• Trump and China are locked in a trade war, and for some products, the situation is getting out of hand.
• Thanks to the US and China's tariff tit-for-tat, EVs from China now face a 247.5% tariff rate.
• So don't expect to see cars from Tesla rivals BYD or Xiaomi on the road anytime soon.

It was already nearly impossible to buy a BYD in the US, but now things are getting somewhat out of hand.

After a rapid escalation in the trade war between the US and China over the past few days, anyone trying to import a Chinese electric car to the US faces a tariff rate of 247.5% — so don't expect to see any cars from Tesla rivals BYD or Xiaomi on the road anytime soon.

A spokesperson for the US International Trade Commission confirmed the total tax rate to Business Insider on Thursday.

That includes the 145% tariffs on Chinese goods announced by Donald Trump in recent days and the 100% levy on Chinese electric cars implemented by Joe Biden last year, plus a 2.5% duty rate on all EVs bought into the US for good measure.

The enormous number is a sign of how the trade war between the world's two largest economies has escalated to almost ludicrous levels. China retaliated against the latest US tariffs on Friday with its own 125% tariff on US goods.

It also shows how far successive US administrations have gone to prevent a wave of affordable, high-tech Chinese electric vehicles from reaching American shores.

According to classic car importer CFR Classic, the cost of importing a car from China to the US starts from $2,749. This means that anyone trying to import a Chinese EV would face extra shipping costs of at least $6,800.

That's not far off the cost of the $7,800 Seagull, BYD's cheapest electric car — and thanks to a host of additional regulations and restrictions, it is unlikely anyone would be able to legally drive one on US roads even if they could afford the shipping fees.

Chinese EVs pose an existential threat

Having once dismissed Chinese carmakers, the US auto industry has now decided BYD and its fellow upstarts represent an existential threat.

Elon Musk warned last year that China's EV companies would "demolish" their Western rivals without trade barriers. At the same time, Ford CEO Jim Farley was so impressed by Xiaomi's SU7 electric sedan that he flew one from Shanghai to Chicago.

The 250% trade barrier protects Tesla, Ford, and other automakers from having to compete with BYD and Xiaomi in the US, but it does little to protect them elsewhere.

Not content with crushing Western automakers at home, China's EV makers are now expanding rapidly in developing markets like Brazil and Southeast Asia.

They are also building factories and entering new markets in Europe, which is reportedly considering removing its own tariffs on Chinese electric cars after getting dragged into Trump's trade war.

Americans, who in surveys have consistently cited a lack of affordability and choice as major barriers to buying an EV, are starting to take notice.

YouTuber iShowSpeed, real name Darren Watkins Jr., showed off some of BYD's most eye-catching cars to his 38.6 million subscribers during a recent visit to China.

In a livestream with around 8 million views on YouTube, the streamer drove BYD's Yangwang U8 SUV, which can float on water for up to 30 minutes, and the U9, a $233,000 electric supercar with remote-controlled suspension that allows it to "dance" and jump over obstacles.

When he attempted to buy the U9 to take back to the US, however, the influencer was told it wasn't possible.

For many US drivers who want to see the Seagull or SU7 in action, high tariffs mean YouTube is their only option. Or they can just cross the border to Mexico, where Chinese EVs are rapidly becoming a common sight on local roads.

• Disney is working on a "Star Wars" horror project, according to "Andor" creator Tony Gilroy.
• The showrunner spoke to Business Insider on the red carpet for "Andor" season two.
• Gilroy previously suggested that the "Star Wars" franchise should expand into other genres.

"Andor" creator and showrunner Tony Gilroy says Disney is working on a horror project within the "Star Wars" universe.

The showrunner briefly touched on the future of the "Star Wars" franchise when speaking to SFX Magazine in March ahead of the final season of "Andor." He joked that he'd like to see "a three-camera sitcom in 'Star Wars' or a horror movie."

Gilroy spoke to Business Insider on the "Andor" season two red carpet in London on Thursday.

Asked what he would do with a "Star Wars" horror project, he said Lucasfilm and Disney already had one in development: "They're doing that. I think they're doing that. I think that's in the works, yeah."

Disney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Gilroy didn't say whether the project was a TV show or a movie.

He also clarified his previous comments: "I'm agnostic about what should be done. I was riffing on the thing where I said, 'Oh, do a three-camera comedy,' so I was riffing. Sometimes riffing doesn't work with the 'Star Wars' community."

Referring to "Andor," Gilroy said: "The right creator, and the right moment, and the right vibe … you can do anything. So, my hope is that the show connects, and then we can pass along the favor that we were given from 'Mandalorian,' and we can pass along a good healthy backwind to someone else who wants to do something else cool."

The "Andor" series is a more serious affair than some of the other "Star Wars" projects of late. The political thriller focuses on the growing rebellion against the Empire in the years before 2016's "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story," as well as 1977's "Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope."

The first season, released in 2022, was met with widespread critical acclaim and earned a 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Its success showed that the "Star Wars" franchise can explore wider themes and genres without relying on the Jedi, lightsabers, and the Force to keep its audience engaged.

"Andor" season two starts streaming on Disney+ on April 22.

• Marine leaders emphasize wargaming to foster learning and adaptability in troops.
• Wargaming helps Marines understand adversary tactics and adapt to emerging technologies.
• Marine leaders say it's important to embrace losing.

A Marine Corps general said this week that officers and troops can't shy away from wargaming, tough exercises in critical thinking.

They also can't be afraid to lose, he said.

"Why isn't everybody wargaming today, right now?" Brig. Gen. Matthew Tracy, the commanding general for the Corps' Education Command, asked Tuesday at the Sea, Air, and Space symposium, a big annual event for military and defense industry insiders.

"We know it's the best way to learn," Tracy said.

"We know they need to get some reps."

Some military leaders might be holding back from making wargaming more common because they fear losing in front of fellow Marines, including junior troops. It will take some bold leadership to help overcome fears of embarrassment, he said.

"We have to get down behind the weapon and show that it's okay to fail." That's key to leadership.

What is wargaming?

Thoughts of military wargames might bring to mind images of senior military officers clustered around a table with figurines representing maneuvering units. That's not wrong. Such games are still important for wargaming.

But nowadays, wargames also come in boxes, on computers, and even in the form of plain flash cards. Some are also played in the field with red and blue teams and aggressor squadrons.

They're for all ranks, but not as commonplace as some would like to see. Leaders like Tracy don't just want to see colonels sweating through these mental gymnastics. They also want to see the trigger-pullers at the lowest tactical levels involved.

At the symposium, a young Marine officer demonstrated the latest computer-based wargame while nearby cadets from the Naval Academy played an almost human-size version of a game that resembled the classic board game "Battleship."

Other games included increasingly complex elements for troops to consider, such as friendly and enemy nations' economic and diplomatic concerns, or how another country's civilians might react to the presence of US troops.

"When you have the time to think, it gives you the muscle memory about things to consider," explained retired Marine Lt. Gen. Lori Reynolds. She previously led the service's Cyber Command and also participated in Tuesday's event.

According to Reynolds, wargaming "improves your ability to understand adversary tactics and capabilities."

The tests force players to constantly check their assumptions about what's happening on the battlefield, she said, making it an ideal environment for learning by failure.

"It's important that we lose when it's okay to lose," she said. Better at the table than in battle.

Amid the Corps' efforts to modernize for a great-power fight in the Pacific after decades of war in the Middle East, checking old assumptions is even more important.

"When you think about Marine Corps Force Design efforts, we're going to be in a more distributed laydown than ever before," Reynolds said, referring to the Corps' initiative to cut mainstays like tanks and sniper units to build a force for combat on the island chains in the Pacific.

The geography of the Pacific — with its remote islands and varying degrees of infrastructure availability — has had war planners spinning their wheels in recent years to discern what the logistics support for such a war might look like.

Wargaming has previously forced planners to confront uncomfortable realities about Pacific warfare. For the rank-and-file, it could help troops to grapple with other emerging issues, like drone warfare and advancements in electronic warfare.

"The ability to teach at the lowest levels, not just what the capability of these emerging technologies can do, but how to properly employ it," makes wargaming more critical, Reynolds said, especially for the most junior ranks.

The notoriously rigid Marine Corps is known for favoring decentralized command structures to foster decision-making in the most junior ranks.

The idea is that when far removed from high-ranking leadership in combat, even the most junior enlisted troops can understand what's going on and make sound decisions to lead their small squads effectively.

Tougher wargaming

"Each year's wargaming efforts should surpass the last in complexity, challenge, and effectiveness," Tracy told Business Insider in an email after the symposium.

Part of the complexity that he envisions for thornier gaming could come in the form of AI-assisted games.

By including AI in wargaming scenarios, "you can look at a whole lot more potential outcomes, and you can look at them a whole lot faster," said Steven Wills, who moderated Tuesday's event and who serves as a research scientist at the Center for Naval Analyses.

