its employees.

My opinion on Mark Zuckerberg has completely changed

I used to defend Mark Zuckerberg to people. I thought he was personable in company meetings and really funny. Now, I feel like that was just a facade.

Between the layoff, removing DEI initiatives, and changes around content moderation, Mark Zuckerberg seems to be testing how many decisions he can make without retribution. Because Meta is such a big player in the tech industry, I'm concerned the company is creating an environment where other employers will follow suit.

Tech used to be a place where companies took care of their employees and where we were supported, but now it feels like we're all in a meat grinder. It's really sad to see.

Meta could already be backfilling these roles

Meta laid off thousands of employees and said they were going to start filling many of those roles with new people.

I joined at a time when Meta's stock was lower, and like many of my coworkers, a portion of my compensation is tied to the value of the company's stock. I have questioned whether the "low performance" label was a way to let expensive employees go.

I'm worried about speaking out for fear of retribution. I hope people are empathetic toward those impacted by layoffs six months or a year down the road.

Nobody knows how long we'll be looking for a new job. I've heard horror stories of people applying to hundreds of jobs for over a year. I don't think that's going to be my position, but it indicates how hard the market is right now.

I had a call with my dad the other day and told him I just don't know what to hope for right now. The rug was pulled out from under me. I don't know how to move forward from that.

Meta did not respond to a request for comment by Business Insider.

• Apple said Monday it plans to invest over $500 billion in US projects over the next four years.
• The package includes adding 20,000 US jobs, a manufacturing facility in Houston, and R&D spending.
• Apple CEO Tim Cook said the company is "bullish on the future of American innovation."

Apple has said it plans to hire about 20,000 people over the next four years as part of a more than $500 billion US investment commitment.

The "vast majority" of the new hires would focus on AI, silicon engineering, R&D, and software development, the tech giant said Monday.

The package — which Apple said is its largest-ever spending commitment — also includes plans to open a new manufacturing facility in Houston and double its Advanced Manufacturing Fund from $5 billion to $10 billion.

Apple said it's set to open the 250,000-square-foot advanced manufacturing facility in Houston next year to produce servers for Apple Intelligence, the company's generative AI product.

"We are bullish on the future of American innovation, and we're proud to build on our long-standing U.S. investments with this $500 billion commitment to our country's future," said Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, in a statement.

Apple's plan to add 20,000 jobs comes at a time when many large tech companies have been reducing their workforces. While it made some layoffs last year, it has not made large-scale cuts similar to companies like Meta, which earlier this month began cutting 5% of its workforce — equivalent to about 3,600 roles.

This a developing story. Check back for updates.

• A mid-flight bomb hoax led Italy's air force to scramble jets to escort an American Airlines plane.
• The Boeing 787 was flying from New York to Delhi when the threat occurred.
• Italy's Aeronautica Militare released a series of photos of the incident unfolding.

American Airlines passengers had a whirlwind journey after a bomb threat saw their flight turn around, and fighter jets scrambled to escort the plane.

The airline said the "possible security concern" was later found to be "non-credible."

Saturday evening's Flight 292 from New York to India's capital, New Delhi, U-turned over the Caspian Sea — more than 10 hours after taking off, according to data from Flightradar24.

It then spent around four hours going back toward Italy, where the country's air force scrambled two Eurofighter jets.

In a press release, the Aeronautica Militare said it escorted the Boeing 787 to Rome Fiumicino Airport after a "bomb alert."

It also shared images of the Eurofighters following the airliner, as well as a video.

American Airlines said the flight landed safely in Rome, and "law enforcement inspected and cleared the aircraft to re-depart."

"Safety and security are our top priorities and we apologize to our customers for the inconvenience," it added.

The Boeing 787 landed in Rome around 4 p.m. local time on Sunday. The same plane is scheduled to fly from Rome to New Delhi at 6 a.m. ET on Tuesday, per Flightradar24.

A senior official briefed on the matter told ABC News a bomb threat was received by email.

Protocol at Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport required an inspection before the plane could land there, American Airlines said.

The incident is the latest in a string of bomb threats on planes flying to or in India in recent months.

India's deputy civil aviation minister, Murlidhar Mohol, said that as of mid-November, there had been 999 hoax bomb threats in the country in 2024.

More than 500 of those were received across two weeks, and 12 people were arrested.

Last October, Singapore's Air Force scrambled two F-15s to escort an Air India Express flight, which landed safely.

The same month, an Air India flight from New Delhi to Chicago made an emergency landing in Canada's Nunavut territory after another bomb threat.

Were you a passenger on this flight? Get in touch with this reporter at [email protected].

• Jon Flynn works in AI sales at Google, focusing on media, entertainment, and gaming.
• Flynn studied journalism and started his career in filmmaking before skilling up in engineering.
• He followed his passions and said his ability to communicate was the skill that got him the farthest.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with 49-year-old Jon Flynn, a Google AI sales leader. His identity and employment have been verified by Business Insider. This story has been edited for length and clarity.

I've always been a hobbyist in technology, but I'm an accidental technologist.

I started my career making music videos and commercials in southern Africa. Now, I help lead AI sales at Google in the telecom, media, entertainment, and gaming sectors within the North American market.

That means I'm responsible for a team of sellers and technical and product counterparts that are responsible for bringing the best of Google AI products into the arms of our customers, whether that is an eight-point or multifaceted solution that will be intricate to their business or a film-making process, or to a game customer service engine.

If you don't know exactly where you want to end up, don't sweat it. Some of the best journeys start without a map. Here's how I ended up where I am now.

I followed my passions

Initially I thought I was going to be a fireman. Then, I wanted to be a doctor. Then, I was planning to be a meteorologist, and eventually I went to school to be a photo journalist. Then, I wanted to get into the movie industry so I went to film school and did a master's degree in cinematography on the back of my journalism degree.

The road less traveled, the risky bet, that's where the magic happens.

"Fortune favors the bold" is a timeless saying for a reason. The people who change the game aren't the ones who wait for certainty. They're the ones who take the leap and figure it out on the way down.

The way that I was very fortunate in my career is that I've been able to zigzag to areas of passion.

Technology was always a passion of mine, so I always did it in my spare time. I had a computer in the family living room ever since I was single-digits years old. I learned to code and spoke in code poorly, but I can code. I was always the one who would fix the neighbor's computer, I was always the one who would build your friend's computer back in the day when we still built them. 

That never left me, and when I had downtime after working on a film project, I completed an engineering certification.

So I got accredited as an engineer with a Microsoft engineering certification and I got this job opportunity at a financial services company as an engineer.

It was really one of those crossroads. I was like, this seems like very much a 9-to-5 corporate kind of offer over here. Sure, it's stable and it's cool, but aren't I supposed to be this cool freewheeling make-music-videos, live-in-your-mom's-basement-until-you're-50 kind of guy?

That didn't seem too great either, though. So, I figured I would do both.

It opened my eyes to another thing I'm passionate about. From there I went into product and then from product into business and then into leadership. I ended up in an AI leadership role in the sports, media, and entertainment sector at Microsoft and then in the last year, moved to Google. 

I never went back holistically into being a content creator. I've created podcasts and I do those kinds of things, but it's a little bit different from what I thought I was going to be back when I finished school.

I find myself just as fortunate though because I get to work in the industry I'm super passionate about, in terms of getting to influence the way in which content is created and consumed.

A technology degree isn't everything

There's one constant thread between everything that I've done in my entire career from school, to being an engineer, to being a sales leader: conversation.

Getting a Microsoft data engineer certification is very functional, but with the advancements in AI, I think that the largest programming language in the world is English, or whatever your native tongue is.

The ability to translate technical complex things into conversational subject matters and hold someone's attention when we are surrounded by competing data points is a massively important skill. That has never ever left me on any step of the way that I've gone. Traditionally, technology people speak to technology people, which is such a miss because you become very myopic in your views.

When I'm looking for someone who's going to represent the products that we are building and the products that we want to get out into the hands of our customers, I'm not looking for someone who is a PhD.  I'm not looking for someone who is going to be up at 2 a.m. in the morning in their garage coding some Python script.

I'm looking for people who are articulate. I'm looking for people who are curious. I'm looking for people who are looking at technology the way our customers are looking at their technology.

A lot of people that I hire come from non-technical roles. They come from business-focused roles, project management-focused roles, and, quite frankly, some of them come from marketing and sales roles.

If you can articulate what we have in a product and how it's going to help you do your job easier, that's a super valuable skill — and none of that has any bearing on a technology-focused degree.

• I was surprised when people started calling me Mom when I was pregnant.
• I quickly began to hate it.
• It was all part of my identity crisis while transitioning to motherhood.

During pregnancy, people started referring to me as Mom. While some other pregnant women seemed to find this cute or sweet, I didn't. In fact, as my daughter (and my belly) grew larger and it was more and more obvious that I was pregnant, so did my annoyance with being called Mom or Mommy. It felt like the person I was, who had a name and a life separate from the life growing inside her, was starting to disappear.

The first place I was called Mom was at my prenatal appointments

It probably all started in the doctor's office. One of the (many) little failures of the prenatal and postpartum care period for me was being referred to as Mom at my birth center. It was not endearing to me — it felt lazy.

I wanted them to look at my chart and call me by my first name. It seemed like just another thing about the experience that was centered on the baby rather than the person who was growing the baby. I wanted to feel like they were looking at me as an individual, not just another of the hundreds of moms who visited their office every month.

My daughter is now 6, and I still dislike being called Mom, Mommy, or Mama in place of my name by other adults. This is especially true in medical settings, like my daughter's pediatrician's office; it feels like they're not taking my concerns seriously. It also feels infantilizing, distancing, and dismissive.

Motherhood caused an identity crisis

After my daughter was born, I was suddenly no longer a writer, a reader, a wife, a chocolate lover, an anglophile, a person who pooped in private. I was a mom, and my responsibility was to care for the well-being of my daughter. It felt like everything else just fell by the wayside. I felt like my identity as a person — a dynamic, well-rounded person — had been snatched away from me. And being called Mom instead of my name by people who weren't my actual child just seemed to reinforce that.

I am sure that being a stay-at-home mom also contributed to this feeling of no longer having a purpose beyond new parenthood, though I know working parents also experience this.

When my daughter was around 18 months old, I spent a weekend away from her for the first time. I spent much of the train ride to my destination feeling guilty for leaving her. I wondered: Will she be confused? Will she think I've abandoned her? I felt unspoken judgment from others when they asked me who was watching my daughter while I was away. Like I didn't deserve time to myself or to explore my own interests apart from her.

I've rediscovered my identity since my daughter was a baby

The only person I love to hear call me Mom is my daughter. In fact, now that she's 6, I miss her calling me Mama like when she was a baby. It's just another reminder that my daughter is growing up.

Since those earlier days of motherhood, I've been able to rediscover who I am apart from my daughter, and being called Mom doesn't irk me the way it used to. The older my daughter gets, the more time I've been able to spend doing the things I love: writing, traveling, reading, crafting. And I've been able to share them with her as well.

• The latest "White Lotus" season was filmed at the Four Seasons Resort Koh Samui in Thailand.
• Previous seasons filmed at Four Seasons resorts in Hawaii and Italy led to increased interest.
• Thailand expects a 20% rise in visitors due to the show's influence, the Four Seasons said.

Fictional guests have officially checked in to the "The White Lotus" hotel for the third season of the hit TV series. As the backdrop for vacationers this season, a Four Seasons resort in Thailand is already getting a boost in interest from IRL tourists.

"The White Lotus," an HBO TV show that follows a cast of characters on lavish vacations, was filmed at the Four Season Resort Koh Samui this time round. The resort, on a Thai island, told Business Insider that it's already seeing a jump in interest since the first episode aired on February 16. Its second episode aired in the US on February 23.

A spokesperson for Four Seasons Koh Samui said the hotel is experiencing a surge "in terms of availability checks, searches, and bookings." It's the third time "The White Lotus" has been filmed at a Four Seasons; production previously took place at locations in Hawaii and Italy for the first and second seasons, respectively. Searches for hotels and flights to Sicily from the US increased by over 50% while season two was airing, according to travel booking site Hopper.

The show also filmed at the Anantara Mai Khao Villas hotel in Phuket, a separate Thai island, for some scenes. Representatives for Anantara and HBO didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from BI.

"There is also increased interest in Thailand itself as a travel destination, and the Director of Thailand's Tourism Authority has said they expect about 20% rise in tourism as a result of the show," the Four Seasons Koh Samui spokesperson said. They didn't specify over which time period.

The season 3 premiere attracted 4.6 million total viewers in the US between Sunday and Monday, up 90% from the season 2 premiere, HBO said. IMDb included "White Lotus" in its top 10 most-anticipated TV shows set to return in 2025.

In 2021, Cascade Investment, the investment firm for billionaire Bill Gates, bought a controlling stake in the resort chain. He purchased it from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal's Kingdom Holding and paid $2.2 billion in cash. Anantara is owned by Minor Hotels, founded by American businessman William Heinecke.

Four Seasons Maui at Wailea in Hawaii — where season one was shot — told BI that it knows the "White Lotus effect" well. A spokesperson said it experienced a 425% increase in website visits and a 386% increase in availability checks year over year when the show first aired in 2021.

Four years later, it says guests are still asking about the fictional "Pineapple Suite," a redecorated version of the real Lokelani Presidential Suite, which costs $29,000 a night. Starting March 14, the resort said it will offer a "White Lotus" experience to guests for a limited time, offering them cocktails inspired by the series and more.

Three nights in May in a serenity pool villa will cost about $1,363 a night on average for a one-bedroom villa at the Koh Samui resort, according to its website. A four-bedroom residence villa with a pool will run to about $7,866 per night. When BI previously searched its accommodation prices for a May 2024 stay last January, the rates were $1,281 and $7,746, respectively.

• Christian Lovell shares six signs your boss might want you to quit your job.
• Lovell, a career coach, highlights communication and workload changes as key indicators.
• In a tough job market, understanding these signs can help you prepare for career shifts.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Christian Lovell, a 31-year-old career coach from Los Angeles. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I'm the founder of Careers by Chris, a growing online community of job seekers, and a former career expert at Sofi. I help people figure out the next steps in their careers and how to land their next job.

On my Instagram, I share actionable, understandable, and easily digestible career growth tips that people may not have learned in school. I answer common questions like: How do I build an effective résumé? What's an applicant tracking system? How do I market myself for a role that I want?

In the current job market and economy, one question to consider is: How do I know if my boss wants me to quit? This job market is the toughest I've ever seen, and you must be prepared for anything.

Although just one sign alone might not be an indicator, here are six signs your boss might want you to quit and what to do next.

1. Your boss is communicating less

A lack of communication is one sign that your boss might be pushing you to quit. If they're decreasing your one-on-ones, making it hard to communicate with them, or if you're unable to get the support you need, it could indicate that developing you as an employee is no longer a priority.

On their end, it wouldn't make sense to pour resources into further developing you if they don't plan to keep you around.

2. Your boss stops having discussions about your future at the company

Similarly, discussions about your future might stop if they don't see you having a future at the company. They might no longer say things during your performance reviews, like, "In three months or six months, this will be happening," or they may stop mentioning your promotion altogether.

If you say to your manager, "Hey, I want to talk about my next steps," and they're not open to having those conversations, that's a red flag.

This might mean they're making excuses or perpetually putting things off. They may feel guilty about letting you go, they might not yet have all the information themselves, or they might not be at liberty to talk about it.

3. Your boss is excluding you

Another sign your boss might be pushing you to quit is if they start excluding you from important meetings or other key forms of communication, such as emails, team meetings, or Slack channels.

If you've been part of a project update every month or week, and suddenly you're no longer included, that can be a sign. There could be many excuses for why you're being excluded from important projects or meetings, like "it was an oversight" or "we're changing how we're structuring this project."

It could also indicate that your work is being reassigned or that they're removing you from projects because they no longer see you as part of the company's future. Again, understanding these decisions in context is important. How often is this happening? How relevant are the projects you're excluded from to your core job duties?

4. Your boss is giving you busy work

If you realize you're not on any important projects and feel like you're doing busy work, that can also be an indicator.

This could look like being asked to do tasks below your normal job duties, like summarizing meeting notes, instead of the important projects you were once on.