"Being able to examine a wider problem set, the thought is that we can think and operate faster than the bad guys and get ahead of their decision-making." Good wargaming, he explained, exposes unforeseen consequences of decision-making, setting off more complex chains of events.

But it doesn't give a participant a road map for winning.

"It lets you play through a whole lot of different outcomes so that when you think about an actual fight, you have an idea of what the outcomes might or could be," Wills said.

"It's all about trying to get you to think about the problem."

But thinking about those problems is going to take a level of vulnerability from Marine leaders, Tracy said.

"Creating a culture of wargaming starts at the highest levels, where leaders set the example by participating directly, making themselves vulnerable, and demonstrating a willingness to lose in order to learn," he told BI.

If you're always winning, you aren't being challenged, Reynolds explained. "It's okay to fail in a safe place that teaches growth."

"It teaches the importance of being a learning organization," she said. "You don't learn if you constantly win."

• US firms like OpenAI often keep their most advanced AI models behind paywalls.
• Chinese tech giants have been giving models away and are quickly integrating them into services.
• Analysts explain the key difference in strategies between China and the US.

Chinese tech giants are playing a different AI game.

US AI companies — like OpenAI and Anthropic — usually keep their most powerful models locked behind paywalls for consumers or license them to enterprises.

China's biggest players, in contrast, are handing theirs out for free — and rolling them out across everyday tech at breakneck speed, Ray Wang, a Washington-based analyst who specializes in AI and US-China tech statecraft, told Business Insider.

Instead of trying to outbuild leading players like OpenAI, China is out-deploying AI and "undergoing consolidation" — in other words, embedding AI into everything, Wang said.

That rapid integration could prove just as crucial as model quality in determining a country's overall competitiveness in AI, he said.

While the US maintains "a limited lead in frontier AI models over China," China's aggressive push to embed AI into everyday tech could give it an edge in real-world adoption, Wang added.

"China could have broader and faster — or on par with the US — AI integration in consumer devices and applications despite not having the most advanced LLM," Wang said, referring to large language models.

China's AI strategy

In recent weeks, companies like Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent have flooded the market with powerful AI models and upgrades.

In late March, Alibaba announced a new AI model designed for developing cost-effective AI agents. That same month, DeepSeek unveiled an upgraded version of its open-source V3 large language model.

Models like Alibaba's Qwen2.5-Omni-7B and DeepSeek's V3 are freely available for anyone to download, modify, and integrate.

DeepSeek's latest models — especially the reasoning-focused R1 and R2 set to launch later this month or in May — mark a "significant inflection point," said Wei Sun, the principal analyst for AI at Counterpoint Research.

"These models not only match the best-in-class performance globally, but are also open-sourced under the most permissive MIT License," she said.

"That changes the game," she added.

Amid high costs and chip shortages, Chinese firms are also prioritizing rapid AI deployment and consolidation to stay competitive, said Wang.

Tencent has deployed its Hunyuan model and DeepSeek R1 across its massive ecosystem, including WeChat, he said. WeChat, China's biggest social media app, is used by nearly 1.4 billion people.

Baidu has also integrated DeepSeek R1 into its search engine, Wang said.

Baidu last month released two newer versions of its AI model — Ernie X1, a reasoning model, and Ernie 4.5, a revamped version of the company's foundational model. The tech giant said it will "progressively integrate" Ernie 4.5 and X1 into its product ecosystem, including Baidu Search, China's dominant search engine.

"These developments underscore China's increasing emphasis on AI integration, application-driven innovation, and enterprise solutions rather than solely competing on model sophistication," Wang said.

The US's AI upgrades

In contrast, the dominant trend in the US is to build advanced, closed-source AI models that require significant investment in computing power, said Wang.

Big Tech firms like Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Meta have spent billions on the infrastructure underpinning emerging AI tech. The four companies are expected to spend a collective $320 billion in capital expenditures this year to broaden their AI capabilities.

Their flagship models — including OpenAI's GPT-4 and Google's Gemini — are typically closed-source and monetized through APIs or enterprise licensing. This restricts access and limits how widely developers can experiment or build on them. However, OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, said in January that the company needs to "figure out a different open source strategy."

On April 10, Anthropic introduced a new $200-per-month subscription tier for its Claude chatbot — matching the premium pricing of rival OpenAI.

Meta is an exception with its open-source Llama model series. But despite its open-source stance, Meta still takes a capital-heavy approach, Wang said. Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has committed as much as $65 billion to AI projects this year.

Where China is catching up

A report released on Monday by Stanford's Artificial Intelligence Index found that US private AI investment grew to $109.1 billion last year — nearly 12 times China's $9.3 billion.

While the US has produced more AI models than China, the report found that Chinese models have "rapidly closed the quality gap."

China also continues to lead in AI publications and patents, the report found.

"Chinese vendors have come a long way from being caught surprised by ChatGPT to now competing head-to-head with top Western vendors," Lian Jye Su, the chief analyst at Omdia, told BI.

"It will take a while for China to compete in AI chipsets, but China has managed to provide solid alternatives to users looking at non-US AI software and applications," he added.

• I'm more bothered than my children that they haven't won Student of the Month yet.
• I want them to win because it would validate that I'm raising exemplary students.
• Their best attributes aren't the ones on display in public but in the safety of our home.

I sat in the back of the school assembly, watching an old acquaintance slip into the center aisle, camera-ready as her son's name was called for the Student of the Month award. I was happy for her — I really was.

But when my daughter's teacher stood to offer her class their monthly awards, I saw my daughter sitting crisscross applesauce with her first-grade classmates, and my stomach knotted. I knew her name wouldn't be called. Clearly, the parents were notified ahead of time. Sure enough, her teacher announced another student's name. My daughter clapped and cheered, seemingly unbothered.

This year, neither my daughter nor her older brother have won Student of the Month. And neither has expressed disappointment. So, why do I care so much?

I started to question why I wanted them to win the award so much

Maybe it's because my husband is a teacher and school administrator, and most of his colleagues' children have already won the award this year. On his behalf, I feel the tiniest hint of professional pressure, as if their children's success reflects on them.

Or maybe it's because, with their class sizes —18 kids in my daughter's class and 22 in my son's — nearly half of the school will receive the award by the end of the school year, making it feel almost as if those who don't are being singled out in some way. Or maybe it's my own history; I won it every year as a child, and perhaps I've unknowingly placed that expectation on my children. Yet, in the end, what does it matter? I don't have my own awards framed in my office or the accomplishments on my résumé.

Are these awards public validations that we must be doing good jobs as parents and that our children are exemplary students? Or, do I simply covet that bumper sticker that signals, "This car is full of winners" because humans are competitive by nature?

As the mother of award-less children, I wonder if the Student of the Month award simply creates unnecessary competition. How much of a child's — or parent's — self-worth hinges on praise?

I just want to raise good children — and I am

My children aren't troublemakers, but they are introverted and sometimes standoffish to those outside their inner circles. Neither are natural leaders, rule followers, or people-pleasers. Still, I hoped they'd be noticed for their better qualities.

I wonder if their best attributes aren't the ones they put on display in public, but rather, most often viewed in the safety of our home. This weekend, they spent two hours assembling a Little Tikes Cozy Coupe car for their toddler brother and couldn't wait to show it to him in the morning. My daughter did all of the dinner dishes to surprise me, and my son grabbed groceries from my hands with a, "Here, Mom, let me get those for you."

These moments give me hope for the adults they'll become.

Still, I'll admit as the school year comes to a close, it's hard not to feel a twinge of disappointment when I realize my children are among the students who won't stand up at the school assembly to receive their Student of the Month award.

I have this lingering question of whether their teachers ever get to see their best sides, but maybe that's the point here — that it doesn't matter. They don't need to stand out among dozens of kids or be awarded on a stage because I recognize them every day in the small moments. I recognize how fortunate I am that my children don't need a piece of paper to feel validated — now it's my turn to do the same.

• I always judged stay-at-home moms and never wanted to be one.
• I got pregnant around the time my career was taking an unexpected turn.
• I feel lost when it comes to a career, but I have a newfound passion: my son.

It wasn't intentional, but it's been two years since I've worked a full-time job.

When asked what I do, I stumble over my words. I write articles occasionally as a freelance journalist, but I can't sugarcoat it: I'm a stay-at-home mom. Even typing it, I cringe a little.

Before becoming a stay-at-home, I saw my friends who were well-off and stay-at-home moms. Their days seemed to be all about lunches and playing tennis.

I was judgmental, for sure. I used to think, "Must be nice."

Now I know — yes, it is nice, but it's also a very challenging job.

My life took an unexpected turn after getting pregnant

When I was 25, I moved to Los Angeles with big dreams of working in Hollywood as a sitcom writer. That didn't pan out, but I did meet my husband.

When COVID-19 hit, it was even harder to find a steady job in television so I took a position in podcasting. I was there a little over a year but left when things went south — the company declared bankruptcy a few months later. I was also newly pregnant.