5. Your boss is giving you too much work

You might also be given an unbearable amount of work. Your boss could set unrealistic expectations and then document them, saying, "I asked my employee to do X, Y, and Z, and they failed to do it. So now there is a reason to let them go," or you might say, "This is unbearable, and I need to quit."

I've seen this happen to a lot of people. Once it happens, I tell them they should be searching if they have inklings they're being pushed out of their job. Do not wait until you can't bear it, or they let you go.

When it comes to finding new work, you won't list your reason for leaving a job on a résumé, so your next company would not know if you quit or were fired, but there will be times when you have to explain your departure from the company, like in future interviews.

There are pros and cons to quitting or waiting to be let go, and the best choice will depend on where you are in your career.

6. Your boss placed you on a PIP

PIPs (performance improvement plans) do not 100% mean you'll be fired from your job, but they are a sign. PIPs are used to create a paper trail — and, in many cases, let the employee go.

If you're put on a PIP, you should make arrangements to find another job. PIPs can be a sign they're preparing to have a final conversation with you and let you go. PIPs are usually paired with micromanaging and unrealistic or unreasonable workloads.

Regardless of whether you're on a PIP, never fully remove yourself from the market. Keep your résumé updated and your network warm.

What to do next

Seeing one of these signs doesn't necessarily mean your boss wants to let you go. Instead of jumping to conclusions, ask yourself: Are there multiple signs? Could it just be your imposter syndrome? And most importantly, have things with your boss shifted from one extreme to the other?

If you do feel your boss wants you to quit, you should first have a conversation with them. Document your achievements, and if you feel your time at the company is ending one way or the other, start your job search.

• The outsize returns VCs depend on might be out of reach through healthcare M&A this year.
• VCs told BI they don't see much appetite for big deals among healthcare's historical mega-buyers.
• Healthcare startups looking to sell may have to settle for lower prices from their peers.

Healthcare startups are hoping for more M&A in the market this year after a three-year drought of company combinations. But most VCs aren't expecting to reap blockbuster returns through big healthcare deals anytime soon.

The industry's historical mega-buyers — from Big Tech and retail to health plans and private equity — don't seem to have much of an appetite for big digital health deals this year, according to nearly a dozen VCs and investment bankers Business Insider spoke to.

Big Tech companies like Amazon and retailers like Walgreens have already made multibillion-dollar buys in healthcare and, in some cases, been burned by their losses. Insurers like United Healthcare are facing mounting scrutiny, said these investors. While private equity seems increasingly interested in healthcare technologies, many of PE firms' recent big healthcare buys have been public companies, and often those already demonstrating stable revenue and profitability, rather than high-growth startups.

Many healthcare startups are looking to get bought or raising down rounds to extend their lifespans, sometimes offering discounts on their last-round valuations to make a deal happen, BI reported in November. Better-performing startups, especially later-stage players, may not want to sell as investors hope for a reopening in the IPO markets that could help them recoup their returns, VCs told BI.

On the bright side, those descending valuations offer plenty of opportunities for late-stage digital health startups flush with cash and looking to grow. Healthcare startups like Transcarent have already announced acquisitions this year, while others like Datavant have signaled they're ready for an M&A spree.

Still, the outsize returns VCs depend on might be out of reach through healthcare M&A for the time being.

"M&A can be a great outcome. It just feels like there's not a lot of buyers that can do the kinds of deals that we would hope for for that big outcome," said IVP partner Yuri Lee.

Tech and retail's healthcare struggles

2024 brought a reckoning for retail healthcare as a number of large companies looked to downsize, sell off, or shut down their healthcare bets.

Walmart shut down its entire Walmart Health division in April, including its 51 health centers and its virtual care services. Walgreens closed at least 160 of its VillageMD primary care clinics throughout the year; the pharmacy retailer said in an August securities filing that it was considering selling part or all of its controlling stake in VillageMD, which Walgreens paid more than $6 billion for.

CVS, which owns a number of healthcare businesses, including the insurer Aetna and the primary care clinic chain Oak Street Health, swapped out its CEOs in October after undergoing a strategic review, where the company reportedly considered splitting up its retail and insurance businesses as it faced rising costs from Medicare Advantage claims, according to Reuters. (For its part, CVS has forged on with its expansion of Oak Street Health, which it bought for $10.6 billion in 2023. The pharmacy business continued opening new clinics throughout the year as other retailers backed off their own in-person healthcare bets.)

A CVS Health spokesperson declined to comment for this story but said the company is "focused on executing on our integrated care strategy." Walmart declined to comment. Walgreens didn't respond to a request for comment.

Some of Big Tech's healthcare investments underwent their own struggles last year. While Amazon's pharmacy business is drawing more consumer interest, its primary care business One Medical, which Amazon said in 2022 it was acquiring for $3.9 billion, lost Google as a large enterprise client in 2024 and faced an ongoing wrongful death lawsuit. Amazon also scrapped its telehealth business, Amazon Care, in 2022.

Amazon declined to comment on its M&A strategy. A spokesperson said the company is committed to One Medical's continued growth and plans to expand next to New Jersey, Northeast Ohio, and Westchester County, New York. The spokesperson said One Medical has contracts with around 10,000 employers and growing.

Investors said that while players like Amazon may look around for smaller acquisitions to tack onto their existing offerings — especially those they can get at a discount — those buyers aren't likely to take another big swing anytime soon.

"I think it's fair to say that they've had a lot of large-scale failures in trying to buy nationally scaled assets that would impose consistency on the system. It just doesn't work like that," said Dan Mendelson, the CEO of JPMorgan's healthcare fund Morgan Health, of large tech and retail companies like Amazon. "As soon as you move to more of a national system, you lose the quality control and a lot of the economic viability."

Steadier buyers may snub startups

For the likely buyers among health insurance's top players, federal scrutiny and a public reckoning could hamper megadeals this year.

UnitedHealth Group's Optum spent more than $31 billion on acquisitions between 2022 and 2024. UnitedHealth is currently trying to close a $3.3 billion deal to acquire home-health company Amedisys. But the Department of Justice sued to block the merger in November, citing antitrust concerns.

Some other health plan mergers fell through last year, including early talks between Anthem and Cigna about a potential combination, per Bloomberg. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana also called off plans to sell itself to Elevance Health in February after facing regulatory pushback.

For health plans, the elephant in the room is the December murder of former UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, which ignited a public outcry over how health insurers pay for patient care, or, more accurately, how frequently they deny paying for it. PitchBook senior healthcare analyst Aaron DeGagne said insurers may seek to lay low for the next few months as criticism mounts — "A lot of things could be misinterpreted," he said.

Despite those headwinds, DeGagne noted that health plans are hoping to tap into recent advancements in healthcare AI technologies to make their prior authorization and claims processes more efficient. He said he thinks health plans will notch more startup partnerships this year, and likely make their own investments in the sector, before they turn to acquisitions.

UnitedHealth Group didn't respond to requests for comment for this story.

Private equity firms have remained active in healthcare and shelled out billions of dollars on a handful of deals last year, like R1 RCM's August take-private by two private equity firms for $8.9 billion, the second biggest US healthcare deal in 2024, according to PitchBook.

Private equity's healthcare interest could certainly continue through 2025, especially as firms hope for falling interest rates and less regulatory scrutiny under a new presidential administration.

However, private equity firms often require acquisitions to be profitable or nearly profitable. In VC, investors aren't exactly itching to sell off their late-stage profitable healthcare bets — since many of those could be candidates for IPOs once the public markets reopen, Mendelson said.

"It is definitely the case that private equity buyers are attractive to middle-market companies. But the larger companies have to be thinking about an IPO," he said.

Moreover, private equity's healthcare playbook has historically relied on buying up individual healthcare practices, like medspas or home health centers. Those models generally bring in slower but more reliable revenue streams rather than explosive growth potential. Healthtech, a VC favorite, wasn't significantly represented in the top megadeals last year — of the 25 biggest US healthcare and life sciences deals in 2024, R1 RCM was the only true healthtech deal, with most of the other deals being in healthcare services or biopharma, per PitchBook.

So while private equity could certainly look to buy more healthcare companies this year, they may not be the sexy deals VCs are looking for, said Krish Ramadurai, a partner at AIX Ventures.

"A lot of the boring services companies with great margins and great product market fit are prime takeouts right now. And if you have the AI angle, even better," he said.

M&A-hungry healthcare unicorns

This year, some of the most active buyers of venture-backed healthcare startups may just be other startups.

Several healthcare startups have signaled their intentions to look for M&A in 2024. Datavant CEO Kyle Armbrester told Business Insider in January that the $7 billion health data startup plans to make more acquisitions this year, a strategy that could help the company continue to grow its revenue ahead of a potential IPO. Other startups approaching public market debuts may use a similar playbook, like Hinge Health, which has been open about its plans to make more acquisitions for its physical therapy business.

Venture capital firms may also work to combine multiple companies within their portfolios to minimize their losses, as healthcare firm 7wireVentures did in selling mental health investment Caraway to its pediatric healthcare investment Summer Health. General Catalyst has taken the same approach for numerous healthcare deals over the years; most recently, its health software bet Commure acquired care navigation platform Memora Health in December.

In fact, a number of General Catalyst's portfolio companies look poised to make acquisitions this year. One of its investments, health benefits platform Transcarent, already made a big bet with its $621 million acquisition of healthcare navigator Accolade in January. Commure has taken an M&A-forward strategy to drive its growth, with seven acquisitions to date, including two in 2024. Care enablement startup Fabric has made four acquisitions since launching out stealth in early 2023, and CEO Aniq Rahman told Business Insider in September that the company was still looking for deals.

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

All told, there may yet be options for digital health startups hoping to get acquired and for the investors desperate for returns, even if billion-dollar deals aren't on the table.

"Founders and investors are getting impatient over exit timelines, and they can only stay impatient for so long," Pitchbook's DeGagne said.

For Ron Sliter, getting a master's degree seemed like a path to job security. After spending nearly two decades in the military, including eight tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, he attended graduate school with the help of the GI Bill and landed a job in IT administration. He looked forward to climbing the corporate ladder and enjoying a long, successful career in the civilian world.

Then, in January 2023, he got laid off. Since then, he's applied to thousands of roles — to no avail. After more than two years, he's still unemployed. The whole experience, he says, feels like "being caught in the middle of 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.'"

"It's disheartening," he tells me. "They sell you on the dream, you fight for the dream, and you come back to take advantage of the dream that you fought for. And you realize it doesn't exist."

Sliter is part of a sudden spike in the number of highly educated professionals who are struggling to find a job — any job. According to government data analyzed by the economist Aaron Terrazas, professionals with advanced degrees who are looking for work find themselves stranded on the unemployment line for a median of 18 weeks — a jobless spell that has more than quadrupled over the past two years. And in a strange twist, job searches are now taking more than twice as long for educated elites than they are for workers who never went to college. At the moment, the higher your degree, the longer it will take for you to find a job.

It's not news that we're in the midst of a sharp downturn in tech and finance — one that has hit highly credentialed professionals especially hard. I've been calling it a white-collar recession, assuming that it's temporary. It's normal, after all, to experience dips in the job market. There have been plenty of times over the years when Ph.D. holders faced longer job searches than high school graduates. But whatever the ups and downs, education — particularly an advanced degree — has generally provided a good buffer against financial insecurity.

Lately, though, I've started to wonder if what we're seeing in the job market is a sign of something deeper. What if Sliter's protracted spell of joblessness is an early warning signal — an indication that the economy is undergoing a fundamental shift? What if, going forward, education no longer provides a path to economic security the way it once did?

"For 40 years, we've been talking about how more education leads to better labor market outcomes," says Terrazas, the former chief economist for Glassdoor. "Suddenly, that feels like it's changing." And the shift, he warns, could herald a profound "moment of dislocation" for today's white-collar professionals, just as blue-collar workers faced a seismic reckoning in the wake of globalization.

"What the early 2000s were for manufacturing workers, I worry that the mid-2020s are going to be for knowledge workers," Terrazas says. "American manufacturing workers were told they were highly productive until global trade opened up, and then suddenly that changed. I worry that we're in a comparable moment for knowledge workers. They were told they were the most productive workers in the world. Suddenly that's being undermined."

Education has long served as a ticket to a better, more secure life. But rarely has it mattered more than in recent decades, with the rise of robots and computers and the internet. The more schooling you had, the more likely you were to survive the sudden technological disruption. Between 1980 and 2009, the economists Daron Acemoglu and David Autor found, wages increased modestly for those with a bachelor's degree, soared for those with an advanced degree, and tumbled for high school dropouts. Economists gave the phenomenon an awkward name: skill-biased technological change. In plainspeak: Get more degrees or you're screwed. Education was the one thing that kept you safe in an increasingly cutthroat economy.

To secure their futures, an unprecedented number of young Americans enrolled in graduate schools, taking out big loans that they believed would yield even bigger payoffs down the road. Since 2000, the numbers of Americans with master's degrees and doctorates have more than doubled — while the ranks of those without a high school diploma shrank.

But then, over the past few years, the demand for super-educated professionals suddenly took a deep dive. A variety of factors have combined to alter the white-collar landscape. The first was the pandemic-driven shift to remote work. No longer limited by the constraints of geography, American companies realized they could hire abroad, giving them access to a larger and cheaper pool of highly trained professionals. Suddenly, homegrown computer scientists, product managers, and data scientists — long treated as rare diamonds worthy of their high salaries — seemed more like overpriced commodities compared with their counterparts overseas.

Another factor has been the big push among corporate recruiters to de-emphasize formal credentials in the hiring process, a trend known as "skills-based hiring." Some employers no longer list degree requirements in job postings; others have added the qualifier "or equivalent experience." That's giving people without the extra schooling a chance at landing the most coveted white-collar jobs — while undercutting the advantage long enjoyed by the advanced-degree holders.

And then there's AI. As I've written before, studies show that chatbots and other AI tools are already providing a boost to those with the least skill and experience, while doing little to help high performers — the very people who likely got an advanced degree to hone their skills. What's more, early estimates suggest that in the long run, AI is most likely to displace white-collar professionals, while leaving most blue-collar jobs intact. And besides, getting an MBA or some other advanced degree didn't exactly prepare anyone for the sudden emergence of ChatGPT. The faster technology changes, the faster your fancy degree is likely to feel outdated. Terrazas found that the median age for those experiencing long-term unemployment is now 37 — meaning you don't have to be a boomer to feel like technology has passed you by.

"What we think of as 'old' is a lot younger now," Terrazas says. "With the accelerated technical frontier, what it means to be out of date is creeping downward."

That's what happened to a millennial I'll call Tara. After earning her MBA from Cornell University in 2021, she was confident that all the hard work — and expense — was going to pay off. With a job offer from Amazon in hand, she moved across the country to Seattle, excited to live on her own for the first time and begin a brand-new career as a product manager. Whatever happened with the job, she figured there would always be plenty of companies eager to hire someone with a business degree from a top school.

Then Tara got laid off during the tech downturn in November 2023 — and hasn't been able to land a new role. Unemployed for 14 months and counting, she's applied to something like 650 jobs. "With every passing month, as my stress levels went up, my search criteria expanded," she tells me. "I'm stumped at just how hard it's been."

Professionals with advanced degrees aren't just mired in longer job searches — they're facing what feels like a vicious circle: The longer they're out of work, the more obsolete their skills become, which in turn makes it even harder to find a job. As they grow increasingly dejected, some opt for lower-paying roles; others give up altogether. Economists refer to this as "scarring," and it's one of the reasons they worry so much about long-term unemployment. It doesn't just hurt the people who can't find work. It also hurts the broader economy.

The prospects for educated elites are so bleak that some have taken to hiding the credentials they worked so hard to earn. Scott Catey, a policy director who has both a JD and a Ph.D., says he sometimes leaves out the doctorate in job applications, to avoid being viewed as overqualified. Michael Borsellino, who has a doctorate in urban studies, started listing his degree as being in "social sciences," to make it sound applicable to a wider range of jobs. The goal, he says, is "not to pigeonhole myself."