I didn't look for a new full-time job while pregnant. Becoming a sitcom writer had been an uphill battle and one I was ready to give up. I took a few short-term contract positions, and after giving birth to my son, I wasn't working at all.

When I finally started to consider working again, there'd been a shift in the podcasting openings I found — many producer roles also required editing experience, which wasn't a skill I had or was interested in.

Since becoming a mother, I can't seem to find a career path that excites me

I'm a self-admitted lost soul when it comes to a career. I still look for jobs and often apply.

However, when I really think about what it would mean to take any of the jobs I apply for, sadness washes over me at the thought of being away from my son.

Maybe it's time to accept what I do feel passionate about: my son.

Also, if I returned to work I would need to find childcare since a day job would likely go to 5 p.m. and my son is out of preschool by 3 p.m. Plus, my son only goes to preschool three days a week.

Whether it's day care or a nanny, the amount of money it would cost makes taking any job less appealing. It's just not worth it.

If I had a clear career trajectory, it might be a different story.

I was surprised that I enjoy being a stay-at-home mom

I was with my son every single day until he started preschool at 1 ½ years old. I was there for all the milestones: first word, steps, giggles.

I was amazed at how this helpless being transformed into a chatty toddler, full of personality, right before my eyes. Though cliché, it was true: The days are long but the years are short.

Of course, some days are just hard. His naps offer me a much-needed break but then sometimes they don't happen. Food gets thrown on the just-washed floor. If he doesn't have a cold, then he has a stomach bug. It feels like a week without an illness is a rarity.

Even now that's he in school part time, my hours alone fly by, and I never accomplish all the to-dos I hope to. At 3 p.m. I switch back to mom duty and I must entertain him, keep him away from the remote (although sometimes you just have to put on the TV), and manage his multistep bedtime routine.

Even with all the trying moments, I've realized I'm the happiest I've ever been. My son makes me laugh constantly, and I can't tell him enough how much I love him.

I am privileged that my family can afford to live on my husband's salary alone. An additional salary would certainly be helpful, but the opportunity cost of me finding work — and not spending my days with my son — is too high.

My name may not be in the credits of your favorite comedy show, but I know people whose names are and I wouldn't trade places with any of them.

Although my days may not be glamorous and are often monotonous, I love my life as a stay-at-home mom.

• Coffee shops are starting to raise their prices in response to President Donald Trump's 10% tariffs.
• The US has limited coffee production, so beans have to be imported.
• Some coffee entrepreneurs told BI they need to cushion their business against tariff uncertainty.

Don't be surprised if your next cup of coffee costs more.

Coffee shops in the US have begun to pass along tariff costs straight to customers' wallets.

Though President Donald Trump put a 90-pause on most of his reciprocal tariffs on Wednesday, his 10% blanket levies remain in effect. Some coffee importers and cafés are now raising their prices in response.

"That erases our entire profit margin if we absorb it," Chris Kornman, the director of education at the importer Royal Coffee, told Business Insider. He called the situation "an unprecedented crisis" for the coffee industry.

The Crown, a specialty coffee shop that Royal owns in Oakland, California, announced across-the-board price increases on Thursday. All of its drinks will cost an additional 50 cents from now on, Kornman said, with the exception of its $2 dark roast, which is an entry-level drink for customers who aren't used to a natural-processed pour-over or washed Rwandan espresso.

"Unless we get a resolution in Washington soon, this appears to be the new normal, unfortunately," Max Nicholas-Fulmer, the CEO of Royal Coffee, said in a statement shared with BI.

Other coffee shops have also announced price hikes. The Wakery, an Illinois-based late-night coffeehouse, posted a statement to Facebook on Wednesday informing customers that it would be increasing the price of all of its coffee drinks due to the tariffs.

"Our coffee supplier needed to raise their wholesale price, and in order to make our ends meet, we need to respond by raising our coffee prices," it said.

Local reports also indicate that cafés in Austin, Grand Rapids, Michigan, and New Jersey are raising their prices or considering doing so.

Just the beginning

TJ Semanchin, co-owner of Wonderstate Coffee, told BI a 10% increase for a cup of coffee is only "the starting point."

The US is the second largest coffee importer in the world, with Brazil, Colombia, and Vietnam making up around 60% of its coffee supply, according to a 2024 United States Department of Agriculture report. Before he announced pauses to some of the country-specific increases on Wednesday, Trump's sweeping "Liberation Day" tariffs varied by country, with a 46% rate for Vietnam and 10% for both Brazil and Colombia. The blanket 10% tariffs remain for all three countries.

"The coffee market is getting zigzagged in every direction because there's so much uncertainty and volatility in everything," Semanchin said.

Uncertainty summer

Shop owners say tariff whiplash doesn't help. When Trump initially announced 25% tariffs on Mexico, Kornman said staff at Royal Coffee scrambled to scale back its Mexican coffee purchases and notify customers that it might charge more for those beans. Now, Mexico's agricultural products aren't affected. Royal has stopped buying coffee from India in case its tariffs go up to 27%, as Trump initially proposed.

"To quote our logistics coordinator, we're digging holes in all the wrong places," Kornman said.

Pierre and Jackie Marquez, who own Tasa Coffee Roasters in Chicago, say they already bumped up their prices in February because of overall rising costs. If Trump's reciprocal tariffs go into effect at the end of his 90-day pause, the Marquez's say they'll have to increase prices again.

"It's almost a guarantee," Pierre Marquez said.

Domestic coffee production is largely limited to Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and small parts of California. Those farms can't replace coffee imports, Kornman said.

The cost of coffee beans was already creeping upward before Trump's tariffs, due in part to shipping costs and extra-warm weather in Brazil, he added.

"There's also the threat of a global recession on the table at the moment, and that makes it pretty unsavory to talk about raising prices when people may not be able to afford a cup of coffee," Kornman said.

"I don't expect to raise prices again in an ideal world," he added. Still, "it's really hard to predict."

• Le Labo, a luxury fragrance brand founded in New York, is known for its attention-getting scents.
• I tried six of the brand's most popular perfumes and ranked them from worst to best.
• Santal 33 is overrated, in my opinion, while Lavande 31 deserves more hype.

It doesn't matter if you're a celebrity, a successful businessman, or an everyday fragrance fanatic. It seems like everyone loves Le Labo.

The New York City brand was founded by friends Fabrice Penot and Edouard Roschi in 2006 and grew so popular that it was purchased by Estée Lauder Companies in 2014.

It's known for creating memorable, luxurious scents that smell unlike anything else. Bottles retail between $107 and $1,095.

I first tried the brand at the end of last year, testing Santal 33 against a Target dupe. Though I wasn't a fan of that fragrance, I was intrigued. I'd never smelled anything like it before.

So, I bought a few more samples (.05 fluid-ounce bottles for $7 each) of Le Labo's most popular scents and wore a different one each day over the course of two weeks.

I took notes on what I liked and disliked, asked friends and family for their thoughts, and watched the clock to see which scents lasted on my skin all day and which evaporated into thin air.

Here's how I'd rank them from worst to best.

• Conductor AI has raised a $15 million Series A led by Lux Capital.
• The startup helps government agencies streamline compliance and approval processes using AI.
• Conductor AI plans to expand its team and scale operations with new funding.

Conductor AI, a startup that uses artificial intelligence to help those in large organizations — like the US government — fill out paperwork and effectively resolve compliance issues, has raised around $15 million for its Series A round led by Lux Capital.

Former Palantir employees Zachary Long, Eric Schwartz, and Ben Fichter, who previously worked at a defense cybersecurity company, cofounded the Biddeford, Maine-based company in June 2023. Additional investors in the funding round include Jack Altman's Alt Capital, Haystack Ventures, led by Semil Shah, and Abstract Ventures.

The 15-person company develops an AI platform that can navigate complex government approval workflows in classified environments. Using AI, Conductor's software ingests thousands of pages of complex policy and compliance rules, atomizes them into individual line items, and then determines what is allowable for a given document review or approval process based on the new information in its system.

"What we are trying to do is make it clear to the user what they're answering … and make it much clearer to the reviewer who has never heard of you, or seen you, what you were trying to say," Long said.

This process speeds up governmental review and approval processes. Early customers have seen their time spent combing dense policy documents drop by 50%, according to the company.

Building software tailor-made for the government was an intentional choice from day one. Just as Conductor's platform helps agencies ensure compliance, the startup itself had to meet strict standards for building new tech since government software has to operate entirely within secure environments, Long said.

The US government is burdened by an overwhelming amount of rules, paperwork, and policies, according to Long: "If you've worked with the government for a while, you've had this experience and this pain of needing to do something," he added. "But there's this totally legitimate but very complicated process of getting to yes."

Conductor's founding team is well-versed in the intricacies of working on tech and selling it to the government. Long started his career as a quantitative analyst at the proprietary trading firm DC Energy. He then spent seven years at defense tech giant Palantir, where he led a data science project for the US Army and collaborated with Schwartz, Conductor cofounder and COO, on DOJ initiatives. Schwartz also spent seven years at Palantir. Before that, he worked in data analysis at Bloomberg. Fichter previously worked as a software engineer at PreVeil, which makes encryption software for email and file collaboration.

So far, the software's biggest use case has been automating security classification, but it's also being applied to a host of other government processes, including export licensure, International Traffic in Arms Regulations compliance, document review, declassification, and the release of information from one agency to another.

Conductor has already clinched contracts with the US Air Force, Space Force, and the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Long added. Conductor AI intends to use its Series A funding to scale quickly and hire engineers.

"The end goal is that any industry that's heavily regulated by the government, including finance, healthcare — any industry that goes through government review workflows would be applicable," Lan Jiang, an associate at Lux Capital, said. "This idea about expediting efficiency and cutting through red tape really appealed to us."

• When Shruti Mangawa tried applying for jobs after taking a career break, she was often ghosted.
• She felt guilt about being unemployed, particularly when people said she was "just a housewife."
• Returning to work after her break taught Mangawa how to view success differently.

This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with 35-year-old Shruti Mangawa from New Mexico. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I grew up and studied in India. In 2018, I joined Hindustan Unilever, a subsidiary of Unilever, where I became an area sales and customer manager.

In 2021, I took a sabbatical due to a spinal injury. I came to the USA, where my husband worked, to spend some time with him and recover.

But after a few months in America, I was diagnosed with breast cancer, so I couldn't go back to work. My company extended my sabbatical, but my health got worse.

I knew I couldn't go back to India or my job. I spent most of the following two to three years in treatment and recovery.

When I started looking for work again in the US in 2024, I had a hunch that the huge gap in my résumé was preventing me from finding a job.

I've struggled with guilt about being unemployed because I tied my identity to my job. It's taken me a while to embrace my career break and adopt a different view of success.

I struggled to find employment in the US after my recovery

My role at Unilever was my dream job. I was in a leadership role managing a team.

I was used to being financially independent and I tied my identity to my job. I saw the shine of pride in my parents' eyes about what I had achieved. In our family circle, people younger than me looked up to me as an inspiration.

Then it all went away.

My diagnosis turned my entire world upside down. The cancer was pretty aggressive and had a big toll on my body. Thankfully, I had financial support from my husband and family.

I was more worried about my professional life than my recovery. I was conscious that any time spent in recovery was increasing the gap in my work experience.

When my doctor said I was cancer-free, I thought I'd be able to pick up my career from where I left off. It didn't happen that way. My energy levels weren't the same, and I didn't feel as motivated as I was in my 20s.

I felt guilty and like I was worthless because I wasn't working

When I was cancer-free but still dealing with long-term side effects, people would ask me what I did for a living, and it made me feel empty inside. Some acquaintances said: "Oh, so you're just a housewife, then?" I don't know if their intentions were bad, but I felt guilty. My parents spent so much on my education, but now I was sitting at home.

Being a housewife isn't a bad thing. My mom was a homemaker. But in my generation, everyone's used to working. I felt like if I wasn't, I was worthless.

When I tried to re-enter the workforce in 2024, people advised me to figure out a way to cover my gap by doing some freelancing or not putting it on my LinkedIn. We may preach that it's OK to take a break and not attach our image to job titles, but people do.

I applied for marketing roles and any jobs where I thought I had transferable skills, but I'd get ghosted or rejected even before the interview stage. I felt like I didn't even get a chance to explain my story.

Once, a recruiter told me that because I had a big career gap and all my prior work experience was based in India, I might need to lower my expectations for the roles I was going for.

I'm focusing on building a personal brand and have changed the way I think about success

Since I was so drained physically and mentally, I forgot what I used to be able to handle professionally. I started to feel that nobody would hire me, and this was my future.

Thankfully, my husband snapped me out of my negative thought patterns.

Around October 2024, I decided that instead of waiting for opportunities, I'd create my own. I thought by developing a personal brand, I'd stand a better chance in the job market. With such a big career gap in a rough market, I needed to find a way to stand out.

I stopped applying for jobs and focused on my writing — posting essays on Medium and producing a newsletter. Getting positive feedback from readers gave me more confidence.

I've decided to focus on brand-building for at least a year and a half while I figure out how I want to transition my career.

Though people have advised me to hide my career gap, I've decided to be more open about it, disclosing it on my LinkedIn.

Embrace detours in working life

In life, you'll have to take detours. I know people who've been laid off or who've had their life disrupted for other reasons. I'm in my 30s and have had to restart my career. Things aren't always linear.

I no longer think success is just about your career and money but also about other parts of life. If my husband says, "I'm lucky to have a wife like you" — even that is success to me now.

Now, when challenges come, I don't just panic. I ask: "What is this here to teach me?" That mindset shift is what I consider my biggest success.

Do you have a story to share about your career break or sabbatical? Contact this reporter at [email protected]

• A Redwood Materials executive sees rising EV demand.
• Concerns about an EV adoption slowdown are overblown, said Redwood's Chief Commercial Officer.
• US EV sales grew 11% year-over-year in Q1 2025, with legacy brands like Porsche seeing major gains.

I recently visited Redwood Materials, a company that's deeply entrenched in the electric vehicle industry.

This startup has agreements worth billions of dollars with major automakers and EV battery manufacturers, including VW, Toyota, GM, and Panasonic. So when I sat down with Redwood Chief Commercial Officer Cal Lankton, I asked for his outlook on EV sales.

Elon Musk's DOGE activities have dented the allure of Tesla vehicles, and there are nagging questions over EV demand and whether the auto industry is all in on this technology — or not.

Lankton, though, was unequivocal during our interview:

"We've been very fortunate to have a strong set of partners — to be very tied into their demand plans and how they see the market evolving — and we have not seen softening," he said.

"In fact, EV demand is continuing to increase. 2024 was the largest year of EV shipments on record in North America, and I think 2025 will be even larger," Lankton added.

Concerns about a potential slowdown in EV adoption have been overblown and driven by "some in OEMs in particular," Lankton explained, without naming names. OEM refers to "original equipment manufacturer," or companies that design and make their own cars.

"But the consumer is looking at EVs as compelling options," he said. "OEMs in North America are offering more and more compelling options and we feel very bullish about the long-term growth of electric vehicles."

It's fair to take Lankton's view with a pinch of salt. Redwood Materials is relying on EV demand staying strong to support its ambitious business plans.

However, the data also supports his view. According to Cox Automotive's Q1 2025 report, the US EV market continues to grow. And while certain brands have lost ground, others are leaning into long-term demand with confidence.

In the first quarter, almost 300,00 EVs were sold in the US, up 11% from a year earlier, Cox estimated.

While Tesla saw a decline, legacy auto brands such as Chevrolet, VW, Toyota, and Honda saw massive growth, year over year. Porsche was a real standout. It sold more than 4,000 EVs in Q1, up 250% from a year earlier. Taycans aren't cheap either!

"Despite many obstacles — and what you may read elsewhere — electric-vehicle sales continue to grow at a healthy pace in the US," Cox wrote in its latest report.

• Many leaders still face uncertainty even after the White House paused some tariffs.
• The 90-day respite offers some relief yet still makes it hard for some CEOs to know how to proceed.
• One startup CEO told BI that he has to keep closer tabs on what the government is doing.

When you're a CEO with big decisions to make, 90 days can feel like an eternity.

Some leaders' relief about President Donald Trump's decision to ease up on some tariffs for three months has quickly given way to more questions.

One of the biggies: What's next?

For many CEOs, the immediate answer is more uncertainty.

The lack of clarity — and the relatively limited 90-day tariff pause that omits China — means that many corporate chiefs who are accustomed to the slow churn of government rather than more rapid-fire policymaking are likely to find it hard to settle on any big decisions.

"It is the uncertainty and the unpredictability that paralyzes decision-making," Joe Galvin, chief research officer at the executive-coaching firm Vistage, told Business Insider.

Chat Joglekar, cofounder and CEO of the startup Baton, told BI that the 90-day pause offers some relief yet doesn't make clear whether there will be changes between now and then, or what comes after that.

"What happens on day 91?" he said.

Watching the government

Other leaders appear unsure as well. Delta and Walmart pointed to that this week. Delta said economic uncertainty around global trade was hurting its business, and Walmart's CFO said the retailer is facing "day-to-day" volatility in sales.

Joglekar said that until recently, he'd never had to run his New York City company — a marketplace for buying and selling small businesses — while keeping news sites open on his computer. He said the volleys over tariffs have become something of a distraction.

"You shouldn't need to be watching a ticker for what the government is doing every single minute of the day," Joglekar said.

Financial markets tumbled anew Thursday after the White House clarified that tariffs on China are now 145%.