Ever since the Industrial Revolution, the modern economy has been dividing up the workforce into ever-narrower specializations. A driving force in higher education, in fact, was to cultivate the sort of hyper-niche expertise that the marketplace demanded. But Terrazas says we're now starting to see the darker side of becoming really, really good at one thing. "Specialization can create productivity-enhancing high returns," he says. "But it can also create obsolescence."

Borsellino, who eventually landed a role at LinkedIn after a nine-month search, doesn't think his Ph.D. proved to be an asset. "If it did help, I feel like I wouldn't have been unemployed for as long as I was," he says. "I don't know if it was a drain, but I don't think it was the end-all, be-all that I grew up believing it would be." If he were thinking about getting a doctorate today, he's not sure he'd do it. "I think we're at this point where experience is valued so much more that it's really, really difficult to justify doing the degree."

Advanced-degree holders, of course, continue to be the economy's overwhelming winners. Most of them are gainfully employed, with salaries that are typically far higher than anyone else's. And it's possible that the current hiring obstacles facing educated professionals will prove to be a temporary blip, just one more twist in a deeply strange pandemic-era economy that we've failed to understand time and time again.

But if I'm right, and this turns out to be the beginning of an enduring trend, it will force us to rethink our long-standing assumptions about education and employment. If even a Ph.D. can't keep us safe from economic catastrophe, what will? That's the question that I find deeply unsettling, especially as we face the uncertainty and upheaval of the AI revolution. Yes, it's always been unfair that those who can afford to keep going to school face better prospects than their less-educated peers. But at least there was some kind of road map to financial security, a rule of thumb that told you how to get to higher ground. There was comfort in that predictability.

Catey, the JD-Ph.D., counts himself among the lucky ones. While he continues his search for a full-time job, he's been able to land enough freelance work to get by. And he doesn't have to worry about paying off his student loans, because they were forgiven by the Biden administration. But being without a full-time job for almost a year wasn't exactly the life he envisioned back when he was slogging his way through grad school.

"Credentialing seemed to me a very solid way to make sure I had a reliable future of employment in front of me," he says. "That's not how it turned out."

Andy Kiersz contributed analysis.

Aki Ito is a chief correspondent at Business Insider.

• The Supreme Court is set to hear a case Tuesday that could expand prisoner access to jury trials.
• The case relates to the PLRA, a 1996 law requiring prisoners to pursue a prison grievance before filing suit.
• The petitioner says expanding access to juries would leave courts "inundated" with meritless suits.

When US lawmakers introduced legislation nearly 30 years ago to curb the "frivolous" prisoner lawsuits they said were inundating the courts, they insisted it wouldn't affect prisoners with legitimate claims.

That law, the 1996 Prison Litigation Reform Act, created something of a catch-22. Under the PLRA, any lawsuit, however serious the claim, can be dismissed if the prisoner didn't first exhaust their prison's internal grievance process. Yet prisoners say grievances can be stymied by the very guards they've accused of wrongdoing.

In these cases, a prisoner's claim of abuse or retaliation can be intertwined with their failure to properly file grievances.

The Supreme Court is expected to hear arguments Tuesday about whether prisoners have a right to argue these complex cases before a jury.

The case the justices will hear centers on a Michigan prisoner named Kyle Brandon Richards, who said in a legal complaint he filed in April 2020 that Thomas Perttu, a resident unit manager at the Baraga Correctional Facility, had "engaged in a pattern of prolific and repetitive sexual abuse." Richards said that when he tried to file written grievances reporting the abuse, Perttu retaliated against him by destroying them and threatening to kill him.

The Michigan Department of Corrections declined to comment on the claims against Perttu and did not confirm whether he still worked at the prison, citing the pending litigation. Michigan's attorney general's office, which represents Perttu, did not respond to queries.

A judge dismissed Richards' lawsuit over his failure to exhaust Baraga's grievance process under the PLRA. An appeals court reversed course. A panel of 6th Circuit judges found that because Richards' First Amendment retaliation claims against Perttu were intertwined with a factual dispute over whether he'd properly exhausted the grievance process, those contested facts should be decided by a jury, not a judge, under the Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial.

Perttu appealed, and the question of whether prisoners in these situations have a right to a jury trial will now be heard by the Supreme Court.

"Holding that the Seventh Amendment requires a jury decision on this question would be significant," said Michael Mushlin, an emeritus professor at Pace University's law school, who wrote an amicus brief with law professors in support of Richards' claims. "It's not earth-shattering, but it's significant in trying to soften the horrible blow of the PLRA."

A contested law

Though the PLRA was pitched as a common-sense reform to curb trivial lawsuits, Business Insider found, in a six-part series published in December, that the law has largely stymied prisoner lawsuits claiming serious harm — including retaliatory beatings, stabbings, sexual assaults, and egregious forms of medical neglect.

Exhausting an internal grievance system before filing suit, as the PLRA requires, is often a convoluted ordeal.

In one case BI uncovered that was dismissed by a judge over the failure to exhaust, a New Jersey prisoner said he'd been beaten by prison guards while he was in restraints and then missed a grievance deadline while in solitary confinement. In another, a Virginia prisoner who said he was sexually abused by a prison psychologist filed a grievance that was not considered specific enough. In Indiana, a prisoner who said he attempted suicide after a guard told him to "go for it" lost in court because his grievance didn't contain the guard's full name.

In Richards' case, he argued that he was unable to meet the PLRA's exhaustion requirement because Perttu had destroyed his grievance forms — the same set of circumstances at the heart of his retaliation claim.

"The disputed facts," said Lori Alvino McGill, a lecturer at the University of Virginia's law school who is representing Richards before the Supreme Court, "will be critical to both the retaliation claim and to whether administrative remedies were available."

The PLRA has faced intense criticism since it was first enacted. Members of Congress have tried to reform the law and failed. And the Richards case is not the first time the Supreme Court has been asked to review aspects of the law.

Margo Schlanger, a law professor at the University of Michigan who is a leading researcher on the PLRA's effects and who helped guide BI on its research methodology, said that if the justices decide in favor of Richards, it would mean, at the very least, "a few more cases" filed by prisoners would make it before juries.

BI found that such outcomes are unusual. Of nearly 1,500 Eighth Amendment prisoner cases BI analyzed for its series — including every appeals court case that reached a decision over a five-year period — only 2% were decided by a jury.

Plaintiffs who got a jury trial fared far better than those who did not: Less than 1% won their cases before a judge, while 18% of plaintiffs whose cases reached a jury prevailed.

ACLU, Cato, counties weigh in

Richards' case has attracted support from the ACLU and the Cato Institute, the libertarian think tank, which both filed amicus briefs on Richards' behalf. Groups including the National Sheriffs' Association and the International Municipal Lawyers Association filed briefs supporting Perttu.

The Cato Institute argued in its brief that the constitutional right to a civil jury trial is "fundamental to American liberty."

"For Richards, and those similarly situated to him," Cato's Clark Neily III wrote, "a jury trial at the exhaustion stage is essential to ensure that their claims are fairly heard."

According to Jennifer Wedekind, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU's National Prison Project who was an author of the ACLU's brief, credibility determinations often come down to an officer's word against a prisoner's. "Those are precisely the type of determinations that juries are supposed to be making," she told BI.

The Supreme Court could decide broadly that every incarcerated plaintiff is entitled to a jury trial when there are disputes over exhaustion. Or the justices could rule more narrowly, as Mushlin expects — granting access to a jury trial only to plaintiffs in cases in which the factual discrepancies over exhaustion are inseparable from the substantive issues of the case.

Perttu's lawyers argued that if the justices uphold the circuit court's decision, federal courts will be "inundated" with "meritless lawsuits that they must allow to go to a jury" and effectively "erase nearly 30 years of progress in reducing frivolous lawsuits."

A brief filed by the International Municipal Lawyers Association and the National Association of Counties echoed those points, arguing that the 6th Circuit ruling "undermines the PLRA's goal of saving costs by reducing the volume of frivolous inmate suits."

BI found that claims of a tide of frivolous lawsuits were largely a myth. While a few dozen of the claims in BI's sample appeared to center on minor matters, the vast majority clearly involved claims of substantive harm. The effects of the law have been dramatic: Of the roughly 1,400 federal prisoner cases that BI examined filed by people who were imprisoned — rather than by former prisoners or their families — 27% failed because of the PLRA's requirements. Among cases decided in district courts, 35% failed because of the law.