The level of "absolute chaos" and uncertainty — and what appears to be mercurial policymaking to critics — is likely to drive some investors and companies away from the US to areas where the view of what's ahead is less opaque and where trade barriers are lower, said Sebastien Breteau, founder and CEO of QIMA, a UK supply-chain services company that works with some 30,000 global and regional brands.

"Trump wanted 'America first.' A lot of people say it will be 'America alone.' I think it will be 'America shrunk,'" he told BI.

The White House didn't respond to a request for comment from BI. Administration officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, have said the partial tariff pause reflects the president's negotiating strategy.

Galvin, from Vistage, said that in a March survey by the company, confidence among small-business CEOs fell by "a historic" 22.1 points in the first quarter. That followed a surge in CEO sentiment in the final three months of 2024, which included Trump's reelection.

'A defensive posture'

Galvin said that in the "rising tide" decade of 2010 to 2020 — until the pandemic arrived — CEOs could make decisions with a reasonable degree of certainty, in part because major shifts in government policy often didn't occur in a matter of hours. Now, that's not necessarily the case, he said.

Galvin said that while tariffs are a challenge, the main problems are uncertainty and unpredictability. That makes it hard for CEOs to make commitments, he said.

"They have to take a defensive posture," Galvin said. He said the not-knowing will likely push some CEOs to take steps such as hoarding cash, postponing investments, and slowing hiring.

Galvin said that uncertainty over what decisions might emerge from the White House without warning also makes it hard for company heads to plan.

"What's making people crazy is the Mr. Miyagi approach of 'tariffs on, tariffs off, tariffs on, tariffs off,'" Galvin said, referring to the fictional character from "The Karate Kid" franchise.

Worries about the prospects for the US economy could lead some CEOs to cut workers. While 45% of leaders said in the Vistage survey they planned to add employees in the next 12 months, 14% said they plan to cut. Since the survey's inception in 2003, the only other times the share of chiefs planning cutbacks was that high was during the pandemic and the financial crisis in 2009.

The survey, which involved nearly 1,800 business leaders in the US, took place during the first two weeks of March.

The China factor

The tariffs on imports from China remain a major question mark for Haas Automation, which builds machine tools used in manufacturing. The Oxnard, California, company said Tuesday it had halted hiring because it had seen a "dramatic decrease" in demand from its US and foreign customers.

A spokesperson told BI on Thursday that Haas, which employs about 1,700 workers, plans to maintain its freeze. That's because the company still faces a tariff on components it can only source from China.

The spokesperson said that pausing hiring is better than laying people off and that Haas's situation isn't "all doom and gloom."

Typically, the company posts about a dozen openings a month because of worker turnover. The spokesperson said Haas plans to maintain the hiring freeze until the US and China can reach some agreement concerning trade.

"Our competitiveness against foreign products is going to suffer until this thing is worked out," the spokesperson said.

Breteau, the QIMA CEO, said that not having a better handle on what will happen next means that some corporate chiefs will likely hold off on some decision-making — even with the 90-day pause.

"It looks like a timeout in a game that never ends," he said.

• UGG is the number one fashion trend among upper-income females in 2025, a survey said.
• Stanley Cups and other recently hot brands are waning in popularity, according to Piper Sandler.
• Nike is still the most popular clothing brand for teens, though its mindshare dropped for females.

Teenage girls seem to be having a retro moment.

Some big brands, including Nike and Sephora, maintained their popularity with teens, according to Piper Sandler's semi-annual Taking Stock With Teens survey, published on April 9.

Yet Hollister and UGG, which were staple brands among millennial and elder Gen Z teens over a decade ago, are rising in popularity again with Gen Alpha and young Gen Zers in 2025, the Piper Sandler report said. The investment bank got input from 6,455 teens with an average age of 16.2 years.

Hollister, for example, became known for its "dead" locations that were transformed into aquariums or other businesses just a few years ago. Now, it's the No. 1 apparel brand for female teens, disrupting Nike's dominance.

UGG grew the most since Piper Sandler's last survey in fall 2024, edging out Lululemon and its popular leggings for the top trend among upper-income female teens.

The teens surveyed are spending about $2,388 annually on their favorite brands, the bank said, up 6%, year-over-year from 2024. It's mostly on clothes and food, with personal care and video games tying for third place for average-income teens.

Despite maintaining its number one ranking in footwear for all teens, mindshare for Nike dipped below 40% for female consumers, the lowest since 2020, the survey said. On Running, a Nike competitor, gained share in the footwear category, but Hey Dude shoes slipped out of the top 10 for the first time since fall 2023.

Victoria's Secret is continuing to climb out of its slump, with female teens ranking it as one of the top places to shop for fragrances.

Stanley Cups and Crocs were all the rage a few years ago, but upper-income female teens told Piper Sandler that they're "on the way out" in 2025. Both skinny jeans and baggy pants made the top of the "out" list, so it's unclear what teenagers consider the correct fit for pants.

Sephora remained the favorite beauty shopping destination for teens. However, e.l.f., the top cosmetics brand this season, isn't sold by the retailer. They can go to Ulta, the runner-up, for that.

• I convinced my company to send me to Ukraine to cover the war.
• Getting the approval demanded months of planning. It also required me to sell it to management.
• This is how I got my boss to take a chance on me.

Do you want your boss to give you a shot at something big? I can tell you what worked for me when I asked Business Insider to send me to a country at war.

I'm a defense reporter, and I spent a little over a week on the ground in Ukraine last month, reporting extensively on the country's military, the booming defense industry, and its hard fight against Russia.

Getting there wasn't easy. It required months of planning, security reviews, safety considerations, logistics, and hiring the right people to help get the job done.

Before that, though, it required convincing my new boss to send me on this risky, costly, and logistically complicated trip. The lessons from my approach can apply to anyone looking to win management's approval for an ambitious idea.

Laying the groundwork to sell a big idea

I had expressed interest in covering the war on the ground in Ukraine early on in the conflict and brought it up regularly, but it wasn't until June 2024 that my supervisor and I began discussing the idea seriously. Up until that point, it had felt like a pipe dream.

What opened that first door? My editor later told me it was my hustle and record of strong work.

That conversation followed a promotion that came with an expectation for more ambitious projects. It also followed roughly two and a half years of near-daily Ukraine war coverage and key source development. It also came after an embed opportunity with the Navy on the front lines of the Red Sea conflict.

I had long been passionate about going to Ukraine, wanting to deepen my reporting on the war. However, if the company was going to send me there, I had to show growth and experience and that I had a reliable support network to do the work expected.

Doing that changed the conversation. That was just a first step, though.

Next, I needed to make a plan, and then, I needed to sell the idea to our company's top decision-makers. The most important thing was not why the trip mattered to me but making sure leadership saw the value in doing this, despite the risks and the cost.

I refined a pitch in collaboration with my editors to include reader interest data, relevance to the BI brand, how we would pull this trip off, and dollar figures. It was a monthslong process putting that together.

Pitching to the top boss

In November, our new editor in chief asked me to meet her in Manhattan.

It was our first-ever meeting since she joined our company in late September. She wanted to learn more about me and get a better sense of why I wanted to go to Ukraine so badly, so she asked me to fly down from Boston, where I'm based, for a day trip and a lunch meeting.

I was nervous. This was my one shot, and I had to make it count. Our new top editor, an industry veteran, had only been at the helm of our newsroom for a few weeks. I was coming to her as a stranger, only a few years out of college, with a big request.

I really wanted to make a good first impression, so I dressed up nicer than I would for my routine visits to the NYC office — collared shirt, khakis, dress shoes. At lunch, I wasn't terribly hungry, but I forced myself to eat my fish so it wouldn't be awkward. All I could think about was rehearsing my pitch over and over again in my head.

She asked me why BI needed to put someone on the ground. I explained the conflict's significance and why it was worth it for our long-term coverage.

Here's where she was during that meeting:

"When a reporter shows drive and curiosity and is willing to take a risk and wants to, I want to hear it out," Jamie Heller, BI's editor in chief, told me later while reflecting on the lunch.

She wanted to understand what I hoped to accomplish in Ukraine and why I felt it was so important to my reporting. But she also needed to know that I was capable of evaluating risk when I was there and could make smart decisions about my personal safety. This is something that came up repeatedly as a priority.

"I was betting on the coverage but also betting on the person," she said. "I needed to have confidence that you not only had a vision for the coverage but could handle a trip like this with wisdom and judgment, which you did."

By the end of the lunch, she seemed persuaded.

Overcoming more hurdles

Later in November, we hit a significant roadblock when it looked like the insurance costs to send me to Ukraine would be too high. It looked like the trip was not going to happen, but BI said it would take another look once we got a new director of newsroom operations.

Work went on, and I tried to keep from getting my hopes up. Then, we got a breakthrough in January, and I was told the trip had finally been given the green light. I'll never forget when my editor called me to share the news that I genuinely didn't believe I'd ever receive.

It was a blur getting things together.