Research by Schlanger found that within five years of the PLRA's passage prisoner suits dropped by 43% even as the prison population grew. The filing rate, she later found, never rebounded.

In BI's sample of prisoner suits, plaintiffs prevailed less than 1% of the time — indicating a near evisceration of protections for this country's 1.2 million prisoners, thanks to the combined impact of the PLRA and a set of legal standards established by the Supreme Court at the height of the war on drugs.

"Recent reports from Business Insider show that many prisoners have been denied their basic legal rights," Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois said in response to BI's series. "Any abuse that happens inside our prisons must be allowed to reach the light of day."

• Kayla Barnes-Lentz is 33 but says biohacking has helped her reverse her biological age by 11 years.
• She views sleeping and red light therapy as biohacks and says they're her favorite.
• Many of Barnes-Lentz's longevity treatments are experimental.

Kayla Barnes-Lentz wants to live to 150.

And, according to her calculations of her "biological age," she's making good progress. The 33-year-old longevity clinic owner and podcaster, based in Los Angeles, told Business Insider that biohacking had helped her reverse her biological age by 11 years.

In contrast to chronological age, biological age is a measure of how healthy cells, tissues, and organs appear to be. The idea is contested, however, because we don't know how bodies "should" look at any given age.

Barnes-Lentz has a lengthy list of experimental treatments she does to optimize her health and try to live longer — including taking cold plunges, standing on vibration plates, and breathing in hydrated air — which means she's essentially biohacking most of the day.

But of all her biohacks, she has two favorites.

Sleep

"Sleep is the foundation of health," Barnes-Lentz said. "Going to bed early and getting high-quality sleep is a game changer for energy levels, focus, motivation, and overall feeling."

She and her husband, Warren Lentz, wind down for the night by watching TV and cuddling. They go to bed at 8:30 p.m. most nights.

Research suggests that getting less than seven to eight hours of sleep a night is associated with a higher risk of chronic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and depression, as well as issues with focusing and reacting. In a 2022 survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 36.8% of Americans reported getting less than seven hours of sleep a night.

Some biohackers spend thousands on sleep hygiene products and tech that isn't proven. Barnes-Lentz uses an Oura ring to track her sleep quality, but otherwise, she keeps things simple: She gets eight hours a night and never uses her phone in bed.

Business Insider previously reported on how to get the best sleep possible.

Red light therapy

Barnes-Lentz's favorite tech-based biohack is red light therapy. Her at-home sauna has an inbuilt red light, so she can do both at the same time.

She said red light therapy improves the functioning of the mitochondria, or the parts of cells that produce energy, which she hopes will increase her energy levels. In a 2024 study published in the Journal of Biophotonics, researchers found that red light appeared to improve the performance of mitochondria in the body — but there's no proof this leads to overall better energy levels.

Barnes-Lentz has also posted on Instagram about how she uses red light therapy to reduce skin aging and inflammation.

It has shown some potential for improving the appearance of skin, such as reducing scars, acne, and wrinkles, but more research is needed to guarantee that it's effective, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

Some people buy $150,000 red light therapy beds or do red light therapy treatments at spas or medical centers. Barnes-Lentz combines red light therapy with time in her sauna, which she does every morning.

• The 31st SAG Awards were held at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on Sunday.
• Celebrity couples, like Jonathan Scott and Zooey Deschanel, made a splash on the red carpet with their outfits.
• Adrien Brody and Georgina Chapman opted for matching monochromatic looks.

On Sunday, some of Hollywood's biggest stars showed up at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles for the 31st Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards.

While the event was filled with couples dressed in their best outfits, Kristen Bell — the host — left her husband, Dax Shepard, at home to look after the kids. "We don't have very many babysitters who are ever available," she told People.

Nonetheless, the show must go on; Here's a look at some of the best-dressed couples of the night.

Jeff Goldblum and Emilie Livingston

Jeff Goldblum and his wife, Canadian dancer Emilie Livingston, arrived at the event hand in hand.

Goldblum wore a dark suit with a bowtie and a green scarf, while Livingston opted for a bejeweled silver gown.

Jonathan Scott and Zooey Deschanel

Jonathan Scott and Zooey Deschanel are a match made for the red carpet. The couple showed up in coordinated black-and-white outfits with bowties.

Adrien Brody and Georgina Chapman

Adrien Brody, who was nominated for best male actor for his role in "The Brutalist," and his partner Georgina Chapman opted for matching monochromatic looks for the red carpet.

Brody wore a black tuxedo with a bowtie, while Chapman was in a sculptural strapless gown from her own clothing label, Marchesa.

David and Emma Gyasi

David Gyasi wore a simple black suit with a high-neck white shirt, while his wife, Emma Gyasi, nearly stole the spotlight from him in a stunning red gown.

William Jackson Harper and Ali Ahn

William Jackson Harper and Ali Ahn stood out from the crowd in their outfits.

Harper looked dapper in his embossed navy-colored suit, while Ahn wore a cream gown with feathered shoulder details.

Zoe Saldaña and Marco Perego

Zoe Saldaña, who won best supporting actress for her role in "Emilia Pérez," looked stunning in her black velvet gown with bejeweled ruffled detailing.

Her husband, Marco Perego, an Italian film producer, opted for a more subdued gray suit with an olive-colored polka dot shirt.

Leighton Meester and Adam Brody

Leighton Meester and Adam Brody were both decked out in earth tones as they hit the SAG Awards red carpet together.

Meester wore a strapless dark green gown with cut-out details, while Brody wore a brown suit with a black tie.

• Alibaba has shifted its focus to artificial general intelligence, or AGI.
• The Chinese tech giant recently reported an 8% rise in quarterly revenue, boosting its stock price.
• Alibaba plans to invest $53 billion in AI and cloud over the next three years as it competes with US tech giants.

Hot stock Alibaba has set its sights beyond AI to focus on artificial general intelligence, or AGI.

"We aim to continue to develop models that extend the boundaries of intelligence," said Eddie Wu, Alibaba's CEO, on Thursday. He called the pursuit of AGI the company's "first and foremost goal."

AGI is AI technology that mimics human intelligence to the point that it can achieve complex cognitive tasks involving logic and reasoning.

US-based companies working toward AGI include OpenAI, Google, Meta, and Microsoft. Masayoshi Son, the CEO of major AI investor SoftBank, said earlier this month that he expects AGI to arrive "much earlier" than his late-2024 forecast of two to three years.

Wu's statement came after Alibaba released blockbuster results on Thursday. For the quarter ending in December, Alibaba posted an 8% rise in revenue to 280.2 billion yuan, or $38.6 billion. Profit rose to 48.9 billion yuan, beating analysts' expectations.

"The pursuit of AGI can contribute immense business value," said Wu, citing studies indicating that AGI — when achieved — could replace or achieve 80% of human capabilities. He said about 50% of global GDP comes from wages for blue- and white-collar work.

"If AGI can be achieved, then that could have a tremendous impact in terms of the restructuring industry around the world. It could have a significant influence on or even replace 50% of global GDP," he said.

Alibaba's AI bet

On Monday, Alibaba announced that it's planning to invest at least 380 billion Chinese yuan, or $53 billion, in cloud computing and AI infrastructure over the next three years.

The company is in a crowded global race for AI supremacy as US tech giants ramp up their AI spending. According to recent earnings reports, the combined capital expenditures of Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Meta are set to exceed $320 billion in 2025.

Amazon is leading the charge, with over $100 billion earmarked for capital expenditures this year. The vast majority will go toward expanding Amazon Web Services and scaling AI infrastructure, the company said.

However, the dramatic rise of DeepSeek, which released a new cost-competitive AI model last month, has thrown Chinese tech companies into the spotlight and caused investors to question whether massive Big Tech AI investments are justified.

US-listed Alibaba shares are up 70% this year to date, thanks to the boost from DeepSeek and after Alibaba announced that it was working with Apple to incorporate its AI into iPhones in China.

The upswing marks a major turnaround after Beijing's yearslong Big Tech regulatory crackdown, when cofounder Jack Ma's tech empire came under intense scrutiny.

Last week, Chinese leader Xi Jinping met with the country's top tech leaders — including Ma — in a sign that the country's private sector is now back in favor again.