There was the accreditation, coordinating with fixers, booking flights and trains, hostile environment training, a bunch of unanswered questions, and my regular reporting job to tackle in a very short time.

Then, in the eleventh hour, just weeks before I was supposed to leave for Ukraine, I was pulled into a room at our New York office where I had to discuss with Heller how our coverage might change even if the fighting stopped or the conflict ended abruptly. I still believed it was important for the trip to proceed, and I calmly made my case.

They told me all systems were a go.

On the night of March 3, I crossed the border from Poland into Ukraine by train. I couldn't believe it. The trip finally felt real — the accumulation of months of work.

"You're there, man," my editor said to me on Slack. "Been a long road."

The trip has already produced more than a dozen stories, with more still to come.

I went to management with a big ask, and it was many months before I finally got approval. The process involved months of hard work, thorough research, intricate planning, and anxiety-inducing waits for answers. I learned patience. These things take time.

With a big ask, ambition is great. What matters most, though, is having the track record and homework done so you can answer when asked why you want it so much — and why your company should bet big on it.

Jake Epstein is a senior defense reporter at Business Insider.

• Laura Gassner Otting, an executive coach, advises taking control of work aspects you can manage.
• If you're motivated to find a new job but don't know if it's the right time, assess your stress.
• It could be the right time if you get the Sunday Scaries or have had a change in life circumstances.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Laura Gassner Otting, a career expert and executive coach in Boston. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I'm a career expert, executive coach, and the author of three books about career satisfaction and workforce engagement.

In the current economy, with looming fears of layoffs, workers are favoring stability over upward mobility. Rather than seeking greener pastures elsewhere, they want to improve their current working environment.

When it feels like layoffs are lurking around every corner, it's easy to think the best thing you can do is keep your head down and hope no one notices you.

The truth is, now is the time to step up — not step back — and take ownership of the parts of your work you can control.

I started my career at one of the best search firms in the country

I worked at Isaacson Miller for five years. One day, I realized I could do this work better and faster, with more profit for us and less cost for our clients. My boss didn't agree, so I quit.

In 2002, I founded Nonprofit Professionals Advisory Group, a global executive search firm, and started calling highly successful people to recruit them. We found them by calling industry leaders across fields and asking for recommendations for shining stars. The recruits called us back because they were successful but weren't happy in their roles.

In my experience, everyone always wonders if there is something better out there. Recruiting firms would've gone out of business long ago if this weren't the case.

I sold that search firm to the team of women who helped me build it in 2016.

Money is not the only consideration for people wanting a new job

Many people think the top consideration for jumping ship is money, but in my more than two decades of experience, I've found that's not the case.

In recruiting, we say there are about eight motivating factors that will inspire anyone, anywhere, at any time to consider taking a new job:

• Money
• Mission
• Leadership
• Challenge
• Scope of impact
• Acquisition of new skills
• Prestige
• Personal needs

In research I spearheaded through Limitless Assessment, with more than 7,000 responses from people in 74 countries, only 36.7% said that money is the most important factor in determining their happiness at work.

If you're motivated to find a new job based on one or more of those eight factors but are unsure if it's the right time, there are indicators that you need to make a move now.

Here are the top reasons people should leave a job for a new opportunity

1. You're exhausted at the end of every day

If your boss, colleagues, or clients are draining you of energy, it's a good sign that they aren't bringing out the best version of you but the one constantly feeling stressed and defensive. If that's the case, odds are that you aren't doing your best work, and your career will eventually stagnate.

2. You have the Sunday Scaries every single week

Our research found that almost all of us want work to be part of what inspires us to get out of bed every morning. If you start to get depressed on Sunday evenings, that's not happening for you.

3. You're making your need-to-make number but not even approaching a plan to get to your want-to-make number

Your need-to-make number is what it costs, at minimum, to afford the life that you have now, while your want-to-make number includes going out for meals, taking a vacation, and other expenses.

4. There's greater potential available for you beyond your current role

Feeling boxed into narrow responsibilities can be frustrating. One client of mine stepped in for a last-minute presentation to her Fortune 100 company board and discovered she loved being onstage. Realizing she wanted a public-facing leadership role, she left her current company when it couldn't offer one, joining a competitor where she could pursue her ambitions.

5. There's a shift in your life circumstances

A startup founder who once thrived on long hours and intense work had a change in priorities after the birth of his daughter. Wanting to be more present at home, he sought a job with better work-life balance and financial stability.

6. You feel unseen in your current role

Another client felt her contributions were undervalued and overshadowed by a louder colleague. When her boss didn't address the imbalance, she left for a new job where the recruitment process and a significant pay increase made her feel more appreciated and valued.

Don't let other people decide what success is for you

The most common mistake I see in my line of work is people judging their current definition of success by the outdated definitions handed to them by other people. While they may be filling in all the checkboxes, they still feel empty.

You can't be insatiably hungry for someone else's goals, so you will never work hard enough for the achievement that belongs to someone else's success. This always leads to boredom, disengagement, and career stagnation.

The myopic, one-size-fits-all, fastest, and most expedient path to the corner office is the old definition of success, but today, there are innumerable ways to work that align with who we want to be, not just what we've been told we have to be.

• Retraining GPT-4 would now take as few as five people, thanks to big advances.
• GPT-4.5, launched in February, was OpenAI's most powerful model yet, the company said.
• Its breakthroughs would make rebuilding GPT-4 much easier.

Building GPT-4 took a lot of manpower. Now, OpenAI says it could rebuild GPT-4 with as few as five people, all because of what it learned from its latest model, GPT-4.5.

In a company podcast episode published Friday, OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, asked a question to three key engineers behind GPT-4.5: What's the smallest OpenAI team that could retrain GPT-4 from scratch today?

Altman said building GPT-4 took "hundreds of people, almost all of OpenAI's effort" — but things get much easier once a model is no longer at the frontier.

Alex Paino, who led pre-training machine learning for GPT-4.5, said retraining GPT-4 now would "probably" take just five to 10 people.

"We trained GPT-4o, which was a GPT-4-caliber model that we retrained using a lot of the same stuff coming out of the GPT-4.5 research program," Paino said. "Doing that run itself actually took a much smaller number of people."

Daniel Selsam, a researcher at OpenAI working on data efficiency and algorithms, agreed that rebuilding GPT-4 would now be far easier.

"Just finding out someone else did something — it becomes immensely easier," he said. "I feel like just the fact that something is possible is a huge cheat code."

In February, OpenAI released GPT-4.5, saying it was the company's largest and most powerful model to date.

Altman described it in a post on X as "the first model that feels like talking to a thoughtful person."

Paino said GPT-4.5 is designed to be "10x smarter" than GPT-4, which was released in March 2023.

"We're scaling 10x beyond what we did before with these GPT pre-training runs," Paino said.

"No longer compute-constrained"

Altman also said OpenAI is no longer "compute-constrained" on the best models it can produce — a shift he thinks the world hasn't really understood yet.

For many AI companies, the biggest hurdle to building better models is simply having enough computing power.

"It is a crazy update," Altman said. "For so long, we lived in a world where compute was always the limiting factor," he added.

Big Tech has been pouring billions into AI infrastructure. Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Meta are expected to spend a collective $320 billion in capital expenditures this year to broaden their AI capabilities.

OpenAI announced in March that it had closed the largest private tech funding round on record, including $30 billion from SoftBank and $10 billion from other investors, bringing the company's valuation to $300 billion.

The fresh capital will help OpenAI scale its computing power even further, the company said in a statement at the time.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said on an earnings call in February that demand for AI compute will only grow.

"Reasoning models can consume 100x more compute. Future reasoning can consume much more compute," Huang said on the call.

As for what's needed to hit the next 10x or 100x jump in scale, Selsam, the OpenAI researcher, said it's data efficiency.

The GPT models are very efficient at processing information, but there's a "ceiling to how deep of an insight it can gain from the data," he said.

"At some point, as the compute keeps growing and growing, the data grows much less quickly," he said, adding that "the data becomes the bottleneck."

Pushing beyond that, he said, will require "some algorithmic innovations" to squeeze more value from the same amount of data.

• Apple CEO Tim Cook has navigated Trump's China tariffs before.
• Can he do it again? This time around, Trump is even more aggressive about punishing China — which Cook depends on to make his iPhones.
• One thing in Cook's favor: Apple is so big that the ripple effects from its tariff troubles could affect lots of people.

The tariffs are paused, except the ones that aren't. Which includes a whopping 145% for products shipped from China.

What does that mean for Apple?

Yes, lots of giant tech companies have deep ties to China, from Amazon to Meta to Tesla. But Apple is fully enmeshed in China, where it has spent years building up the supply chain for its iPhones, which are the company's core business.

If those tariffs stay in place, it could jack up the price of an iPhone by hundreds of dollars. Maybe more.

So now what?

Spoiler: No one seems to know. (An Apple rep declined to comment; I haven't heard back from the White House.) But if you're an Apple optimist, you are probably wishing for one, or both, of these plans.