The market is viewing the meeting as a possible end of the crackdown. The Chinese government is seemingly working to revive an economy disrupted by a pandemic, regulatory crackdowns, and a real estate crisis, wrote Deutsche Bank analysts in a note last week following the event.

On Monday, Hong Kong-listed Alibaba shares were 2.5% lower by midday after recent gains and as Asian stocks were broadly pressured by sharp losses in the US markets on Friday.

• 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.

• The 31st SAG Awards were held at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on Sunday.
• Many celebrities weren't afraid to show up in bold ensembles, some featuring elements like feathers and fringe.
• Danielle Deadwyler, Demi Moore, and Anna Sawai all wore sculptural gowns that turned heads on the red carpet.

The 31st Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards took place on Sunday at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.

Unlike other awards, such as the Oscars or the Golden Globes —which also honor directors, writers, musicians, and production teams — the SAG Awards are dedicated exclusively to recognizing actors.

Before the ceremony, which was hosted by Kristen Bell, some of Hollywood's biggest celebrities posed for the cameras on the red carpet.

Here are some of the most daring looks from the night.

Danielle Deadwyler

Danielle Deadwyler, who was nominated for best supporting actress for "The Piano Lesson," made a bold statement at the SAG Awards in a custom Louis Vuitton gown.

To complement her look, she wore bright red eyeshadow and matching red pumps.

Cynthia Erivo

Cynthia Erivo made a dramatic entrance in a vintage Givenchy gown designed by Alexander McQueen.

Her dress, made from a textured metallic fabric, featured fringe details at the neckline and sleeves.

Jamie Lee Curtis

Jamie Lee Curtis — who was nominated for best supporting actress for her role in "The Last Showgirl" — channeled showgirl energy at the SAG Awards with her black sequinned gown with a feathered top.

Jane Fonda

Jane Fonda, the recipient of this year's SAG Life Achievement Award, turned heads on the red carpet in a custom Armani Privé dress.

The peach-colored ensemble, which featured a wavy black pattern and a fringe skirt, was a departure from her usual menswear-inspired outfits.

Anna Sawai

Anna Sawai stunned on the red carpet with a custom Armani Privé strapless gown.

Her dress featured red crystals on the front with sheer side panels and a black velvet back.

Timothée Chalamet

Timothée Chalamet, who won best male actor for his role as Bob Dylan in "A Complete Unknown," wore a leather suit with a neon green shirt to the ceremony. To complement his look, he accessorized with a bejeweled bolo tie.

The actor's stylist, Taylor McNeil, seemingly drew inspiration from Dylan himself, posting a reference photo of the musician in a similar outfit on his Instagram story.

Fran Drescher

Fran Drescher, the president of the SAG-AFTRA actors' union, went for a menswear-inspired look.

Drescher rocked a baby pink satin pantsuit at this year's red carpet event — an outfit that looked similar to the one she wore to the 2022 Directors Guild of America Awards. This time around, she opted for open-toed wedges instead of pointed-toe shoes.

Demi Moore

Demi Moore, who won best female actress for her role in "The Substance," wore an edgy, drop-waist Bottega Veneta leather gown.

She styled her long black hair in loose waves and kept her makeup simple, but accessorized with a statement necklace and bracelet from Tiffany and Co.

Carl Clemons-Hopkins

Carl Clemons-Hopkins, known for his role as Marcus on "Hacks," turned heads on the red carpet in a black jumpsuit with oversized sleeves.

Tyler James Williams

Tyler James Williams, who plays Gregory Eddie in "Abbott Elementary," wore a red oversized suit with a cinched waist on the red carpet.

Banita Sandhu

Banita Sandhu, known for her role as Sita Malhotra in "Bridgerton," wore a sculptural metallic dress on the red carpet.

• The Pentagon is telling employees to "pause any response" to DOGE's request for a work report.
• Federal employees were told this weekend to list five tasks they achieved last week by Monday night.
• But the Defense Department has instead said it would be the authority to review its employees.

The Pentagon told employees on Sunday not to respond to an instruction from the White House DOGE office to list their work accomplishments.

"For now, please pause any response to the OPM email titled 'What did you do last week,'" the Defense Department wrote in a statement to civilian employees that was posted on X.

"The Department of Defense is responsible for reviewing the performance of its personnel and it will conduct any review in accordance with its own procedures," said the statement, posted on behalf of Darin S. Selnick, the acting defense undersecretary for personnel and readiness.

It added that the Pentagon would handle responses to the email request.

Selnick was referring to an email sent through the Office of Personnel Management, which asked federal employees to respond by 11:59 p.m. EST on Monday with five tasks or accomplishments they achieved over the last week.

"Please do not send any classified information, links, or attachments," said the DOGE email, which was sent to employees in federal agencies across the US.

It came just after President Donald Trump publicly wrote on Saturday that he wanted Elon Musk to "get more aggressive" in cutting workers and expenses from the federal bureaucracy.

Musk, who oversees the DOGE team, also announced the email on social media and said that a "failure to respond will be taken as a resignation."

The Defense Department did not respond to a request for comment sent by Business Insider outside regular business hours.

Other security-related government departments — including the Department of Homeland Security, the National Security Agency, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — did not respond to requests for comment from BI.

Representatives for the State Department and the FBI declined to comment on the DOGE emails.

• "Suits LA" is Aaron Korsh's spinoff of the original "Suits," which ran for nine seasons.
• It's led by Stephen Amell who plays Ted Black, a former prosecutor turned entertainment lawyer.
• The first episode ends with a twist for Black, who is reckoning with his past.

Warning: Spoilers for "Suits LA" below.

"Suits LA" — the new spinoff of Aaron Korsh's "Suits," which enjoyed a revival after landing on streamers — starts with a twist.

The first episode introduces Ted Black (Stephen Amell), a former New York prosecutor who moves to the West Coast to start his own law firm representing some of the biggest names in Hollywood.

"Suits LA" maintains the format of the original show by including flashbacks to subplots that explain the characters' actions in the present day. Mainly, these scenes explain Black's previous role as a prosecutor in New York working on jailing gang members for murder.

This plot device helped develop the backstories of beloved characters like Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht), Mike Ross (Patrick J. Adams), Rachel Zane (Meghan Markle), and Donna Paulsen (Sarah Rafferty) in "Suits."

Black's character is developed when he talks to Eddie (Carson A. Egan), his brother, who seemingly lives with him.

Here's the twist in the closing moments of the first episode of Suits: LA" explained.

Ted Black talks to his dead brother in 'Suits LA'

The first episode implies that Black lives with his younger brother Eddie, who is there when he wakes from a nightmare. Other scenes also show that they have a close relationship.

But at the end of the episode, Black visits his estranged, dying father, (Matt Letscher) who is in a coma. Black tearfully blames his father for "letting them kill Eddie" the night before he was convicted for an unknown crime.

This moment reveals that Black has been imagining his dead brother this whole time, which some viewers might have picked up on since he wears the same New York Yankees shirt in every scene.

In the closing moments, Black tells Eddie him he just wants to spend another day with him.

It's a surprising move from "Suits LA," as the original show didn't have such abstract moments. But it's an interesting way of endearing Black, who is ruthless at work, to the audience.

• I'm a mom of two kids under the age of 4.
• I rely on my kids' boomer grandparents when I need childcare.
• They don't always understand the way I parent, but they try hard.

I'm a mom of a 4-year-old and a 7-month-old who attend day care while my husband and I work full-time. Boomer grandparents get a lot of grief for being unempathetic and aloof, but that's not the case for my family. My children's boomer grandparents are my childcare secret weapon and I couldn't be a working parent without their help.

I'm not the only one, either; I see our school's office administrators helping grandparents navigate the attendance system at least once a week. I've even become friendly with some of the grandparents I see regularly at pick-up. For some millennials, grandparents are an important part of our family ecosystem.

We heavily considered their proximity to us when choosing a home

When choosing our first home, it was important to us to have easy access to my mom and my in-laws, who are less than 30 minutes away, to ensure that our children could see their grandparents frequently. Both sets of parents are in their mid to late 70s; I had my first child at 36 and my second at 40, so their time together is precious.