Plan one: Tim Apple to the rescue.

After Trump's first election in 2016, Apple CEO Tim Cook basically wrote the playbook for business leaders hoping to stay afloat in Trumpland. He frequently engaged with Trump privately, never criticized him publicly, and was willing to play along when Trump wanted to use Apple as a symbol of Big American Companies That Are Coming Back to America.

That included keeping mum when the president falsely claimed that Apple had opened a MacBook plant in Texas during Trump's reign (the plant had opened years before, during the Obama administration).

And that work paid off when Apple got exemptions from the China tariffs Trump enacted during his first term.

Now Apple bulls are hopeful Cook will find a way to wriggle out again. They're especially buoyed by Trump's comments on Wednesday suggesting he will give certain companies some kind of tariff relief.

"Some companies, through no fault of their own, they happen to be in an industry that is more affected by these things than others," Trump said. "You have to be able to show a little flexibility, and I'm able to do that."

On the one hand, it would seem much harder for Trump to give Apple a pass this time around, since his administration has consistently talked about getting Apple to build iPhones in the US. Exempting Apple from some or all of his tariffs makes that even less likely.

On the other hand, Trump is consistently inconsistent. For instance, while it is engaging with China in a trade war and talking about the need for the US to stay ahead of China in the AI arms race, Trump's administration has reportedly given Nvidia its blessing to sell its top-of-the-line chips to China. Prior to that, Trump was reportedly set to halt those sales.

Plan two: The short-term end-run

Maybe Cook convinces Trump to give Apple a pass, or a partial pass. But in the meantime, Cook has been trying to give himself as much flexibility as possible, by reportedly shipping planeloads of iPhones — perhaps as many as 1.5 million units — from China and India to the US in advance of new tariffs. That would give him the ability to keep selling the current versions of iPhones at the same price, at the same profit margin, at least for a while.

But then what? Apple usually unveils, and starts shipping, new iPhone models in the fall. It's almost impossible to imagine those getting made anywhere but China, no matter how hard Apple scrambles to find extra production capacity in lower tariff countries like Vietnam or India. And those 1.5 million older model phones won't satisfy demand for a company that sells a reported 220 million phones a year around the world.

And … that's kind of it, as far as options go. Note that there's no real consideration of Apple building up a brand new supply chain infrastructure that's fully separate from China — certainly not in the short to mid-term.

Meanwhile, even if you don't own an iPhone and/or never plan on buying a new one again, Apple's iPhone dilemma is probably still your dilemma. Even if you don't own Apple stock directly, you are almost certainly exposed to it, because the $3 trillion company makes up a giant slice makes up a giant slice of the major stock indexes.

As journalist Patrick McGee notes: "If your retirement is invested in index funds, Apple is your single biggest investment."

The fact that Apple's stock price only dropped by 4% on Thursday — compared to 7% drops for Meta and Tesla, and 5% for Amazon and Nvidia — suggests that investors feel reasonably confident that Tim Cook can navigate this one. Maybe they're right. Then again, these are the same investors who were surprised by Trump's tariff rollout last week. I wouldn't feel confident about any of these outcomes.

• John Coogan and Jordi Hays's livestreamed daily talk show "TBPN" has gained rapid popularity.
• The show features startup founders and venture capitalists in 15-minute interviews.
• VCs like Keith Rabois, Alexis Ohanian, and Plaid CEO Zach Perret have appeared on the show.

Entrepreneurs John Coogan and Jordi Hays appeared in a YouTube video last October in rumpled T-shirts. For an hour, they riffed on the week's tech news and launched their talk show, "Technology Brothers," with an unapologetic swagger.

Coogan, who cofounded the once-hyped meal replacement startup Soylent, and Hays, the cofounder of a fundraising startup, have since ditched the tech bro T-shirts for crisp suits, big personalities, and even bigger hair. Their daily show, now rebranded as "TBPN," short for the "Technology Business Programming Network," has evolved into a sports talk show-like livestream where tech founders and investors call in for 15-minute interview slots.

"The name 'tech bros' had been a slur, right?" Hays told Business Insider. "We wanted to reclaim that word in a fun way by saying, 'No, we're not tech bros — we're technology brothers.'"

So far, the show's guest list has included star venture capitalists like Keith Rabois, Trae Stephens, and Garry Tan, as well as Plaid CEO Zach Perret and Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen. In just a few months, "TBPN" has amassed a few thousand YouTube subscribers while publishing daily on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Its X account has nearly 40,000 followers.

The duo's calculated charisma has sparked a social storm because of its redux of the podcast, a played-out format in tech and venture capital. Many main character-coded investors and tech luminaries have podcasts of their own — from Harry Stebbings' "The Twenty Minute VC" to the "All-In Podcast," where Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks, and David Friedberg hold court online.

Fans of the show are also driving "TBPN"'s fame: "None of the men posting these have the courage to call @johncoogan and @jordihays hot outright," Erika Bricky, who works at a fintech startup, wrote on X. "Which is actually what we've been missing in tech pod hosts."

Not just another tech podcast

Coogan has "never really had a real full time job," he said, but has built a roster of companies. In 2013, Coogan cofounded Soylent, which quickly amassed a cult following. After Soylent, he cofounded Lucy, which makes nicotine gum and pouches. He's also an entrepreneur in residence at Peter Thiel's Founders Fund.

"TBPN" isn't Coogan's first time running a tech media playbook. He skims The Wall Street Journal in print while lounging in his gym's sauna every morning and channeled that ritual into content during the pandemic with a news-driven YouTube channel that has nearly half a million subscribers.

In college, Hays built a YouTube ad network to help podcasts monetize. He then started fintech company Party Round, later renamed Capital, which helped startup founders raise money. Capital was acquired by the business banking platform Rho in 2023. Hays also angel invests in early-stage startups and advises others, like Coogan's Lucy.

The pair decided to take their idea for a founder-friendly talk show more seriously late last year. "We were joking that technology needs a podcast," Coogan said. "Because, obviously, there's a ton."

Two months after their first episode in October 2024, Coogan and Hays were uploading three episodes a week.

In January, they began featuring guests and moved to broadcasting every weekday. Episodes are shot live, and interviews with founders are unedited. On a good day, like last week's defense tech-focused show, "TBPN" interviews 10 people, though usually they average four to six guests. Coogan and Hays also react to articles of interest, like an Economist story on defense tech's rise in Silicon Valley.

"TBPN" has not raised any money from venture investors and doesn't plan to, Coogan said. The company relies on advertising revenue from sponsors like fintech company Ramp and bed cooling system startup Eight Sleep.

The show currently runs lean, with a small crew of editors and three full-time staffers who handle production. Coogan said that, in a bid to level up its content, "TBPN" is close to signing a lease on a Hollywood soundstage.

'Digitally-native news anchors'

Perhaps "TBPN" has gained appeal because Coogan and Hays are both investors and operators, David Zagaynov, cofounder and CEO of Poseidon Aerospace, wrote to BI in an email. He appeared on "TBPN" on April 1, the day after his company launched out of stealth.

Although "TBPN" is relatively new to the tech podcast scene, a guest appearance has become a signal to some in the startup ecosystem: "I now only respond to VC cold emails/DMs if they've been on @tbpn," Cy Sack, head of business systems at Anduril, wrote on X. "Serious alpha," Seven Seven Six investor Alexis Ohanian, who has been on the show, responded.

Coogan and Hays don't pretend to be journalists. They think of themselves as "digitally-native news anchors," Hays said.

They aren't venture capitalists either (though they do occasionally angel invest). While some of their tech brethren have raised funds off their podcast momentum (Stebbings, for example, started 20VC's fund in 2020 after his podcast took off), the pair has different intentions.

"We want to do what we're doing now for decades," Hays said. "We're not doing this so that in a year we can raise a fund."

• Former executives from Citadel, Millennium, and Point72 are in senior positions across the industry.
• The leading firms have become a pool of talent for smaller rivals to poach from.
• Managers such as Walleye, Capula, Fortress, Jain Global, and more have hired alums of the biggest funds.

As Dmitry Balyasny thought about the next stage of his eponymous firm's evolution and the leaders to shepherd it, he wanted someone who had been there before.

Balyasny hired Millennium's one-time chief financial officer, Kevin Byrne, as its chief operating officer last summer. This move brought on one of the few people who can say they know what it's like to work in the C-suite of a large multistrategy firm. Byrne had been among the leadership of Izzy Englander's firm when it was roughly the size of $23 billion Balyasny today.

For those in charge of smaller multistrategy funds, the place to find the talent to take you to the next level is obvious: the three biggest firms in the sector, Englander's Millennium, Ken Griffin's Citadel, and Steve Cohen's Point72.

The three firms, which manage more than $180 billion combined and employ more than 10,000 people, have become the recruiting grounds for firms in need of experienced executives in the same way that Julian Robertson's Tiger Management was once the launching pad for aspiring fund founders.