When my youngest first attended day care, she only went three days a week. My mom and in-laws surprised me by offering to watch her the other two days so I could work full-time without paying for full-time care. I'm sure they would have offered even if they lived further away, having them relatively close has made a huge difference.

While they might not understand our new parenting systems, they try hard

I'm grateful that neither my in-laws nor my mom have ever questioned modern millennial parenting values and concepts. I'm sure they are internally rolling their eyes at me when I talk about sleep hygiene, bottle schedules, and gentle parenting. But they genuinely try to stick to my schedules and notes.

I've found that my part of this relationship is letting things go that aren't make-or-break; my child will be OK if someone forgets to put them in a sleep sack for a nap or if my mom makes a bottle by hand instead of using our fancy formula machine.

Thankfully, none of them has ever given me long diatribes about how they did things when we were babies. This mutual respect is what keeps our relationship healthy, and I'm grateful that they're open to learning the ways we think are best for our children at this point in time, no matter how ridiculous they might seem to them.

I've learned to pick my battles

As a first-time mom suffering from postpartum anxiety, I would internally flip out, watching them feed my toddler things riddled with added sugar and salt. It's been four years since I had my first child and their first grandchild. I've now realized their time together is more important than the details. While I would prefer that my preschooler not get diet tea sweetened with stevia, her tea party is much more important than what's in her cup.

They are there when we need them most

Now that both of my children are in full-time care, my mom and in-laws regularly pick them up from school to help me with scheduling issues or to give us a break from the grueling job of parenting. It can be frustrating when both sets are unavailable for holidays or sick days because they are almost always available and eager to help. These are the moments I have to catch myself and acknowledge how lucky I am to have two sets of grandparents at the ready.

• The FBI has issued a warning about a Chinese ransomware group called Ghost.
• Ghost has attacked critical infrastructure, schools, and businesses in over 70 countries.
• The FBI advises using security updates and multifactor authentication to prevent ransomware attacks.

The FBI is warning about a new ransomware hacker group called "Ghost."

The FBI published a security advisory with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency that said the group began indiscriminately attacking organizations in more than 70 countries starting in 2021. The warning from the FBI and the CISA says Ghost is now one of the top ransomware groups, targeting organizations all over the world as recently as January.

"Ghost actors, located in China, conduct these widespread attacks for financial gain," the report says. "Affected victims include critical infrastructure, schools and universities, healthcare, government networks, religious institutions, technology and manufacturing companies, and numerous small- and medium-sized businesses."

Ransomware is a type of malware that lets bad actors encrypt a victim's data until they pay a ransom. Ransomware attacks have become more common in recent years, sometimes targeting large companies or government infrastructure.

A ransomware attack in February 2024 against Chain Healthcare, the payment arm of healthcare giant UnitedHealth Group, briefly crippled the pharmacy industry after it caused a major backlog in filling customer subscriptions.

Most ransomware hackers use phishing methods, sending fake messages to victims in the hope that they'll click a link and install malware on their devices.

The hackers in the Ghost group, however, use publicly available code to exploit common vulnerabilities in organizations' software that have not been removed by updated patches, the FBI says.

"The FBI has observed Ghost actors obtaining initial access to networks by exploiting public-facing applications that are associated with multiple Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures," the warning says.

The FBI said in the warning that Ghost attackers usually claim that they will sell the victim's stolen data if they do not pay a ransom. However, the agency said they "do not frequently exfiltrate a significant amount of information or files, such as intellectual property or personally identifiable information that would cause significant harm to victims if leaked."

The FBI recommends consulting its StopRansomware guide for comprehensive information on how companies can guard against ransomware attacks.

Some tips for fighting against common ransomware tactics are to maintain regular system backups of sensitive information, patch known system vulnerabilities with security updates and use phishing-resistant multifactor authentication for company email accounts.

The FBI recommends reporting any ransomware attacks to the agency. In the security advisory, the FBI said it is particularly interested in "any information that can be shared, including logs showing communication to and from foreign IP addresses, a sample ransom note, communications with threat actors, Bitcoin wallet information, and/or decryptor files."

• At 23, Hong Kong was Hannah Ho's dream city, until it wasn't.
• She had moved there after graduation but when she turned 30, she knew it was time to move back home.
• She enjoys spending more time with family back in the UK but wants to continue exploring the world.

When I graduated with degrees in business management and Chinese, I didn't have a clear career plan. I just knew I wanted to live abroad.

I had spent two semesters in China — six months studying in Shanghai and six months completing an internship in Qingdao. That year, I took a 5-day trip to Hong Kong, and something about the city's energy and diversity drew me in. I decided I wanted to move there.

So, at 23, I took the leap and moved to Hong Kong. I was excited but also nervous. I was a fresh graduate with no real-world experience and had landed a nine-month job as a project coordinator for an educational foundation.

I thought it would be a short adventure, but I ended up staying for seven years. I transitioned into the recruitment industry and before I knew it, Hong Kong became home. I made a lot of friends and adapted to the city's fast-paced lifestyle.

But my life in Hong Kong began to shift in 2020. During and after the pandemic, the once-bustling city felt gloomy. Over time, I realized that the version of Hong Kong I had fallen in love with was gone. Some of my close friends had left, tourism had slowed down, and the once-thriving social scene had faded with fewer gatherings and events.

As the city changed, so did I. I found myself craving something new, a fresh challenge and the desire for a career change began to grow.

Moving home was hard

In 2023, and after I turned 30, I knew it was time to leave. Moving back home to the UK was not an easy decision. It meant leaving behind the life and career I had built, the friendships I had formed, and a city that had shaped me as a person.

I had never heard anyone talk about how hard it is to move home after being an expat. The truth is, you come back as a different person, shaped by experiences and perspectives that people around you may not fully understand.

Meanwhile, I quickly noticed that things back home had also changed. My parents were older, most of my friends had settled down, and the life I once knew felt both familiar and foreign.

One of the biggest challenges I faced was returning without a professional network. Having left the UK straight after university, I had built my career in Hong Kong. Now, I was essentially starting from scratch.

In Hong Kong, my well-established career provided useful connections. Back in the UK, I had to rebuild everything. I started getting back in touch with old friends and acquaintances, attending networking events, and leveraging LinkedIn to create new opportunities. At times, it was uncomfortable, but I reminded myself that I had done this before — I had built a life from scratch once, and I could do it again.

Not missing Hong Kong's work culture

For the first time in years, I had time to pause and reflect. It was a strange paradox — I had longed for more balance, yet I found myself missing the intensity of my old life.

There's so much I miss about Hong Kong: transporting myself from the hustle and bustle of Central to an island beach or a hiking trail in 30 minutes. I miss the food, the social scene, and the warmer weather. The sense of adventure that came with living in a place where something was always happening.

In Hong Kong, I shared a compact apartment with a roommate in a lively neighborhood. Big-city living meant being surrounded by high-rises and skyscrapers. Now, in Liverpool — a port city about 200 miles northwest of London — I've gone from apartment living to a house with a garden — something that once felt almost impossible in Hong Kong. With more space, fresh air, and quieter surroundings, home now feels more open and relaxed.

Coming back to the UK has brought its own joys. Spending quality time with my family has been a highlight, I notice myself appreciating them now in a way I never did before. I can drop by my sister and brother's places for home-cooked meals, a cup of tea, and just talk about life. These simple moments remind me of the comfort and connection I once took for granted.

I have a car, so I can drive to the countryside instead of relying on public transport.

Adjusting to the UK's work culture has also been refreshing. In Hong Kong, the work ethic was intense — long workdays were the norm, and efficiency was everything. There was a sense of urgency in everything people did. In contrast, the UK has felt more relaxed. The standard 9-to-5 schedule, hybrid/remote working models, and emphasis on work-life balance have been a welcome change.

Most importantly, I've been using this transition as an opportunity to pivot my career. While I still work a part-time job, I've decided to step away from the agency recruitment industry. Now, I'm building an online business that will allow me to work remotely and travel more. Because if there's one thing I've learned, once an expat, always an expat.

It does feel like I'm starting from scratch, but I see it as an opportunity to build something new on my own terms while embracing the lessons and experiences that shaped me abroad.

Got a personal essay about moving home after living abroad that you want to share? Get in touch with the editor: [email protected].