It's another example of the institutional qualities of the top tier of the $4.5 trillion industry. Decades ago — when a hedge fund would have felt crowded with more than 100 people on staff — banks, consulting firms, law firms, and accounting giants served as feeders for hedge funds looking to fill out their executive ranks.

No one could say they knew what it takes to run a multistrategy firm with tens of billions in capital because it had never been done. Now that's changed, and those involved with the day-to-day management of the biggest firms in the industry have become hot commodities for those hoping to break into the top tier.

"When you sit in those circles, when you sit on those committees, you learn about how to run this kind of business," said John Pierson, an industry recruiter who founded P2 Investments.

"They want that DNA, that top .0001% DNA, from the top shops," he said, referring to the biggest multistrategy firms.

The names

The firms tapping into this talent include upstart platforms like Walleye, new launches like Jain Global, and established managers hoping to carve out their own spot in the multistrategy sector like Capula. And for those who leave Millennium, Citadel, and Point72, it's often for jobs and titles that give them more responsibility and runway, Pierson said.

"It's all about control and creation," he said.

While many of these roles are filled by people who made their name in the industry because of their investing chops — and a select few do still trade a book — the real value from these individuals comes from their managerial or business-building abilities.

And titles can be deceiving. Chief investment officers and strategy heads at most platforms do not run a portfolio themselves, but instead manage, recruit, and train legions of investors beneath them.

Below is a rundown of some names and roles that fit the bill. The story continues below the table. Those with an asterisk next to their name have worked at several different firms, often other multistrategy hedge funds, since leaving one of the three big platforms.

Name	Role	Current Firm	Former Firm
John Anderson	CIO of Capula Multistrategy Fund	Capula	Millennium
Dev Joneja	Chairman of Risk	ExodusPoint	Millennium
Hyung Lee	Cofounder and Advisor	ExodusPoint	Millennium
Stephen Haratunian	Chief Risk Officer	Jain Global	Millennium
Di Wu	Head of Execution Services	Schonfeld	Millennium
David Pereira	Chief Risk Officer	Verition	Millennium
Meghan Tudor	Head of Talent Management	Schonfeld	Millennium
Jeff Runnfeldt*	CIO of Fortress Multi-Manager Group	Fortress	Citadel
Colin Lancaster*	Head of EMEA and Cohead of Discretionary Macro and Fixed Income	Schonfeld	Citadel
Michael Moreau*	Deputy COO of Fundamental Equity	Schonfeld	Citadel
Noah Goldberg	Chief Compliance Officer	Jain Global	Citadel
Townie Wells	CIO of Fundamental Equities	Jain Global	Citadel
Joe Macaione	Head of North America Client Relations Group	LMR	Citadel
Seth Kammerman	Global Head of Funding and Liquidity	Verition	Citadel
Matt Giannini*	COO of Fundamental Equity Long-Short	Walleye	Citadel
Maureen Reed	Chief People Officer	Walleye	Citadel
Tom DeAngelis	President and Partner	Walleye	Citadel
Dan Schatz	Global Head of Credit	Marshall Wace	Citadel
Matt Dolente	Managing Director, Cohead of Global Long-Short Equity	Davidson Kempner	Point72
Mike Daylamani*	Founding Principal and Head of Synthesis	Engineers Gate	Point72
Rachel D'Antonio	Deputy COO	Jain Global	Point72

These three managers have also been the place where many founders of new multistrategy firms — which require more boardroom tact than market savviness from their leaders — have been groomed. Millennium spawned the industry's two biggest platform launches: Michael Gelband's ExodusPoint and Bobby Jain's Jain Global.

Englander's former executives have also started two of Asia's biggest multistrategy launches: Jonathan Xiong's Singapore-based Arrowpoint Investment Partners and Kurt Baker's Hong Kong-based 30th Century Partners.

Equity-focused multimanager funds from Citadel alumni have vaccumed up billions in capital. Managers include Holocene Advisors, founded by Brandon Haley; Candlestick Capital, founded by Jack Woodruff; Woodline Partners, cofounded by Michael Rockefeller and Karl Kroeker; Cinctive Capital, cofounded by Richard Schimel and Larry Sapanski; and, most recently, Freestone Grove Partners, founded by Todd Barker. Additionally, Dymon Asia cofounder Danny Yong was once Citadel's top Asia executive before starting his own firm.

Two former executives from Cohen's umbrella, Doug Haynes and Tom Conheeney, have each tried to launch their own multi-strategies offering, but both were ultimately unable to get them off the ground. Still, Point72 executive Angus Wai launched Asia-based Polymer Capital in 2019.

Balyasny as a case study

There's a road map for founders tapping talent from Citadel, Millennium, and Point72 in the hopes of spurring their next wave of growth: Balyasny.

While it hasn't always been smooth, the Chicago-based fund has expanded significantly in recent years. At the end of a tough 2018 that resulted in dozens of layoffs, the manager had $6 billion in assets. It now runs $23 billion and has expanded into asset classes like commodities and geographies like Denmark and Dubai.

While Balyasny and his cofounders Taylor O'Malley and Scott Schroeder still lead the firm, with Balyasny himself recently taking on more control over the fund's stockpickers, the firm's executive ranks are littered with alums of its three larger rivals, including the aforementioned Byrne. In fact, the firm's past poaching of Citadel talent — which also included Runnfeldt and Giannini — sparked a mini turf war between Griffin and Balyasny years ago.

Current Balyasny executives from Citadel, Millennium, and Point72 include:

• Alex Lurye, former chief risk officer for Citadel, who now sits in the same seat at Balyasny
• Steve Goldberg, one-time senior portfolio manager at Citadel, who coheads the fixed-income and macro investing teams at Balyasny
• Francine Fang, once the deputy head of investments for Cohen's quant unit Cubist, who currently is Balyasny's global head of systematic
• Bill Wappler, a former Point72 research executive, who is a partner and director of research at Balyasny
• Gappy Paleologo, an alum of Millennium and Citadel, who is Balyasny's new global head of quantitative research
• Peter Goodwin, a one-time star PM for Point72, who is running his own unit, Longaeva Partners, within Balyasny
• Thomas Stephens, a former PM for Millennium and Citadel, who is the senior managing director of stock-picking unit Corbets Capital
• Steve Schurr, a Point72 portfolio manager before joining Balyasny, who is a senior managing director of fundamental equities
• Joe Lanzillotti, a one-time controller at Millennium, who is Balyasny's deputy CFO
• Anita Nassar, once a partner at Citadel, who is the global head of the client relations group for Balyasny
• Joe Snodgrass, the former spokesperson for Millennium, who is the chief communications officer at Balyasny

As Citadel and Point72 return capital and Englander considers selling a stake in Millennium, Balyasny has positioned itself as not just a rival to the three biggest firms, but a legitimate peer.

One point of proof is that smaller multi-strategy funds, as well as the biggest in the industry, are hiring Balyasny alums to be leaders.

Walleye, for instance, named former Balyasny PM Anil Gondi the firm's head of long-short equity last year, and Daylamani and Runnfeldt worked in leadership roles at Balyasny before joining Engineers Gate and Fortress, respectively. Schonfeld's co-heads of its macro and fixed-income investing unit, Colin Lancaster and Mitesh Parikh, both traded for Balyasny before starting their own firm and eventually joining Schonfeld.

Jared Hade, meanwhile, will start as Point72's chief financial officer in the second half of the year after spending close to 20 years at Balyasny.

"The big three," as one industry recruiter put it, "is now the big four."

• Photographer Whitney Boykin rents out her home each year for the Masters golf tournament.
• Boykin, her husband, and their two kids pile into an RV while guests stay in their home.
• They spend $5,000 getting the house ready, but the eight-day booking pays their mortgage for a year.

This week, golf's greatest stars descend on the tiny city of Augusta, Georgia, in pursuit of the famous green jacket awarded to winners of the Masters Tournament.

It's also time for photographer Whitney Boykin and her family to pile into their camper to make way for the guests renting their home in North Augusta, South Carolina.

"I'm one of the rare locals who says I love Masters week. I just want visitors to see how amazing it is here," Boykin told Business Insider.

Boykin and other locals rent out their properties to golfers and visitors directly, on Airbnb, or via other platforms. In the city of Augusta alone, the number of rentals jumped from 725 in March 2024 to 1,700 in April 2024, data from short-term-rental analytics site AirDNA shows. The average revenue for rentals in the city jumped from $2,700 in March 2024 to $5,300 in April 2024, AirDNA found.

While Boykin declined to share exactly how much she makes, she said it's enough to cover the family's mortgage payments for a year. This is the seventh year the family is renting out their house for the Masters.

As of April 4, homes similar to Boykin's listed on Airbnb were available to rent from about $9,000 a week to $28,000 a week.

For Boykin, one week of sleeping in a camper with her husband, their two kids, their cat, and their dog is more than worth it. Take a look inside the home they rent out during the Masters.